The Diet Detective's Count Down

Overall, this is an interesting and enlightening book showing you just how much exercise you need to burn off extra calories you eat each day. By looking up the foods you eat and getting a general idea of how many minutes it takes to burn off extra calories, you become much more aware of your choices and, hopefully, make better ones.

Charles Stuart Platkin asks an intriguing question in his book, The Diet Detective's Count Down - "Do you ever wonder how long it takes to burn off those extra calories you just ate...?" Do you really want to know? If so, this book may be motivation for making better food choices. The idea is to show how much activity you need to burn off the calories in different foods and it can be quite enlightening.

In part one, he covers the basics of how to use the book for weight loss (calculate your BMR, keep a food diary, etc.). He also covers the basics of exercise and how to motivate yourself...nothing earth-shattering here.

The meat of the book lists 7500 different foods broken down into categories like dairy, fruit, fast food, etc. For each food he lists the amount, calories, carbs and fat followed by the exercise time required to burn off those calories. The activities include walking, running, swimming, cycling, yoga and dance. For example, one serving of Ho Hos (3 cakes) is 380 calories which would require 98 minutes of walking. Yikes! Flipping through this book, you may be surprised by how much exercise you would need to burn off some of those extra calories. But he points out that it's not about killing yourself with exercise to burn off the Ho Hos, but to avoid them in the first place. To do that, Platkin suggests finding 'Calorie Bargains' where you replace high-calorie foods with low-calorie foods that you'll still enjoy.

Overall, the book is easy to use and full of interesting (sometimes frightening) information. My only problem is that he doesn't explain the intensity of the exercises (e.g., how fast to walk or run) or what the calorie-counts are based on (a 155-lb person) until the end. A detailed explanation at the beginning would be nice to see. This is a great resource if you're trying to eat healthy and lose weight.