THE MOST DECADENT DIET EVER
BY DEVIN ALEXANDER
Review by Barb & Ron Kroll
The Most Decadent Diet Ever
(Broadway) ISBN 978-0767928816 0767928814
Devin Alexander provides 125 healthy recipes and diet meal plans to help you achieve weight loss without giving up delicious foods. She explains that The Most Decadent Diet Ever addresses four types of dieters: people on a diet, people who want to become healthier and have no desire to count calories, people who are worried about a loved one who is overweight and unsuccessful dieters who need diet programs that work.
If weight loss products and weight loss diets, like the cookie diet, don't work for you, Devin Alexander's diet cookbook of healthy recipes may be the best diet for you. Recipes like fried zucchini, Italian seasoned fries and chocolate chocolate brownie cups look and taste high fat but can be included in diet programs.
Devin Alexander explains that readers can satisfy high fat cravings with cherry-topped cheesecake, which has only 99 calories per serving or chocolate chip pancakes at 209 calories per serving.
The 230-page diet cookbook is organized by meal type, e.g., breakfast, main course etc., with chapters on low calorie snacks. Each chapter of The Most Decadent Diet Ever begins with an introduction. For example, the chapter on starches describes the benefits of carbohydrates, such as whole grains, for providing energy and satisfying appetites.
For each recipe, Devin Alexander identifies the preparation time, the number of servings or portions, the number of calories, amounts of protein, carbohydrates, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, fiber and sodium content.
Full page color photos by Theresa Raffetto show that recipes for weight loss diets can look delicious.
All diet recipes are multiples of 100 calories, so it is simple to track your calorie intake. To make calorie counting easy, Devin Alexander uses the "Decadent Disk" unit of measurement (one Decadent Disk is 100 calories). She defines "servings" and "portions" where servings are standard, satisfying amounts of a dish and a portion is a little bit or enough to be a couple mouthfuls (about 1/3 cup) o 1-Decadent-Disk. This concept helps dieters stick to their diets and still satisfy their cravings.
The Most Decadent Diet Ever includes a chart for estimated calorie requirements for males and females of various ages and activity levels. It also provides a seven day meal plan based on 1,400 calories per day and offers suggestions for making your own diet menus.
With this diet book, dieters learn how to lose one pound of body fat per week (cut back 500 calories per day for seven days to lose 3,500 calories).
Devin Alexander offers weight loss tips like adding fiber to your diet to fill you up and counting calories in alcoholic beverages.
The Pantry chapter lists foods to spice up a low calorie diet (e.g., red curry paste, dried orange peel and ancho chile pepper).
French toast with sautéed banana. Banana colada smoothie. Blue cheese mushroom burger. Turkey sandwich with cranberry aioli. Herbed crab salad. Chicken pasta with vodka cream sauce. Chipotle chili with blue cheese crumbles. Sage butter roasted turkey with Madeira wine gravy. Chipotle mashed sweet potatoes. Cilantro queso stuffed mushrooms. Bacon horseradish dip with raw vegetables. Pumpkin pie bars.
Contents
- Foreword by Kate Geagan, Founder of IT Nutrition, LLC
- Introduction: The Most Decadent Diet Ever!—The plan
- What you need to get started
- Breakfasts
- Burgers, sandwiches and wraps
- Salads
- Entrées
- Starchy sides
- Veggie sides
- Savory snacks
- Sweet snacks
- Index
Author
Devin Alexander is the author of two other healthy diet cookbooks, Fast Food Fix and The Biggest Loser Cookbook.