Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsNot nearly as useful as the first book in the series
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 July 2020
I love food and I love cooking and baking. In lockdown Britain, doing lots of cooking and baking bread, I have put back a quarter of the weight that I'd previously lost, following the Slimming World regime. I turned to the Hairy Dieters for inspiration, and bought this book to add to my collection. Though they follow a pure calorie counting approach*, like SW they avoid fat and recommend filling up on fresh vegetables, salads etc. Importantly they offer recipes that appeal to those who enjoy food and cooking. Dishes are straightforward, flavoursome, and hearty too. Very few 'fancy' ingredients, well by my reckoning anyway. They are big on common herbs and spices though, fresh and dried. They also offer pragmatic suggestions; I'd never have thought of using tinned clams in spaghetti vongole for example.
I would suggest however that the first book in the series - The Hairy Dieters: How to Love Food and Lose Weight - is a much richer source of appealing recipes. I found considerably less in this book, though it was worth having at the Kindle offer price.
As an eBook it is reasonable. It would benefit from linked lists of recipes at the start of each chapter, but the GoTo function can be used to achieve the same effect. No index in this book.
*Guidance is given in a Q&A with a nutrition expert in book 3. This said that in the UK the average man is recommended to have a maximum of about 2500 calories per day and the average woman about 2000 (though this varies by body size and activity levels). As a rough guide eating 500 calories less than you need per day for a week results in a weight loss of 500g [and vice versa]. In book 1 the bikers say that they followed advice to drop to 1300-1500 calories per day to target a weight loss of 1kg per week.
