Book: Nutrition Map by Yvonne Quiñones Syto
Genre(s): diet book
Publisher: self published
Publication date: 2010
Pages: 178

Summary: Nutrition Map: Your Guide to Eating Healthy in the Real World by Yvonne Quiñones Syto presents a week by week approach to improved eating in our present-day environment, surrounded by fast food and other empty calories, misinformation about healthy eating, and erroneous assumptions about what it takes to lose weight. Each week’s tasks build on the accomplishments of the previous weeks so that in 8 weeks time, the reader has developed the habits that work (like keeping a food journal) and learned how each category of food fits into a healthy diet, starting with vegetables and ending with fat.

Thoughts: If you ever thought that what you really needed was a dietitian to visit your home once a week for a couple of months, providing small new assignments at each visit, this book is it. Follow the plan in this book, tackling a new chapter and skill each week, and it is like a Do It Yourself dietitian home visit.

This book has hallmarks of being self-published. The typography is quirky and there are spots that could have used more copy-editing. Fortunately, these don’t detract from the readability. The conversational tone of the book makes it feel like a trusted, knowledgeable friend rather than a distant, authoritarian expert. If you were going to have a dietitian visit your home once a week, wouldn’t you want one with a personality?

While self-published, this book is available at Amazon, including electronic versions. I read this in print, but it strikes me as the sort of book that would work well in ebook format with its one chapter a week structure. See the links at the author’s website: Nutrition Map. The author is bilingual, so this book is available in both English and Spanish versions.

This is my first ever review book, sent to me by the author when we found each other’s blogs during National Nutrition Month. It was thrilling for me, but there was no expectation from either the author or myself that I would write a review at all, much less a positive one.

Appeal: Nutrition Map: Your Guide to Eating Healthy in the Real World guides the reader on a step-by-step journey to balanced eating, warning of hazards on the journey and providing tools to navigate through them. It will appeal to anyone who wants to lose weight or to improve their diet for other reasons.

Meme: This is my Weekend Cooking entry. See the post at Beth Fish Reads post for a review of Kings of Pastry and links to other Weekend Cooking posts.