A Successful and Sardonic Look at Diets and Dieters

Why Your Last Diet Failed You And How This Book Won't Help You on Your Next One

By Charlie Hills

(Lockshire Press, 2007)

Pages: 210

ISBN: 978-0-9749732-6-5

Price: $16.96, paperback

Books dedicated to dieting abound. How to diet, how not to diet, instructions for specific diets...the public's demand for guidance seems to grow exponentially on a daily basis. Its rise propelled by the increasing number of diets and dieters. This trend is precisely what Charlie Hills's book, Why Your Last Diet Failed You And How This Book Won't Help You on Your Next One, seeks to address.

While Hills's book may share a shelf with other diet books, it shares little else. And that, in my opinion, is a good thing. Hills's book does not try to capitalize on readers's potential insecurities. It does not try to promote any one diet or exercise plan. Nor does it try to sell: equipment, shakes, pills, or special foods. What it does do is speak frankly and honestly; from one dieter to another.

Charlie Hills is not a doctor or a dietician. He is a dieter. He has in fact tried many diets; a good portion of which are discussed in this book. By adopting the voice of a witty commentator, Hills shares the failures, successes, and revelations that came with his 192 months of diet-hopping. Neither his failures nor his successes are new. Many a dieter has fallen victim to the yo-yo effect, and the curse of the "dietlet". But that is what makes his book so appealing. He has been there. He is one of the dieters he is writing to. He's "one of us," his target audience can chant. What are new, or at least rare, are his revelations. And the way in which they are presented.