Reading Into It: Master Your Metabolism

In honor of starting 30 Day Shred with Jillian Michaels today, I thought I’d take the opportunity to review her new book “Master Your Metabolism.”

I like “The Biggest Loser” a lot. I don’t watch it every week but I do like to catch it. The trainers (Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper) are one of the best parts of the show. So many people have been inspired by those two. I always agreed they were badass trainers, but after reading this book, I find Jillian even more inspiring. Why? Because she used to be incredibly out of shape and unhealthy.

In the beginning of the book, she openly describes her experiences at the fat kid in middle school. Her parents were going through problems, and she ate to feel better. She says food was the only way her dad could relate to her, so they’d stuff themselves together. She talks about how she was teased. And she talks about how her mom put her in martial arts to give her an outlet for all the troubling feelings she was experiencing, and how it saved her. I knew some of this already, but what I was surprised to find out was that her success story doesn’t end there. Once she became a trainer, she started to try many different things. She relied on a very low-calorie diet and ran on caffeine and Diet Coke. Even though she was eating so few calories and was working out, she couldn’t maintain her weight. She finally went to her doctor, who told her that her years of diet foods and starvation diets had completely messed up her metabolism and thyroid. And that’s the starting point for this book.

This book is about getting your hormones on track, eating healthy, whole foods and not dieting. She explains how toxins (everything from aspartame to pesticides) really affect our hormones. We also can do a number on ourselves by yo-yo dieting and consuming tons of fake sweeteners, processed crap, and caffeine. This really spoke to me. I’ve read two other books this month that describe the exact same thing. I never knew how big of a role our hormones play in losing/maintaining weight, and how easy it is to disrupt our bodies’ natural processes, even when we’re trying to do just the opposite. She outlines the major hormones and what to do to naturally get them back on track if yours are out of whack.

She advocates eating clean and organic, and choosing your medications carefully. She talks about what to take out of your diet, as well as what to put in. Much of it are things that we all know, deep down, are good for us: whole grains, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats. But after years of hearing (or trying) many different diets, I think it helps to see it in print. Yes, eat some fats. Yes, eat some carbs. No, don’t eat things that contain “cheez.” I definitely think this school of thought is where nutrition and fat-loss research is heading. It just makes so much sense.

Jillian definitely has a no-nonsense approach (not a lot of exclamation points like I like to use!!!!) but she is honest and keeps it real, which I love. If you’re still sticking to the notion that it’s worth it to choose artificially-flavored foods to save calories and lose weight, this book is definitely worth your time. And even if you’re already there, it’s a great reference guide on how we are affected by our eating, sleeping, and environmental habits.

Tagged as: Diet, Jillian Michaels, metabolism, Product Reviews