Ugh, dieting. I debated whether or not to include The 4 Day Diet by Ian Smith on my blog. However, it’s been a very important book for me for the last two weeks. In fact, I’ve probably looked at it more than any other book I’ve been reading lately!
I don’t know about you, but I always have an eye on my weight. I confess, I’m a total yo-yo dieter. I manage to stay at my “happy” weight for about six months, then I slide back into bad habits: I skip a few workouts and grab a few snacks from the convenience store. Then, my pants starting getting snugger and the scale starts inching upward. Usually, when buttons pop off my work pants, I take action.
However, I can never manage to do the same diet twice in a row. Weight Watchers is my favorite approach. Last spring and summer, I lost 12 pounds using their web site. Unfortunately, five of those pounds have crept back since school started. I knew that I needed to correct a few bad habits, but I just couldn’t motivate myself to count points again. Then, Mom told me about Smith’s diet that came out last year. She’d lost four pounds on it and totally inspired me.
Of course, you have to diet for more than four days. The genius of the diet is that you do everything in four-day modules. Each one mixes things up a bit, but includes the basic veggies, fruits, and healthy proteins. I love it because Smith tells you what to eat each day. However, rather than setting out complicated and fussy meal plans, he just tells you what basic items to eat. You can figure out how you want to prepare them. It takes the thinking out of dieting, but gives you room to be creative with how exactly you eat. Plus, the recipes in the back are delicious.
I’ve gotten my eating and exercise habits back into balance and am happy to report that the scale is moving in the right direction! If you’re interested, but want a more detailed analysis, check out WebMD’s review. It helped me decide if this was the right diet for me right now.
Recipe for an instant “Amy Reads Good Books” Favorite:
, has mastered the recipe. Reading this, I was completely jealous of Kurlansky and his time at the Library of Congress, digging through literal carbon copies and stacks of typewritten sheets from the files of the Federal Writers’ Project. Some of my happiest days in graduate school were spent in the grand main reading room at the Library of Congress. 
by Benjamin Wallace is the inspiration for this little blog. The book unravels the mystery of the “world’s most expensive bottle of wine.” The central players include members of the Forbes family, wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, and Michael Broadbent, the Christie’s auctioneer who presided over the sale. Wallace describes Broadbent’s knack for creating vivid, often sensual, phrases to characterize wines, describing one as “black as Egypt’s night” and another reminiscent of “chocolate and school girls’ uniforms.” By the time of the record-setting auction in 1985, Broadbent had tasting notes on over 40,000 wines.
Thanks 
Thanks 
