The Biggest Loser 30-Day Jump Start Book Review

What I read and why

Not that long ago, I read The Biggest Loser 30-Day Jump Start. I have a slight obsession with reading weight loss books and specifically those from The Biggest Loser. I'm not really sure why, but it's a relatively new thing for me. I watched the most recent season of The Biggest Loser, but I hadn't watched much of the show prior to that. I only watched this season because when I was in high school, I knew one of the contestants. I wanted to watch him go through the show. Prior to that, I never wanted to watch the show because Jillian was just so bloody obnoxious on the commercials. Back on track.....I wrote a post several weeks ago about the Simple Swaps book and liked that one, so I picked this one up from the library. I wish I had more time to read! There are so many books I've gotten, but haven't gotten to read yet.

The Premise

The book mainly talks about healthy eating and exercise. There is no calorie counting or carb counting. There's nothing special that you need. The book actually gives you a 30 day meal plan and a 30 day exercise plan. You have nothing to think about with this plan. However, I wasn't a big fan of the recipes or the exercises, so I haven't done the 30 Day Jump Start. I still enjoyed reading the book. It had tips and updates from previous contestants.The focus is on people who were in Season 7. Apparently, during Season 7, some of the contestants were sent home for 30 days. There is a chapter that talks about what happened to each of them during their 30 days.

The Chapters

Ready...Set...Jump!

This is basically an intro chapter and something to get you motivated. It was very short

There's No Place Like Home

This section talked about each of the contestants that had to go home for 30 days. It showed a picture of the contestant and had a little bio about them. It listed their starting weight, their weight on Day 1 of the at home challenge, their height, age, hometown, and team mates name.  Each contestant had a little blurb about why they were ready. It then listed journal entries from Day 1, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4 and Day 30. It also had a paragraph about what they learned. 

The What, When and How of Eating

This section talked about eating healthy. It's not a fad diet that you'll be on until you lose the weight and then you just eat whatever you want. This is about eating real food that's good for you. No processed crap that came in a box, no white sugar white flour or white rice. 

Building a Fitness Foundation

This section talked about exercise. It discussed the scale of exertion and heart rate monitors. At the end, it had the chart for the 30 days of exercise.

30 Day of Transformation

This section lists out everything you should eat and each exercise you should do for each of the 30 days. Each day starts off with an inspirational page to motivate us. There is a meal plan that includes breakfast, morning snack, lunch afternoon snack and dinner. There is also an exercise plan for each day.

The meal plans might be good for the average person, but I'm very fussy about what I eat. I'm slowly getting over it, but it's VERY slow. I can't just jump into a food plan with a bunch of stuff that I just don't like. The book has a couple recipes for each day. Some of them look interesting. The exercises seemed like a step backwards from what I was doing. I think this would be great for someone who hasn't begun an exercise plan. It starts off with a 20 minute walk and 10 minutes of mobility and body weight exercises. The walk increases by 2 minutes per day. I'm no professional, but in my experience, I've been burning a lot more calories by doing my DVDs than I do when I just walk around the block or even on our hikes. The body weight exercises didn't seem as intense as the Jessica Smith Thin in 10 workouts that I did last week or even The Biggest Loser DVDs that I've done.  

Now What?

This was another inspirational section that talked about keeping your eye on the prize,  not getting all upset over slip ups and keeping people around you who are going to help you instead of hurt your progress.

My Overall Thoughts

I enjoyed reading the book, but it was a pretty quick read since the bulk of it was the daily eating and exercise plan. It didn't talk a lot about nutrition, but it did have some stuff in there. I think the Simple Swaps book is a better about nutrition education, but this was good too. If you're not picky about what you eat and you need someone to tell you what to eat and when, this is a great book. The exercises are good exercises, but it didn't seem like a very intense routine to me. However, I didn't do the routine. I probably should, but I've got other plans at the moment.