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

Don't Lose Your Mind Lose Your Weight
Author: Rujuta Diwekar
ISBN: 978-8184001051

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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 as 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.

I bought this book a couple of years ago, because it was highly recommended by a few people I know personally. I was not so impressed by it.

First of all, 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.

Secondly, 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 quite irritating.

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... the information for which people buy this book... well, 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 sites on the internet... 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.

However, some of the advice given in Don't Lose Your Mind Lose Your Weight was not very practical. For example, eating every 2 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 2 sittings instead of just 1.

One really good advice in the book is to "cook you 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 / mathris instead of the packed cookies & biscuits, and the halwa / 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 that you'll decide to go without them! 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 over-hyped book. Just a good compilation of basic common sense regarding nutrition. Nothing new really, but it is all in one place, and does save you the internet research time. I would say: go for it, but don't expect to be spoon-fed. Try to get the basic under-lying principles beneath all those fancy frills in the book.

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