The Fat Flush Plan

This is without a doubt the BEST book on diet that I have ever read! (And I've read a bunch of them.) I didn't follow every detail of the plan, and I didn't take every supplement recommended, but even by just following the basics of the program, I saw incredible results. It did wonderful things for my complexion, and for the first time in... well, maybe the first time ever... I didn't crave chocolate or starchy carbohydrates.

I'm not overweight, but this book is more about improving your overall health, digestion, and the effectiveness of your body's functions. Weight loss is just a natural response to the positive changes you make in the fat flush plan. Whether you have weight to lose or not, I HIGHLY recommend this book.

In response to the previous one-star rating... the wheat and dairy restrictions are only for the first two weeks. Wheat and dairy are incorporated back into the plan as it progresses. Personally, eliminating dairy was a great step for me, and even when the plan allowed for dairy again, I chose to leave it out.

This is an awesome book with tons of great information!

The mind can be a funny thing. After weighing myself today, I was actually upset that I weighed 168 pounds. I had apparently forgotten where I had come from. The heaviest I weighed in at was 229 pounds. I know that I weighed more than that, but stopped getting on the scale after I saw 229. I was so tired of seeing the numbers going up. I had been out of control, overwhelmed by my new role as mother to 2 little boys. It was the same vicious cycle for me as it is for everyone. I ate because I was sad, then was sad because I was large.
Hindsight being 20/20, I did what a lot of people do. I put myself last, everyday slowly losing who I was. With my hindsight, I can also see that I was becoming desperate, not knowing how to find myself again. My sister-in-law told me about the Fat Flush, and I gave it a last ditch effort. I had tried so many times to lose the weight, and told myself "If it doesn't work this time, just give it up." The first time I tried the plan, I found that it removed my physical cravings after about 3 weeks. It was those darn habits and emotional cravings that did me in. Although I fell off a few times, I got back on everytime. Sometimes it took a couple of days, sometimes a couple of months. Each time I came back, it got easier. As I write this I am in Phase 2, and have been on track for a couple of months. I feel successful because I don't have those horrid habits coming at me anymore. The thought of eating my old regular, garlic bread, fettucini alfredo, ice cream for dessert, makes me cringe. After all these years, I am actually standing on the "other side". The side where people talk about healthy food being yummy while being genuine. The side where cheese on everything is truly not appealing. The side where I can think clearly, my mood swings are gone and I am not tired all the time. And to top it all off, even though I still have about 25 pounds to lose, I can boast that I have lost 61 or more pounds, 6 dress sizes(from 22 to 10), and 58 inches. My waist alone has gone from 45 inches to 32!!! I have lost 5 feet of fat!!!

There will always be bad days along with the good days, but I am better equipped to handle things when I am eating according to the Fat Flush Plan. With the book as my guide, and the iVillage message board as my support, I know I can be good to myself, and set a great example for my boys. I am in a new never-ending cycle, and in this one, the more I eat well, the more I feel great. Life is pretty good now, and I am finally looking forward to my future.

Grinning like an imp,

Claire Lacroix

I bought this book, along with the cookbook, on Amazon a month ago and followed the diet plan closely for the first two weeks (I lost 13lbs.) and loosely for another 7-10 days for a total weight loss of 27lbs. It is not the easiest diet to follow, as the flax oil tastes really icky and the flaxseed fiber supplement drink is equally hard to swallow, but if you actually do what the author suggests, you Will lose weight. What I found the most difficult was eating eggs without salt and topping my protein portions with the flax oil as suggested. I think (I cannot prove it with personal research), that flax oil is much the same as linseed oil. It's not the initial taste, but the lingering aftertaste that put me off. I did learn how to cut back on carbs, fats and sodium (it's amazing what you can do with mustard and hot sauce) and did manage to modify my long term dietary intake, but after a month, I wanted to taste a grilled steak with garlic salt and maybe even a touch of butter, not to mention a crusty bit of bread! If you are more committed and have more willpower than I do, you can really lose a significant amount of weight on this plan and alter your palate. I have maintianed my weight loss (except for 4 lbs.), which is probably water weight due to increased sodium intake) and am very happy with the plan. I did lose a good amount of weight and learned alot on how to control portions and refined carbs without any real discomfort. The cookbook has lots of really good recipes, most of which could be elevated to stardom with some off-limits additions of butter! The mock mashed potatoes, using cauliflower was a real hit in my household and is still something I will fix regularly. This is an effective but not entirely painless diet plan suited for someone with real dedication. I thank the author sincerely for the many pounds I lost initially and for the good advice that I continue to follow. It's worth trying, especially if you have 20+ lbs. to lose!

If followed precisely or even closely, this book, and the diet plan it espouses, will prove to be for many people a "nutritional boot camp." As such, it's important to understand ahead of time that Gittleman's Fat Flush Plan (FFP) diet is best undertaken by the serious dieter who has the requisite discipline and dedication to stick with it, as it entails elimination of, and restrictions on, various of your favorite foods. You may even need to throw many things out of your cupboard or fridge before you even begin!

The FFP diet appears to make a lot of sense from a nutritional standpoint: basically, it's all based on the not-too-extreme idea that by eliminating such things from your diet as dairy products, wheat (and other gluten-containing foods), sugars, preservatives, excess salts, soy, caffeine, alcohol, vinegar etc. you can "un-load" your liver, thus allowing it to do its job much more efficiently. Part of the liver's job is to process fat, and this it will do much better if it is a clean liver. But also, without all the extra sugars, salts, chemicals and food allergens, the liver will stop sending "self defense" signals to your body that make your body retain fluids, thus giving you that undesirable bloat. That's largely what this book is about: getting back your normal liver function so it will help you burn fats and stop retaining excess fluids.

The overall Fat Flush Plan is both simple and complex: the "simple" part is the elimination of various things from your diet - e.g. wheat/gluten, dairy products, alcohol, sugary things, etc. Okay, so don't buy 'em, don't use 'em. How complicated is that?? But the diet gets more complicated when you have to factor in the daily eating ritual (meals and snacks require planning and timing, and are carefully outlined for each phase), not to mention the supplements that you are obligated to take in order to make the Plan work (flaxseed oil, pure whey powder, unsweetened diluted cranberry juice, the so-called Long Life Cocktail - which is nothing more than a fiber supplement such as psyllium powder or ground flaxseed meal blended with water and unsweetened cranberry juice), and several other supplements). Remember, this IS after all a detoxifying diet, and as mentioned, it will require your full dedication and discipline, and in addition will no doubt entail the cooperation and assistance of ones close to you - be it family, friends, or co-workers. Speaking of assistance, Ann Louise Gittleman and friends operate a very active and helpful Fat Flush Forum on the Internet, which is available for answering any and all questions about the Plan, as well as providing ongoing information and encouragement. If you do the Plan, I highly recommend joining the Forum.

My own experience: I have been on the FFP diet, and though it is a bit harsh-going at first (just like the REAL boot camp I went through many years ago), I nevertheless found it doable, and ultimately rewarding. You may (as I did) find it necessary to take a few creative liberties in tailoring the diet to your own particular needs and abilities. But I remained (and still do remain) close to the prescribed framework of Phase One, as I found that the Phase One portion of the diet really "clicked" with me: I find that it is actually quite liberating to be off of so many foods that I had heretofore mistakenly believed were really part of a balanced diet, but in fact might actually have been causing weight gain and bloating. Obviously I can't speak for everybody - "your mileage may vary," as they say - but my approach seemed to work, because I not only had tangible results, but I felt inspired to continue on with this more Spartan and easy-to-maintain diet and lifestyle. It even gives me a "big picture" perspective: in a world where the price of oil flirts with new highs every day, I just like the thought of being able to make do in life with less.

It's perhaps an important consolation (or inducement!) to know that after you have successfully completed Phase One, you go on to Phase Two and Phase Three (the so-called Lifestyle Plan) - each of which gradually incorporates some of the previously "forbidden foods" back into your diet. As for me, I can barely comment on Phase Two or Phase Three of Gittleman's FFP, as I have still found it undesirable to reintroduce many of these forbidden food items back into my diet. I figure if they were causing problems with weight and bloating in the first place, why would I ever want to put them back in my body?? After all, I don't want this to become yet another yo-yo diet!

Anyway, I highly recommend this book to others out there in Diet Land who, like me, may be looking for that "missing link" as to why other diets have failed them, or why their blind reliance on mainstream ideas about which foods are healthy for humans may be misguided. Give this diet plan a sincere attempt, and you just may be happy with the results. And if you're like me, perhaps you can maintain yourself in a sort of "Phase One-and-a-Half" version of Gittleman's FFP diet for a long, long time! I leave you with a quote from the movie JOE DIRT: "Life's a garden, people. Dig It!!"

When I read TFFP 11 months ago, I had suffered diabetes for 15 years. Over the years I progressed from a solution consisting of diet and exercise to the use of diabetic medications and then eventually to also taking insulin. I became insulin resistant and developed Syndrome X. For several years I was daily giving myself 100 units of insulin perday and taking 2 tablets of Glucophage and 2 of Avandia to achieve some control. My last A1C test was 9.7.
My cholesterol had been 266. I was on Baycol for 12 months when it was taken off the market last August. My doctor then prescribed other statins which caused severe pain in my legs and chest and also did not control my cholesterol readings.
My wife and I read the Fat Flush Plan book on a Sunday afternoon. We went to the supermarket Sunday evening, and started the Plan Monday morning, Feb. 25th, in earnest. Tuesday morning my glucometer readings were low so I cut the doses in half. On Wednesday morning my readings had again dropped lower and I discontinued the insulin and medications. I have had absolutely no medications or insulin since February 27th. My April 6th lab showed my cholesterol to be 166. The HDL's were up and LDL's were down. My total cholesterol has been getting lower ever since. My A1C is down to 5.5.
I have always been overweight. For 30 years I have weighed between 250-300#. Taking insulin added about 50# to my weight. When I began on Feb. 25th, I weighed 352#, I guess. I say "guess" because my doctor's scale only went to 350# and my weight was off to the right of the end of the scale. My wife Joan weighed 253#. I wore size 60 pants and XXXL shirts comfortably. Joan was wearing XXL pants and tops. I am now 230# and wear size 40 pants and size 16 shirts. Joan is 160# and is wearing Medium size pants and tops.
Over the past 10 years, I had developed a severe hiatic hernia. I had a lot of acid reflex at night and had been taking Aciphex for several years for this condition. After about a month, I discontinued Aciphex and have not been bothered with it since.
I have had sleep apnia for 17 years. I had my uvula removed in 1987 and have been using a CPAP machine since 1996. On Feb. 25th I was using 16# of air pressure. I was tested again this last December and they reduced my pressure to 6#.
My wife is a nurse and she used to come home literally in tears with the arthritis and pain in her legs from walking and standing. Now she comes home even after a 10-hour shift tired, but not in pain. She also no longer suffers from extreme pain in her thumbs and arms.
And these are just the obvious benefits of the return of health my wife and I have experienced since we began the Fat Flush Plan. We had to be willing to change our life, but we happily embrace every aspect of the Plan. This is the Plan we are on for life. From the Sunday we read the book, we felt this was a healthy plan. It is a life filled with fresh fruits vegetables, nuts and oils. It's hard to go wrong with that.
Thank you, Ann Louise, for setting our feet on this path.