The Lazy Girl's Guide.. is A. J. Rochester's follow up to Confessions of a Reformed Dieter. While Confessions was about her own weight loss journey, The Lazy Girl's Guide is more of a how-to.

The Lazy Girl's Guide isn't a diet book, as in a book that gives you a set diet plan to follow, but rather an instruction guide to sensible eating and exercise. The first couple of chapters cover the basics - getting ready to lose weight (health checks, taking "before" photos), how you should be eating (3 meals and snacks, plus reading food labels), how to get started with exercise (a guide to different kinds of exercise and getting around those excuses). Rochester then goes on to talk about emotional eating, with a bunch of exercises you can work through so you can get to know your own emotional eating issues.

Other chapters include Fine Tuning - going from making "better" eating choices to making the best choices; Taking It To The Streets - a guide to what to eat when you aren't eating at home; Getting Off the Dreaded Plateau - for when your efforts aren't working. She includes a 12 week plan to get you started, recipes (including a low fat tiramisu, yum) and sample food diaries.

The Lazy Girl's Guide is the sort of book that would be fantastic if you are starting out with weight loss and your head is spinning from a surplus of information - low carbs, low fat, low what? Rochester cuts though all that, providing good, sensible and easy to follow advice. You don't need to buy special foods or measure or count anything. You just need to get started. Rochester talks from her own experience and it's reassuring to know that this is someone who's been there, not a fancy doctor who's only interest is to make dollars.

If you are in the middle of a weight loss journey, however, this book probably isn't going to tell you anything new.

Rochester's writing style is light and breezy, making The Lazy Girl's Guide an easy read, although at times she tries too hard with the humour.

Have you read The Lazy Girl's Guide? What did you think? Have you made the low fat tiramisu and how was it?