The U-Factor Weight Management Program

Deborah Fisher is a medical doctor associated with Mount Sinai Hospital
in Toronto.

Among the myriad of self-help books available, the subject of weight
loss never ceases to attract readers.

Lopez, a dietician, offers her method of permanent weight loss in this
book. Her plan’s premise is that foods are given in unit numbers
instead of calories; exercise energy expended is also described in
units. This approach is a permutation of the standard exchange diet. In
fact, the whole book is composed of variations and combinations of
existing diet systems.

In the book, Lopez (a self-confessed former “big woman” who claims
she was once bulimic) discusses the physiology and psychology of
obesity, and offers helpful hints and true confessions of her successful
clients, as well as her own saga. Finally, there is a chapter about a
specific diet based on her unit system.

Although this book’s advice is quite safe and some of it is even
sound, none of it is new. The confessions are a bit trite and not
terribly credible; in fact, the entire book reads like an Oprah Winfrey
Optifast ad. There are no particular connections among the bits of
information she presents, nor is there any logical progression in the
book. I do not understand her claim to expertise in the various areas in
which she becomes a self-prescribed maven—particularly in her
minicourse on egostate therapy.

I do not think physicians or dieticians will find this book
particularly helpful for patients, and I doubt that anyone will achieve
permanent weight loss from reading this book alone.