Master Your Metabolism was an informative book, very enlightening to read. It is chock-full of information about different nutrients and hormones and other nuggets that can help you make more knowledgeable decisions about what you put into your body, and Jillian’s advice takes all those tidbits and wraps them up into very actionable items. Her overarching plan — Remove, Restore, Rebalance — is repeated often throughout the book; it ties everything together nicely and makes for an easy-to-remember mantra. She shares some anecdotes throughout the book too which serve to highlight key takeaways; they are well-chosen to be poignant and memorable. She also offers a lot of interesting suggestions that may open your eyes to new options you hadn’t considered, too — have you ever tried amaranth or spelt, for example? She suggests them as part of a discussion about getting more whole grains into your diet. While some of the suggestions in her plan can be stifling — I’m definitely having trouble not eating after 9pm — there is a lot of really sound advice in here that I’m enjoying incorporating into my lifestyle.
I’d recommend this book to anyone who wants to make more informed choices about the food they consume. Tables filled with information are scattered throughout the book, making for well-organized data points that are easy to revisit once you’ve finished reading it. The rest of the book is well-organized too, with clear headers, useful sidebars, and frequent “Hormone Homework.” While some of the advice is things we hear repeatedly anyway — drink more water, eliminate processed foods wherever possible — the level of detail offered here brings everything together well and drives home points like why fiber is necessary or why beans are awesome. She offers a lot of concrete steps rather than just a lot of theory and data, and it makes it easy to start implementing these guidelines as soon as you start reading the book. There is a lot of great advice scattered throughout, and then the book ends with “The Master Meal Plans and Recipes” and “The Master Shopping List,” which summarize everything and tie it together nicely. I’d been working on losing weight for months and had hit a plateau, and this book helped me overcome it and start losing weight again.
In summary, it’s an incredibly useful book. It’s easy to digest and full of useful information on everything from what to avoid to what to fill up on. Whether you’re trying to lose weight or just trying to maintain a healthy weight, this is definitely a book to read.
