Food and books, wonderful combo

So I was poking around the book section on Amazon.com, researching a few books when I found "The Fat Smash Diet" by Ian K. Smith M.D. You may know him as the young doctor on the panel of VH1's Celebrity Fit Club. I've heard and read great reviews of this book and at a little over two bucks how could I not pick it up?

The diet is in phases, four to be exact. Each phase is a week long or if you would like to make it longer you may. The first phase is the detox phase so your choices are limited. The good thing is you can have all the fruits and veggies you want. Bad news for some is no meat. I eat the grilled veggie Boca Burgers. I'll have a salad and a burger in a lettuce wrap with ketchup, mustard and pickles. It deelish honestly. I don't really feel like I'm missing out on much. I'm eating every two hours. If I'm not hungry and it's time to eat I'll at least have a couple of bites to keep my metabolism going. My tummy grumbled a little the first day but I do feel satisfied and not overstuffed. The caffeine headache was the worst. I didn't think I drank enough caffeine that it would matter when I cut it out completely but it did. Two Aleve and that passed, hasn't been back since.

I also picked up "The Sneaky Chef" I forget the lady's name but the book is all about pureeing vegetables so that you can incorporate AKA "hide" them into your kids food. My son absolutely refused to eat vegetables although for some strange reason he likes Cole slaw and believe me I'm feeding it to him every chance I get. Anyway I haven't tried the recipes yet but I'll give a review when I do.

On a side note: Jerry Seinfeld's wife wrote a book almost identical to this book after The Sneaky Chef had already been published. There is still great debate going on about plagiarism and if there was any committed by Mrs. Seinfeld. I researched many of the reviews and found that the original was not only a cheaper book, the buyers found the recipes tastier. That was enough of a selling point for me.

The third book was "Special Diets for Special Kids part two". This book is a GF/CF recipe follow up book to the first one by the same author. Gluten and Casein which is also known as wheat and dairy, does not process well in my son's body and the side effects can cause a number of things from diarrhea to an opiate effect like he's stoned out of his mind. It's horrible and he's unable to focus on anything going on. I don't mind letting him go off into his own little world but when he needs to relearn ways to communicate I have to have his full attention or we are wasting our time.

Since we have taken wheat and dairy out of his system it's definitely helped. I can tell when he's had something with wheat or dairy in it. He bounces off the walls. This will be life long for Ayden and he will have to learn to maintain the diet on his own as he gets older. We are having him tested for Celiac Disease soon.