Stop the Diet, I Want To Get Off! Review Tour

Title: Stop the Diet, I Want To Get Off!

Author: Lisa Tillinger Johansen

Publisher: J. Murray Press

Genre: Nonfiction/Nutrition/Health

The Paleo.  The Zone.  The Gluten-free.  Another day, another diet.  

We’re caught in a never-ending merry-go-round of weight loss plans, fueled by 

celebrity endorsers, TV doctors and companies angling for a piece of a $60 billion industry.  

But do these diets really work?  And how healthy are they?

Registered Dietitian Lisa Tillinger Johansen examines dozens of the most wildly popular

diets based on medical facts, not hype.  And along the way, she reveals tried-and-true 

weight loss strategies, relying on her years of hospital experience, weight-loss seminars 

and community outreach efforts.  With insight and humor, Stop The Diet, I Want To Get 

Off shows that the best answer is often not a trendy celebrity-endorsed diet, but easy-to-

follow guidelines that are best for our health and our waistlines.

Book Excerpt:

The idea for this book began at a wedding.

Who doesn’t love a good wedding? The clothes, the flowers, the romance, the food…

Ah, the food. As we moved into the banquet hall, the culinary feast was on everyone’s minds. 

It was all anyone seemed talk about. But for some reason, guests weren’t conversing about the 

dishes being served; they were swapping stories of diets they had heard about from friends, 

magazine articles, even celebrities on talk shows.

I’m a registered dietitian with a master’s degree in nutritional science and years of 

clinical and health education experience. I’ve counseled thousands of patients and clients 

on all of these diets. But hearing the guests only momentarily distracted me from my horrible 

faux pas of wearing white (gasp!) to a friend’s wedding.

“I’m on the Blood Type Diet,” said a woman with an impossibly high bouffant 

hairdo. “You’ve heard of that, haven’t you? It’s the one where you choose your foods 

based on your blood type. I’m an AB, so I’ll be having the fish.”

“Really?” her friend replied. “I swear by the gluten-free diet. I’m on it, my 

daughter’s on it, and my granddaughter’s on it.”

I happened to know her granddaughter was six and didn’t have a gluten sensitivity or celiac disease.

Then there was the stocky guy who was trying to impress one of the bridesmaids. 

“I’m a paleo man myself,” he said, piling his plate high with beef kebabs. “It gives me 

more stamina, know what I mean? It puts me in touch with my inner caveman. 

There’s a restaurant near my apartment that’s paleo friendly. Maybe we can grab a bite there 

sometime, or…Hey wait, where are you going?”

And there were three Weight Watchers sisters who typed furiously on their phones and 

argued over their meals’ point values. Apparently there was some discrepancy between 

their various apps, and the sisters’ discussion was becoming more heated by the moment.

I’m past the point of being surprised by the wide range of weight-loss strategies—

some worthless, some crazy, some quite reasonable—being tossed around. 

In the past few years, there has been a tidal wave of diets washing up on the shores 

of our nutritional consciousness. Celebrities prance across our screens, promoting a 

variety of weight-loss schemes on talk shows and infomercials. 

Medical doctors star in their own syndicated television programs, exposing millions to 

weight-loss techniques, often unsupported by medical research. 

Other diets get traction on the Internet, racing all over the globe in social media posts, 

YouTube videos, and annoying spam e-mails. It’s hard to walk past a shopping center 

vitamin store without being approached by salespeople trying to pitch the latest weight-loss supplements. It seems that everyone wants a piece of the pie; the 

American diet industry tops $60 billion annually.

It’s classic information overload. 

You can’t blame people for being confused by all the diets out there, even as crazy as some of them may sound. I didn’t speak up to my fellow wedding guests that day, but it occurred to me they would benefit from some hard facts about the diets they so ardently follow.

So during the toasts, I thought to myself, I should write a book.

I counsel clients on these matters each week, giving them information they need 

to make the best choices for their health and waistlines. I find that all too often there’s 

nothing to the diets that are presented to me in my counseling sessions and classes. 

They just plain don’t work, particularly over the long term. And some of them are harmful, 

even potentially lethal. But it’s also unhealthy to carry extra weight on our frames. 

So how do we separate good diets from the bad?

In the chapters to come, we’ll take a good, hard look at the various weight-loss 

plans out there. I’ll pull no punches in my professional evaluation of some of the most 

wildly popular diets, both bad and good, of the past few years. And along the way, I’ll 

explore tried-and-true strategies for losing weight, based on my years of hospital experience, 

weight-loss seminars, and community outreach efforts. More often than not, the best answer 

is not a trendy celebrity-endorsed diet, but instead a few easy-to-follow guidelines t

hat I’ve seen work in literally thousands of cases.

Enough is enough. It’s time for the madness—and the diets—to stop.

Dieting is a $60Billion per year industry. Variety of diet plans are endless.
Fad diets have been around for centuries. Most restrict specific foods or food groups. 
Finding diet information is as simple as clicking a mouse or picking up a tabloid.
How can you identify a reliable source or a diet that won't endanger your health?
Any time diets are discussed "celebrity" names come up. Tv shows hosted by actual physicians, well known and trusted, have come under fire for promoting diets without scientific proof.
The human body requires variety and balance. This book includes a very thorough discussion of the gluten free topic and many varieties of vegetarian and non-meat diets. Also discussed are detoxes, cleanses, fasting, meal replacement and packaged meal plans. There are nice comparison charts and easy to understand health basics.
It is noted that education and behavior changes are necessary for lasting success.

Part two informs us about the plate which replaced the food pyramid. We get good information on food preparation and the benefits of vegetable colors, serving sizes and calories in beverages.

If you read diet books, I hope you also read food labels. Author/Dietician Lisa Tillinger Johansen explains labels, menus and more. Most of the book focuses on food and nutrition but included is a section on exercise to burn calories and stay F.I.T.T. followed by emotional issues related to food, diets and weight.
With better understanding comes the ability to make lasting change.
This is the book you need to begin understanding how to make better choices.

I did receive this book in exchange for my honest unbiased opinion.
I will be referring back to it often. Since I first finished this book I have begun visiting a dietician locally.
We are using this book for our discussions on trying to improve my health.

For More Information

 Stop the Diet, I Want to Get Off! is available at Amazon.

 Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble.


 Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.

LISA TILLINGER JOHANSEN, MS, RD is a Registered Dietitian who counsels clients
on a wide range of health issues. Her debut nutrition book, Fast Food Vindication,
received the Discovery Award (sponsored by USA Today, Kirkus and The Huffington Post).
 She lives in Southern California.

Her latest book is the nonfiction/nutrition/health book, Stop the Diet, I Want To Get Off!

For More Information

 Visit Lisa Tillinger Johansen’s websites –
Stop the Diet, Consult the Dietitian and  Fast Food Vindication.

 Connect with Lisa on Facebook and Twitter.