K.I.S.S. Low-Carb Goodbye

As diet books get back to basics, the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" philosophy is giving low carb a swift kick in the rear. But will common sense sell?

In hindsight, the success of Mireille Guiliano's French Women Don't Get Fat (Knopf) isn't particularly surprising; after all, what Guiliano did was write an easy-to-read diet book that wasn't really a diet book, since it didn't include a lot of rules or prescriptions. The book's non-scientific approach to weight loss and overall health centered on living a healthy lifestyle: take the stairs, drink water, savor your food—and don't deprive yourself of the occasional bite of chocolate or sip of champagne. In short, it preached the doctrine of common sense. The book spent 24 weeks on PW's bestseller list.

Compare Guiliano's diet to the specific, phase-oriented, rules-dictated (yet wildly successful) diets like Atkins and South Beach, and it's clear some American dieters are looking in a new direction. Atkins Nutritionals Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July of this year, and books about following a strictly low-carb diet have all but disappeared from bestseller lists. According to the diet news site Carbwire. com, experts consider March 2005 to be the peak of the low-carb craze; the site quoted one food industry consultant as saying, "The bloom is off the rose. It doesn't look like the [low-carb] market has any staying power."

Touchstone/Fireside editor Nancy Hancock, who worked with Dr. Atkins for eight years, agrees: "I think that we are moving away from plans [like Atkins], that require people [to] make a huge investment of learning or time or money."

It seems inevitable that Atkins and its imitators would eventually wane in popularity; after all, there's a reason they're called fad diets. (In the end, who didn't regain all the weight they lost on Atkins? Eating a steak instead of a bowl of cereal had to backfire at some point.) Sydny Miner, executive editor at Simon & Schuster, remembers the late 1960s and early '70s diet titans Adele Davis (Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit) and Gaylord Hauser (Dictionary of Foods), noting that they were on to something. "The basic science of weight loss remains the same: calories do count, what you eat counts and what your grandma said was right—eat those veggies." Indeed, Miner says, "Common sense may be coming back."

Publishers are responding, just in time to take advantage of New Year's resolutions, with books that stress the fundamentals. But in a category that's thrived on extreme prescriptions and the promise of quick transformation, this change raises a question: How do you make common sense sexy enough to sell books?

"A Nice Way to Say Eat Less!"

One strategy is to pick up on a catchphrase. And the catchphrase of the day is "portion control"—which is just "a nice way to say, 'eat less,' " says Judith McCarthy, McGraw-Hill's publisher of consumer books. That seemingly obvious morsel of wisdom is a key tenet of McGraw-Hill's recent Body Intelligence: Lose Weight, Keep It Off, and Feel Great About Your Body Without Dieting! by Edward Abramson. The book stresses eating in moderation and dealing with the emotional aspects of eating.

Miner at S&S agrees that "the portion thing is really big. That's where a lot of people err. You can gain weight eating nothing but apples—if you eat too many apples." She cites Bob Greene (Total Body Makeover; The Get with the Program! Guide to Good Eating; etc.), who S&S has published very successfully, as one example of this philosophy. "He says there is no magic bullet. You have to eat sensibly and you've got to get out and move," Miner explains. "You eat when you're hungry, not when you broke up with your boyfriend or you had a bad day at work. It's about making conscious choices."

Touchstone/Fireside's Hancock sees portion control as "something that people can easily focus on. It gives you a structure, a regimen to look at and say, 'This is what I'm going to eat.' That's very important to people following a plan." However, a book can't just say "eat less"—as Hancock points out, "I think people already know that, so to be told [that you should eat less] for $22.95 is too much of a hard sell." For Hancock, even if a diet book is not promoting a "counterintuitive approach" (like Atkins did), it still must have a very specific approach in order to sell. She mentions as an example a book she's currently working on, The Structure House Weight Loss Program, which was developed by researchers at Duke University and teaches readers how to structure their meals and lifestyle to support their eating habits.

Pork Rinds Are Not the Answer

Of course, it's not just how much you eat, but what you eat. Now that avoiding carbohydrates is no longer considered the golden ticket to weight loss, publishers are offering other definitions of healthy eating. So-called whole foods are getting a lot of publicity these days, thanks in part to the burgeoning chain of organic food stores with the same name. Processed foods are out; fresh, naturally grown foods are in. According to a recent survey of dietary behavior commissioned by the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR), four out of five weight-conscious Americans turn to salads, vegetables and fruits when trying to lose weight—not commercially prepared "diet foods" of the low-carb, low-calorie or low-fat variety. Karen Collins, a registered dietician and the nutrition advisor to the AICR, reports that dieters now say, "I want [a diet plan] that's going to give me something that's more than weight loss."

A slew of forthcoming books hammers home the importance of consuming natural foods, and the need for people to consider their long-term health over quick-fix weight loss. Real Food, by Nina Planck (Bloomsbury, Mar.), for example, advocates "traditional foods, locally grown and eaten in moderation." SuperFoods HealthStyle: Proven Strategies for Lifelong Health by Steven Pratt—Oprah's "Food Dude"—and Kathy Matthews (Morrow, Dec.) offers a "complete blueprint for eating well, feeling well and living well." Even the quirkily titled Texas Two-Step Diet: Achieve Happiness and Health—Even When Faced with Cheese Enchiladas by John Bridgman and Amy Bradshaw (Bright Sky Press, Jan.) is built on the standard tactics of taking vitamins and eating healthy food. The "two-step" of its title refers to the determination and dedication needed to achieve healthy weight loss and maintain it for a lifetime.

Jennifer Hughes, publicity director at Capital Books in Washington, D.C., notes, "Our response to popular fad diet books that have consumed the public's interest has been to publish factual, informative books for people concerned with becoming healthy, not just thin." In April, the house is publishing Savvy Eating for the Whole Family: Whole Foods, Whole Family, Whole Life by Margaret Kocsis, which emphasizes the need for entire families to adopt healthy eating habits.

Neil Wertheimer, editor-in-chief at Reader's Digest, also eschews fad diets in favor of plans for healthy living. "We have a responsibility to be a little less fad-driven," he says, acknowledging that while "a hot new idea" may mean booming sales, "in the end, I think we all in our hearts want to do more than just sell books. We want to help people live healthier lives." The house has done just that with its ChangeOne program, which advocates slow weight loss and small changes that eventually lead to sustaining weight loss. The book based on the diet has sold 210,000 copies in the U.S. to date, and a revised edition is coming in January.

Speaking of health, vegetarians, who have long been considered either oddball freaks or the healthiest people on the planet—depending on one's opinion of bacon—are still the darlings of some health book publishers. Witness the stream of titles on vegetarianism flowing into bookstores this season: there's Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers: Fresh Ideas for the Weeknight Table by the Moosewood Collective (Clarkson Potter, Oct.); Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen (Broadway, Feb.); The Enlightened Kitchen: Fresh Vegetable Dishes from the Temples of Japan by Mari Fujii (Kodansha, Jan.); and The Real Food Daily Cookbook: Really Fresh, Really Good, Really Vegetarian, by Ann Gentry (Ten Speed, Oct.). This month, Artisan is publishing Vegetable Love: A Book for Cooks by Barbara Kafka, which, though not a vegetarian book per se, is as pro-vegetables as its title indicates.

Just a New Way of Saying Old Things?

Even in this new environment, the low-carb based South Beach Diet continues to flourish. Last month Rodale released The South Beach Diet Quick & Easy Cookbook. It hasn't hit PW's bestseller list, but the book's marketing and publicity campaign has just started gaining momentum, and got a boost when Britney Spears announced that she plans to lose her pregnancy weight by going on the South Beach diet.

While Rodale executive editor Heather Jackson predicts the South Beach franchise will be strong for a long time to come, she says the success of less regimented diet and health books like You: The Owners Manual(Collins), French Women Don't Get Fat and Why Do Men Have Nipples? (Three Rivers) suggests that readers "are looking for a little more levity, something that'll give them more information but not be dreary and uninteresting."

Some publishers are trying to keep it interesting by giving their advice an international flavor. Among this fall's releases is Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle's Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen (Delacorte, Nov.). While the book doesn't have the same hedonistic spirit as French Women, it does advocate eating white flour noodles, the kind of starchy staple that became all but taboo during the low-carb craze. Crown will publish The French Don't Diet Plan: 10 Simple Steps to Stay Thin for Life by Will Clower this spring, and Collins will bring out Mediterranean Women Stay Slim, Too: Eating to Be Sexy, Fit, and Fabulous! by Melissa Kelly and Eve Adamson.

And then there are the books with such provocative titles as How the Rich Get Thin: Park Avenue's Top Diet Doctor Reveals the Secrets to Losing Weight and Feeling Great by Jana Klauer (St. Martin's, Jan.) and Skinny Bitch: A No-Nonsense Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous! by Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman (Running Press, Dec.). Are they offering levity or just plain silliness?

Dr. Klauer, who has a practice in Manhattan, is big on—you guessed it—portion control. "Portions have just gotten out of control in the U.S.," she laments. As an example, Klauer points out that wine glasses have gotten bigger. The recommended serving size of a glass of Chardonnay is three and a half to four ounces, yet, Klauer points out, the bestselling wine glass at Tiffany's holds 12 ounces, "and at Pottery Barn, it's 16 ounces!" She also advocates exercising every day, putting protein and calcium high on your list, resisting cravings and cutting processed foods out of your diet. Oh, and drink plenty of mineral water with lemon or lime. Basic strategies, it seems, that would work in pretty much any ZIP code. Klauer admits that "the whole rich people thing" is a marketing move: "I think there's a certain mystery about 'what do the rich do?' But the truth of the matter is, it's a catchy title. The information in the book works just as well for someone who's not a wealthy individual. You certainly can adapt things to whatever your circumstances," whether that means taking a daily 30-minute walk or working out with a personal trainer three times a week.

Which leads us to fitness, the yin to the diet category's yang. It also seems to be getting a common-sense makeover; on October 27, the New York Times ran a story on the trend toward "integrative exercise"—yet another example of a simple, age-old concept getting an attractive new name. The article profiled people who raise their pulse rate every day by jogging from the parking lot to the office, vacuuming with gusto and bench-pressing their small children.

"We've decided to get into 'functional fitness' in a big way," explains Heather Jackson, mentioning a book Rodale is publishing in April by tennis legend Martina Navratilova, The Shape of Your Life. "The point of it is that you are in great shape so you can live a great life," Jackson says. In the book's introduction, Navratilova writes, "I follow a healthy, delicious diet. I pay attention when little aches and pains pop up, and I take care of them. I work out and play lots of different sports. I take time off from my workouts. Along with that, there's hard work, a little common sense, and some genetic luck." It just might be sane enough to work.

For a listing of forthcoming diet and fitness titles, see www.publishersweekly.com.