Probably the most important book I’ve read this year. Authentic, rooted in reality and written beautifully by an author who truly “gets it” (as well as having all the official credentials...I believe they understand the complexity of relationships with food and bodies) Practical and kind. Life-changing.

This book is amazing. As someone who has had a bad relationship with food, weight and body image from a young age I was comforted to know I wasn't alone.

Using a custom-tailored plan, The Last Diet. will help you identify where your unhealthy habits come from, teach you how change them, and show you what to do when you slip up. The evidence based plan is a welcome change from faddy diet books (I should know, I have a whole shelf of those books) and I've learned a lot about myself, including some uncomfortable truths.

A must-read for anyone who has a love/hate relationship with what they eat.

The last diet is a book that encourages you how to change your eating habits in order to lose weight. It's a book that approaches your problems with diets and eating like an addiction problem, which in most cases it is as it's so hard to say no to that piece (lets face it) whole bar of chocolate even though you know deep down you shouldn't have it!

It does not recommend eating piles of vegetables or never dining out ever again. It just suggests you consider which foods are triggering you to eat, emotional eating and internal dialogues defeating you.

There are exercises-not the physical sort - worksheets/mind maps at the end of each chapters so you can do them throughout the book to help you put strategies in place and stay on track.

I received this book from Netgalley in return for a honest review.

A different approach to losing weight, changing your mindset rather than a prescriptive list of what to eat. Which is important because all diets make you lose weight if you stick to them, but other habits sabotage your attempts.

I would recommend this and the Beck Diet for a different approach to your eating habits.

A very informative and interesting read.

This comes from a different viewpoint in that its all about changing your mindset about food and your body and that will then in turn enable you to eat more healthily and lose weight naturally. One of the main themes is just to be kinder to yourself about who you are and where you are in your life.

Very interesting and recommended.

Thank you Pan Macmillan and NetGalley.

If you’ve read the kindness method, you won’t find any meaningful new insights here, although it serves as a useful reminder of how to manage your thoughts and feelings and connect better with yourself to achieve your goals. It certainly helps in a much broader sense than an actual food based diet plan!

All good advice to make you think about food. Not a diet, a life change in mindset. Really useful.

Great book, easy to read and follow. Great information and advice. Thank you to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my review

In a world where Body Positivity and Lizzo exist in all their glory, it can be quite tricky to be a chubby girl and *not* love your body.

Like many others, I have succumbed to 'friendly' weight loss groups, strict 'only eat something if it's green'diets and other countless, useless measures to slim down my weight. However, when these fail - and they always fail - I've beaten myself up and so the cycle continues. Shahroo Izadi has gone through these exact motions, and her training in addiction not only helps her to look at this in a whole new light, but it means that instead of hating myself and wanting to physically (and emotionally) shrink myself out of existence, I finally have the tools to look at why I treat food the way I do, and what mechanisms I can develop to move past my damaging habits.

Izadi doesn't believe in shaming yourself into eating better, and as a result, I truly enjoying reading through the pages and carrying out the tasks within. Of course, some of it was gruelling, and I did feel quite emotional at times, but I am already feeling like this might be the reinforcement I've needed all along. Although every diet book tells you it will transform your life, Izadi's book is the only book I know of that holistically looks at the body and mind, and finally gets them working together to the same goal - a happy, content life no matter what size it is.

Anything that falls into self-help is a very personal consideration. I still largely believe that, fundamentally, this is about finding a concept that largely reinforces what you want to hear. That's not to say that there's nothing new to learn, these books are most valuable when they do offer a new perspective that you can buy into, but if a book suggests something too far from your identity you'll struggle to engage with it, and if it says exactly what you need/want to hear you'll rave about it. Izadi's work weirdly falls into both aspects for me.

Her basic tenet is one I can get behind - to over-simplify it all, be kinder to yourself. I think it's best captured in the logic that if we were talking to a friend instead of ourselves we'd generally be far more positive and supportive. In the case of this book, there's a big aspect of body positivity and acceptance. Yes, that can sound a little contradictory I know, but it also fits my logic so I think it's good. The thing is, this isn't about dropping weight to have a beach-ready body, it's about looking at your relationship with food, dumping a lot of the emotional baggage, and being happy taking your body to the beach. The logic being that if you have a healthier relationship with food you'll likely find you lose weight to a suitable level for you - which may well be higher than other people around you, but that's fine. And that's why I like this. It's not about shaming people into losing weight, it's just trying to help people find a good place for them. It's not forcing restrictions on what you eat, because although the basic foundation of good nutrition is sound we all have different genetics and will have slightly different dietary requirements.

So what don't I buy into? All the written exercises. I can see why they'd work for many people, but it isn't me. I'm not someone who can write themselves letters. But, if I'm splitting the book in two and only buying into one half, then the why is more important than the how. I can take on board the concept even if I enact it my own way. Like, given this was rather cynically published on Boxing Day I know I've not been eating the best. I may not want to pull out a mind map about my goals but I can still cut myself some slack and accept that I'm allowed to enjoy myself from time to time without beating myself up over it.

As I say, that's all grossly oversimplified. Izadi is a professional with qualifications and good experience to support her work. I like where she comes from and I like what she says. Be kinder to yourself people, and if you're worried about your weight give this a read - it makes a lot of sense to me and I think it's a good approach for many people.

A very, very good book gently and sensibly guiding changes in mental, lifestyle and behavior to induce healthy weight loss. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

The Last Diet by Shahroo Izadi is a very inspirational book that makes a lot of sense. I've read it in a few days but intend to read it again while doing the written exercises in it.

Refreshingly it's not about what to eat and what not to eat but about the mental and emotional thinking about why we eat the wrong things or too much. It encourages the reader think about their relationship with food while putting into practice plans for eating more sensibly. This involves a series of written exercises and maps to delve into our own psyche and help to formulate an eating plan. The idea is to do a five minute review each day with a longer twenty minute review at the end of each three weeks which can then be tweaked for the next three week plan.

I really like the plethora of practical advice given and also many scenarios and examples which are personal to the author but help the reader to think of their own situation. I'm reading it on a Kindle so finding it not so easy to skip back and forth to the written exercises and maps. A printed edition would be a better format to buy this book in in my view. .

The author has lost 8 stone in 18 months which is inspirational in itself. This is about one and a half pounds a week, or one fifth of a pound a day, which is sensible and very achievable. She also gives lots of encouragement about how to be nice and like one's body and how to deal with temptation and relapses.

I want to lose just a stone in 10 weeks. I am figuring that the week of Christmas and New Year is probably not the best time to do this when my fridge and store cupboards are loaded with food and fattening food at that. So while Shahroo Izadi doesn't encourage the 'I'll start next Monday' thinking I think I might have more chance of this once there's less of the wrong food sitting around! I will come back and update this review in mid March when I expect to be able to say I lost that stone....and keep it off.

With thanks to NetGalley and Bluebird and Pan Macmillan for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I r eceived a copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The last diet is a book that teaches you how to change your eating habits in order to lose weight. Refreshingly this does not recommend eating piles of vegetables and never dining out ever again. It just encourages you to sit and think about the foods that are triggering and whether to cut down or cut out and gradually reintroduce if you feel that they won’t be a problem anymore. This book also talks a lot about emotional eating which is something I definitely have a problem with.

There are exercises you do throughout this book to help you put strategies in place and stay on track. For the purpose of this review I did not do any of these exercises I just read it straight through but I will be going back and doing the exercises.

What an amazing book! Excellent step by step ways to help you find the right mind set to lose weight and keep it off. No more looking down on yourself. I’ve learned you have to love yourself as you are if you’re going to have any hope of becoming what you love.
A must read for anyone who has spent years battling with their weight, their self-image and motivation.

When this book talks about it being the last diet, this is a little misleading because it's using the word 'diet' in the sense of the food you eat, rather than a restrictive, miserable approach to weight loss. So don't think this is just another one of those books telling you how you must eat, because it really isn't.

Taking a holistic, personalised approach, Izadi walks you through a series of exercises designed to help you create the best approach for your own attitude towards food, empowering you to be able to design your own diet and finally form a healthy relationship with food.

A quick and easy read, this deceptively small book contains a wealth of powerful information which is truly life changing. A must read for anyone who wants to finally eat healthily without feeling like they're missing out.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC without obligation.