Rosemary Conley's Amazing Inch Loss Plan: Lose a Stone in a Month [Paperback]

We bought this on the basis of having bought and derived benefit from Conley's previous books - "Ultimate GI Jeans Diet" and "Complete Hip and Thigh Diet", and a few of her DVDs. One could ask why, if Conley's methods are so great, anyone would need more than one book about them, as most seem to be re-hashes of previous material. I suppose there are two reasons for this: (1) The novelty factor - exercise, healthy eating and dieting can become boring; and (2) diets are, by their nature, transient events. In this book, Conley updates it all, and simplifies it somewhat, making a plan that is no bother to follow.

The diet is divided into 28 days, with each day setting out a full menu (with recipes) and an exercise. You can follow this regime if you like, but Conley points out that you can swap any similar meal for any other (for example, one breakfast for another breakfast within the same category). In other words, you don't need to bother with following the exact plan day by day - just use the menu summaries on pages 196-209.

The menus are pretty good though, with a variety of food types on offer. Some of the meals seem to be aimed at people who formely lived on take-aways and treats, as there seem to be lots of spicy eastern flavours going on, and endless snacks (if you can call 12 grapes a snack). Many of the meals rely on ready-made diet foods, or ready-made sauces. Presumably some readers are not very good with a cooker. Why Conley prefers a diet tomato/basil sauce over the homemade variety is beyond me. Basic pasta sauce is naturally fat-free, made with onion, tomato and herbs. The recipes won't win any awards, but they are generally tasty and easy to make, and they will help you lose weight, of course!

Some of the recipe ingredients are hardly worth the bother. For example, one recipe calls for "80g of new potatoes". Erm, that's ONE new potato. Hardly worth the bother, I'd say.

Many of the lunchtime reacipes are cooked. This is likely to be impossible for anyone who goes out to work. In most office kitchens, you have a kettle and a microwave to cook with, that's all. You have to quickly forget all the omlettes, stir-fries and grills that are described in the lunch menus.

So what's the key to the diet? I am no doctor, but having had a good look through the menus, and used many of them, it boils down to small portions and VERY low fat. If you do EXACTLY what Conley advises, day by day, then I have no doubt that almost anyone will lose weight on this diet. Conley is no fake, her diets do work. You just have to give yourself over to them. So far, it is working wonders for us!

If you intend to follow the diet, you'll need to do some serious fruit-and-veg shopping first. For example, smoothies make an expensive breakfast. I also wonder where she imagines one buys seasonal foods like chicory in January? Yes, buying choices are a matter for common sense, but my point is that giving such prominence to seasonal ingredients makes it almost impossible to follow the diet exactly.

The exercises occupy far too much space. This kind of material is much better suited to a DVD. In fact the whole thing is a tie-in with Conley's new "Real Results Workout" DVD, which I must say is a really good one to use with this diet, as most of the book's exercises are featured in the DVD.

The book design is colourful and pretty. The pages are very nicely arranged. Roger Walker, its designer, deserves a mention for this. His page designs are right on the money!

If you cut out pages and pages of exercise photos, what you're left with is a ready-made menu and plenty of good positive motivational stuff. On balance though, the menus are generally very good.

Conley manages to inject adverts for her wares in a surprising number of places. It looks like her marketing people got hold of the final draft before it went to press. The ads can be a bit tiresome. I think I've heard all I ever want to hear about "Rosemary Conley Portion Pots" and "Solo Slim" for this lifetime.

To sum up then, it's a mixed bag. It has many good points and a few bad, but it does try hard to make you pick it up and use it. Conley keeps it fun and interesting throughout. If you want to lose the titular stone, then go for it. This book will almost certainly get you there if you do exactly what Conley advises.

26 March 2010 update: Well, we've been following the plan for almost a month now, and it is working very well for us. Once you get into it, and just do what Conley says, then it is very easy to follow and succeed with. For all my misgivings about The portion pots, they are actually very handy things to have around. They make the portions in the menus easy to judge, without fetching the scales out all the time.

This book is the first i have bought and has worked brilliantly than any of the other diets i have tried. This book takes you through a day by day step of what to eat the calories and a daily 5 minute exercise routine that i have greatly felt the benefits from. It is though only worth buying if you are serious about losing weight as it does take time and effort and will to stick to but once in the frame of mind of wanting to lose weight you can see and feel the difference. I you don't like some of the foods then i have found you can swap it for something you do like as long as it is the same amount as what rosemary says and within the amount of calories allowed for that meal time which it tells you in the book. A great diet plan.

I am disappointed that this book appears to be very similar to the 'New GI Hip and Thigh Diet' which was released two years ago.

Not many recipes and the diet appears very similar to the menus suggested in the GI Hip and Thigh Diet. One exception seems to be the menus focusing on more protein. I tried for example having the breakfast with bacon and egg and it kept me going longer than something like special K would have done.

I am not keen on all the pages and pages of exercises shown, one for each day, some people may like this feature and find it helpful. If you prefer to work out to say an exercise DVD rather than trying to keep a book open and get the right exercise move then that's another reason to avoid buying this book.

If you already own Rosemary's Inch Loss Plan then the format for this book is pretty similar, not much new material here.