‘Naughty Diet’ offers ‘quick ride to a better outlook’

Food, glorious food. Bathing suits, terrible bathing suits. Our body image and luscious summer treats are often a conflict for women. I know summer’s culinary delights often stand between me and donning a swimsuit. Melissa Milne says that instead of rushing to the nearest scale or calorie counter we must first change our mindset about our bodies, food, and everything about eating that we women have felt to date. While men have diet issues too, Milne’s focus is on women. She notes that women are often guilty of striving for body perfection. She says that seventy percent of women feel some shame about their bodies, daily.

This book “grants readers permission to find pleasure in eating food.” What would be considered “naughty” on most diets is permitted by Milne. She says you and I can go ahead with some “naughty” pleasure s like eating pizza if we focus on balance in what we eat. Instead of worrying about one type of food, she wants us to change our overall approach to food. She wants us to throw off restrictions, calorie counts, and category (of food) elimination. Her advice is to instead, “order (and use)unusual spices. Take a wine class. Buy a beautiful cookbook. Eat more real foods.”

She is not the first person to advocate moderation and wholistic approach to dietary change. But style of presentation is smart and sassy and quite irreverent and elicits chuckles during the read. I admit to being fuddy-duddy enough to have found some of her style a bit over the top, but her premises and advice are sound. She wants us to trust our own bodies and instincts, give up guilt and focus on moderation. She notes,”healthy, balanced, normal eating is overindulging at times, and under-indulging at other times. It means (sometimes) leaving dessert on your plate because you are full or eating cookies straight from the oven (at other times). These seeming contradictions are all possible under the umbrella of moderatin in all things and her emphasis on real foods. Eating foods without additives, means that the food will taste better and you often need less to satisfy a craving.

Scatter amid the bits of advice are some fun recipes like chocolate pudding made with olive oil, eggs in purgatory,and coffee rubbed steak. You will have to tab them or recall the titles and use the index if you want to find them again. This book is more for the advice and its lists than for the recipes.

Her lists, like “Things to count instead of calories” are often wise and witty and will provoke laughter as well as a pen-mark to recall the wisdom. The chapter titles themselves are an exercise in non-dieting humor, “Cook when You want”, Chill the Eff out “ (I warned you some language was rough) and best of all, “Change your Brain , Change your Body.” Even if you don’t laugh hard enough to loose weight, your mood will lift when reading. That last chapter title is the heart of her message. Changing bad food habits to healthy, slimming ones is a mind over matter/habit/plate. If your basic mindset does not change, counting calories and watching steps on a fit bit will not really be effective in the long run. So, if you are ready for a quick ride to a better outlook and hopefully to a healthier self, take a look at Milne’s book. Ask for it the next time you are in the library.

This story was originally published June 26, 2016 at 5:59 PM with the headline "‘Naughty Diet’ offers ‘quick ride to a better outlook’."