Book Review: Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight by Rujuta Diwekar

Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight, by Rujuta Diwekar, teaches you how to lose weight without giving up all your favorite foods. No crash dieting, no carbohydrate deprivation, no unbidden cravings. Losing weight doesn't mean having to go hungry. Losing weight is not so much about WHAT to eat, as it is about HOW MUCH to eat and WHEN to eat. And that, in a nutshell, is what this book is all about.

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Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight

Author: Rujuta Diwekar
Genre: Health, Self-help, Fitness, Diet, Food, Nutrition, Weight-loss
First Published: 2009
Format: Paperback, 288 pages

Book Blurb:

It’s the book that’s taken the country by storm. For the first time comes a diet book from Rujuta Diwekar – India’s pre-eminent sports science and nutrition expert and the woman behind Kareena Kapoor’s sensationally fit body – that teaches you how to lose weight without giving up on the samosas, kebabs and gulab jamuns.

All you have to do is follow four simple rules to eating right. Soon you’ll be eating all you want – and still shedding those kilos. Full of practical advice, fascinating insights and funny anecdotes, Don’t Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight gives you the ultimate zero-deprivation diet.

I bought Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight, by Rujuta Diwekar, quite a few years ago, based on exceptionally high recommendations from several people I knew personally. And even though most of the information in the book is quite logical, I still couldn't understand all the hype about it. First of all, here are a few things that didn't impress me:

1. The language in the book was too 'Mumbaiya' for my taste. Perhaps, this kind of over-casual tone appeals to some readers. It was a turn-off for me.
2. The author keeps throwing in names of her high-profile clients to impress/dazzle the readers. Frankly, I don't care. I bought the book to learn about losing weight in a healthy manner, not to read up on her impressive resume. This obvious attempt at flaunting was a bit irritating for me.
3. Then there was this huge section (rather a complete chapter) in the beginning, devoted to writing off other weight-loss systems. There was so much negative writing about other weight-loss programs and clinics that I almost put the book away. (Talk about over-doing something!)

Coming now to the actual content of Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight, i.e. the information for which people buy this book. Well, personally, I didn't find anything new to take home. The facts/concepts presented by the author are the same ones that you keep seeing off and on in newspapers and weight-loss websites on the internet, i.e. eat shorter meals, eat more frequent meals, don't skip breakfast, eat light dinner, etc. In short, very generalized knowledge. No life-changing philosophy, at least not for me.

Some of it was pretty good advice - like crash diets do more harm than good, so do carb-less diets, and that we should stick to what we've been eating during our growing-up years because our digestive systems are familiar with processing those foods.

Rujuta also highlighted the psychosomatic causes of weight gain - stress and lack of self-love. That, I think, was the best takeaway from her book. Being into Reiki healing, I already know of psychosomatic reasons for various health issues, including obesity, but, not many people would be aware of this concept. So yes, this would be something new for most readers.

However, some of the advice given in Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight was not very practical. For example, eating every two hours. Not everybody will be able to do that. It would mean that you spend practically the entire day preparing and then eating your meals! Also, the few sample menus she has outlined in the book will require a full-time cook, but all of us are not "Page 3 celebrities" like her high-profile clients! The best that a common man can do perhaps is split his usual 3 meals into 6, i.e. divide the same meal in two sittings instead of just one.

One really good advice in the book is to "cook your own meals". Fry your own chips, have an aloo-ka-paratha instead of a ready-made burger from McDs, go for those home-made fried suhalis and mathris instead of the packed cookies & biscuits, and the halwa or kheer in place of ready-to-eat pastries and doughnuts! One - you'll probably be too lazy, most of the time, to do so much cooking, so that you'll decide to go without them! And two - in case you do feel up to all that cooking, at least you'll end up burning some of those calories! LOL!

My rating: 3 out of 5. Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight, by Rujuta Diwekar, is an okay-ish, but, slightly over-hyped book on diet and weight-loss. It is mostly just a good compilation of basic common sense regarding nutrition. Nothing ground-breakingly new, but hey, it is all in one place, and does save you the internet research time. I would say: go for it, without expecting to be spoon-fed. Try to get the basic under-lying principles beneath all those fancy frills in the book.

Buy this book from: Amazon.in | Amazon.com
Check out other books by Rujuta Diwekar on: Amazon.in | Amazon.com
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