by Jill Fleming, MS, RD
2005

It's still a matter of debate, but there's a lot of evidence that the growing obesity problem in America (and the rest of the civilized world) is due to one major issue: our relationship with food. Most of us have lost touch with our bodies and we don't realize when we're really hungry or just craving a certain type of food. Our tastes are ruled by our emotions, not by our physical needs. Nobody knows what a real portion is anymore. Two-thirds of American adults (the overweight ones) are having serious issues with food. The other third, however, seem to have escaped a lot of the problems and as a result, are able to keep their weight in a normal range. In her book, Jill Fleming focuses on this group to discover what they do that the rest don't. In other words, it focuses on the solution instead of the problem.

Thin People Don't Clean Their Plates is really a very simple book. It's a mere 136 pages long (and that includes the index), and most of the chapters are devoted to the actions and behaviors of thin people that keep them slender. None of it is rocket science. Everybody probably realizes that thin people eat only when they're hungry, and they're not compelled to eat absolutely everything that's put in front of them. Thin people are active, but still get enough sleep and don't consume heavy meals late at night. They drink a lot of water and naturally gravitate to veggies and fruits. These chapters, however, don't just focus on what thin people do, but how they do it. Fleming gives you exercises to help you deal with emotional eating and instructions on how to count fat grams (surprise, all you low carb fanatics &mdash fat still counts!). Each chapter ends by listing a summary of its steps, and there's a chapter of tips on removing excess fat from your diet. Most importantly, Fleming emphasizes the fact that diets don't work &mdash never have and never will. Only a change in everyday eating habits will make weight loss permanent. This book is meant to help you attain that.

Fleming knows whereof she writes &mdash she's a registered dietician who came out of college packing 40 extra pounds. (You would never know this by her book cover photo &mdash she's admirably slender now.) She learned about nutrition from school, from her clients and from her own personal experience. And she's come to the realization that nobody wants a lot of complicated instructions for attaining and keeping a healthy weight. Some people may complain that this book is overly simplistic, but that's really one of the best things about it. Getting up the motivation to change is hard enough, so why make the process any more difficult than it needs to be? Thin People Don't Clean Their Plates is a must-read for anyone who is ready to acknowledge that the only way to be thin is to do what thin people do.

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