The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great | Pam Anderson

The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great | Pam Anderson | great everyday recipes!

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The Perfect Recipe...

	The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great Pam Anderson Houghton Mifflin, 2008 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The best-selling author of The Perfect Recipe shares her secret for dumping pounds without dieting?and the 250 recipes for her new way of eating.

To millions of citizen cooks, Pam Anderson is a trusted friend who does all the work for them, testing and retesting until she arrives at the best version of classic favorites and simple dishes for company. But gradually, Pam found herself standing with the two thirds of Americans who are more than a few pounds overweight. Fed up with whipsaw cycles of losing and gaining, she vowed to change?but not if it involved dieting, hunger pangs, or saying no to the foods she loved. Complicated recipes were out. She streamlined, creating meals as satisfying as they are quick?pizzas that take just thirty minutes, big-bowl combos, and gratifying snacks to forestall cravings. She discovered a few simple habits that make all the difference. Four years later, she's still maintaining her forty-pound weight loss. The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great is a way to eat for life. It's filled with voice-of-experience tips for curbing appetite, no-nonsense shortcuts for getting food on the table pronto, and recipes that could only have been developed by this food-loving pro?no compromises, no wasted steps, just extraordinary results from ordinary ingredients.

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Good advice from one who knows

While really nothing new, this is just a wonderfully encouraging book to get us cooking and eating much healthier. I love her attitude towards food and how to begin eating your way to a slimmer, trim body. This is no fad diets and no crazy food plans. Just an education in common sense eating and cooking. Highly recommended.

great everyday recipes!

I bought this book without even going through it first! I love all of her other books and this one is a hit as well. I have made many of the recipes and they are all quick and very flavorful. It's nice to have nutritious, healthy, great tating dinners during the busy work week.

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Delicious healthy recipes, quick & easy

I have made (and enjoyed) several of the recipes from this book. They are both easy and tasty and only require ingredients that are easily found at my local grocery store. So many books I have looked at include recipes that are to cumbersome for the average person, so this is like a breath of fresh air. I especially like her seared turkey burgers and her morning smoothies (although I have found that my blender can't handle frozen bananas, I need fresh ones!). For me, this is a healthy & doable approach to eating & exercise (and for those who are complaining about 45 minutes of jogging a day, you don't necessarily have to jog - just plain old walking is very good exercise and at least 30 minutes a day is recommended for you anyway!)

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NOT A DIET: A Different, Flexible, Balanced Approach to LIVING

I've used Pam Anderson's recipes for years with confidence and learned a lot from her about technique and the reasoning behind great recipes. She's taught me to consider what I like to eat and why, and how to make recipes work. So it is no surprise that this book continues this way. It is a blueprint for BALANCED LIVING: "What do you need in life to be happy?" "What foods satisfy you? -- and thereby must be incorporated in your life?" This is NOT a DIET. This is a LIFESTYLE CHANGE. She says what is common sense but so few women act apon: If YOU are exhausted from always giving and doing for others, then eventually you will break down emotionally, physically, etc. If your life is full of resentment and stress, YOU must do something to address this and deal with it constructively. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!!!

The recipes are designed so that you can easily adapt them to whatever is more your style. Use your own ingredients and other recipes to fill in! Her message is to STOP obsessing about fat, carbs, etc and focus more on fulfillment within reason, and taking care of yourself.

I am a busy mom with 3 kids. I am a 'diet/lifestyle change' group leader. I participate in exercise classes as student or leader 3-4 times a week. But I still struggle with weight/food because I focus on food as reward/sacrifice/vice/ETC. That isn't what it's about!

I bought this book when it came out and just went to a cooking demo/class with Pam (I admit with some skepticism) and was inspired by both. She says precisely what is in my mind: Why sacrifice, go on a diet with strict rules and lose weight only to gain it all back when I just go back to my real life? What's the use? This is a guide to living a happy life. Shed the emotional baggage, stop worrying about what everyone else might think! Communicate with your loved ones and develop solid, loving relationships! Find a way of exercising that you enjoy, and DO IT regularly! Eat and ENJOY food without guilt or excess -- not as a vice but as a basic part of a happy life!

BTW, all of the book's recipes I've tried -- at the cooking demo and on my own -- are delicious, pretty, and quite simple to prepare. (She also deliberately makes them a little difficult to simply chow down on-- part of her message is to nibble and savor your food.)

Her 'program' is spreading 6 nice meals and snacks throughout the day. Instead of cramming fast junk down your craw twice a day, take the time to prepare and eat 3 healthy delicious balanced pretty meals three times, also 3 times stop to relax and put up your feet for 5-10 minutes and savor a cup of tea and fruit/1-2 little cookies/etc. What a lovely thought and YES YOU DESERVE THIS and can do it!!! By thinking about when and what you really need to eat --instead of reflexively saying "Noon--it's lunchtime, I must eat something" listen to your body's rhythms and find what works for you to make you happy. OK, so I won't pick a glass of wine and a fancy cracker/cheese; a glass of milk (btw not in a REAL glass not the kids meal plastic cup) with pretzels will do if done in the right attitude. And yes, teach your kids that this 5 minutes is a peaceful quiet time-- they probably need a nice snack then too, sit down and cuddle and talk or read a book with them. What a cherished time and happy memory that will become!

I've read through the negative reviews of this book and basically these people are not 'getting it'. 1) No, she doesn't include exchanges and fat counts, because that's not the type of person she is-- neither am I and that sort of diet is just frustrating to me. She knows how many calories to eat per day and sticks to it, but chooses foods she enjoys to cook and eat--and encourages you to do the same. Know your calorie limits and stick to them. 2)Yes, some of these items are high-end or high in fat or whatever, but if that's not your style then don't use them. She is a cookbook writer and gourmand, so she uses sundried tomatoes, olive oil, and yet ramen noodles. I don't use any of those but can easily substitute something else. Have some basics in your pantry that you can toss together in different variations, being aware that this is @___ calories and addresses this or that food group, etc. 3)She has a flexible time schedule so she was able to take 3 walks a day, etc. That may not work for you, BUT there is a way for you to manage your life and include regular exercise-- not because you HAVE to, because it recharges you and you WANT to do it.

If you truly, truly do NOT have the time and energy to adapt make simple changes, then something is wrong with your life -- and maybe it's time for you to examine your choices and do a little "JUST SAY NO" here and there. Stop making excuses and use your talent and creativity to make a better life for yourself and the people around you!!!

I encourage you to incorporate Pam's ideas into your life, using her structure to guide you to your own balance. Take charge and take responsibility (if YOU don't take care of you, who will?), find what is right for YOU and do it! PLAN AHEAD and have some treats you love on hand, whether it's homemade and in the freezer or a 100-calorie pack of cookies. And savor the food, make it pretty because YOU DESERVE IT, go for a walk with your spouse or a friend, live life fully and happily!

Good luck and best wishes to you!

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Nice book; probably not for everyone

No cookbook or weight loss guidebook is going to be perfect for everyone. Each individual will have different reasons for buying the book, and different tastes, amounts of time to commit to cooking, budgets, etc.. I bought the book because I am a fan of 'healthy eating' and like the cooks illustrated tested-to-death style of recipe-writing which helps you better understand the process and be sure that a recipe won't be a clunker. Although Pam Anderson started with Cooks Illustrated and sticks to the similar "perfect recipe" language, you won't find a lot of description of the recipe-creation process in her books (not just this one), which I, for one, find a little disappointing. I would especially have liked to hear more about her general strategies for making recipes healthier or reducing fat/calories. There is useful information here, but a lot of it is well- buried in overly breezy and basic instruction.

Anderson tends to emphasize basic techniques and ideas that will, hopefully, direct the reader to adapt recipes to their own tastes. In keeping with that style, many recipes here are followed by voluminous variations. I think this is most helpful if you are either a kitchen novice or someone with a very limited repertoire that happens to be quite different from hers. And as an accomplished cook, I find many of these recipes too basic, and uninspiring. I already know how to make a smoothie, roast vegetables, and lower the fat in an omelet by substituting egg whites, so the 15+ pages spent on these three topics are not very helpful to me. Similarly, I doubt many health-conscious eaters need to be told that a big salad is a healthy lunch choice. There are probably some helpful tips buried within, but the 8+ pages of basic instruction on making a lunch salad [start with greens, and add vegetables, protein and dressing] focussed so much attention on the ridiculously obvious it led me to roll my eyes and quickly turn the page.

Also, the cooking represented here is modern American home cooking. A few reviewers have complained that recipes are too gourmet; I have the opposite complaint. Personally, I would also have preferred more emphasis on 'natural foods' like whole grains, more vegetarian meals, and less semi-processed foods like light vanilla soymilk, store-bought salsa or pasta sauce and low-sugar jam. As a vegetarian, her meat-centric american fare is not always adaptable to my kitchen, and there is a lot of emphasis on quick, familiar, family-friendly cooking, not novelty. All of which probably means it is perfect for the 'average american.' Though I agree with the complaints to the effect that, especially if you already have a good basic healthy cooking repertoire, and/or have certain specific food restrictions regarding, for example, meat, sugar, or saturated fat, the recipe content here is a bit too slim.

The recipes provided are mostly in the middle-of-the-road from a nutritional perspective. These are definitely NOT your standard fatty fare, but neither are they punishing, fat-banishing, recipes only those on a strict diet regimen would eat. They tend to be more of the 'reduced-fat' style; an improvement over standard versions of similar foods, but not so lean that one doesn't need to exercise portion control. Still, I think the recipes are very reliable. I tested her granola recipe against 3 other highly touted ones (some of which were considerably fattier; some less); it came in second for me and first for my husband. I found the multiple 'variations' and serving suggestions in this case to be quite helpful and inspiring.

Her own weight loss story is interesting, and I find her advice in this vein very reasonable, but I didn't find much that was novel, or even particularly inspiring. She clearly lost a great deal of the weight by exercising vigorously and using real portion control in her eating, as well as finding a nutritional middle ground where recipes were concerned. This is very much a lifestyle and not a diet, and will be much more useful to those seeking to make small, health-inducing changes than those looking to drop pounds immediately.

In summary, I'd say this book is most appropriate for a relative novice in the kitchen looking for inspiration for relatively healthy american fare and/or someone looking for the inspiration to make small lifestyle changes to keep their weight in check.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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