Nutrition Map: Your Guide to Eating Healthy

Food is pleasurable and...will always be everywhere, so it is time to live with it and enjoy it." With those spot-on words in the opening pages of Nutrition Map, we are greeted with Yvonne Quiñones Syto's* appreciation of the power of food--food not only satisfies us, it plays an unavoidable role in our social interaction.

Nutrition Map is just that: a week-by-week guide educating us on how to eat this, not that. Don't get enough fiber? Read Syto's chapter on vegetables, titled "Let the Roughage Begin." Need to revamp your stance on fruit? Read: "Fruit: Nature's Dessert." Syto's candor in recounting her own struggle with weight disarms the reader, allowing us to admit our hot topic weight issues, insecurities aside. Besides the author's infectious wit peppered throughout the book, you will all but shout, "Speak to me, sistah!" when she refers to "diet" as a four-letter word!

Nutrition Map starts us off on our path to better nutrition simply enough: start exercising a couple of days a week, increase our water intake and keep a food journal. With that manageable kick-off, Syto provides sample food journals, a body measurement table and a valuable definition grid of look-alike terms such as "reduced", "light" and "low fat". This isn't a starvation plan. This is a a step-by-step guide on how to incorporate a better nutrition choice this week, another the following week, etc., while acknowledging the reality that you will slip up here and there and have no intention of bidding adieu to desserts forever.

The tone of this book is informative yet conversational. In fact, while reading Nutrition Map, I couldn't help but feel like I was in Syto's office, having an uninhibited conversation about food and eating habits, (low fat) hot chocolate in hand. The author doesn't treat you like a guilt-ridden victim of your food choices; she just wants you to face them and improve them sensibly. If you're a size 18, Syto warns that lusting after transforming into a size 2 is tantamount to a "nose dive into a pint of ice cream." Setting your sights on a size 16 within a three-month period, instead, is a more attainable initial goal for most people.

Description from book review done by Janette Dolores (look for full interview on blogspot)