Carrots 'n' Cake by Tina Haupert

Book Title: Carrots 'N' Cake
Subtitle: Healthy Living One Carrot and Cupcake at a Time
Author: Tina Haupert
Genre: Cooking, Nutrition
ISBN: 978-1-4027-7824-7
Publisher: Sterling Epicure
Suggested Retail Price: $14.95

From the book:

Like most brides to be, Tina Haupert wanted to look her best on her wedding day.  After using an online calorie and exercise tracker and reading food blogs, Tina was inspired to start her own blog.   Shortly thereafter, Carrots 'N' Cake was born.  Then came the readers; Complete strangers starting posting comments and asking questions.  Tina was all too happy to help and loved sharing her experiences and advice with them.  What started out as a hobby soon became her passion.
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Most people who think of dieting think of a never ending meal pan containing grilled chicken, salad, fruit, cottage cheese and yogurt.  They think of saying good bye to pizza, carrot cake and donuts. They have visions of no more lunches with their friends or date nights out with the husband at a fancy restaurant.

That's the reason most diets fail.  People stay on them for a week or two, loose a pound or two, realize they cannot give up their favorite baked goods for the rest of their life and they give up.  Tina Haupert understands that leading a healthy balanced lifestyle doesn't mean having to give up all of those tasty treats for the rest of your life.  The author explains how you can still enjoy treats and drop pounds. Dieting doesn't need to mean constant calorie counting and being hungry all the time while you gnaw on a celery stick.

Carrots 'N' Cake is look at how the author managed to loose weight and keep it off.  It's a collection of her thoughts and ideas on a variety of topics including exercise, how to splurge, maintaining your weight, becoming accountable, cravings, traveling and more.  Each chapter focuses on a different topic and inside that chapter are recipes that deal with what you've just learned. She also shares a number of very in depth samples of her work out routines in strength training and treadmill workouts.

I really love the tone that this book is written in.  She doesn't come off preachy and she acknowledges a number of things that many women suffer from like cravings and binges.  For the most part, her recipes are simple and use ingredients that most people will have in their pantry already. She doesn't encourage the use of artificial sweeteners in her recipes and encourages whole grains and fresh produce.  All in all, this is a very doable program that won't leave you feeling exhausted, starving and ready to eat an entire cake in one sitting.  I'm really looking forward to trying these recipes.  They're healthy enough for me to feel good about making them and delicious looking enough for me to want to eat them.

My thanks to the sponsor for allowing me to review this book.

As required by the FTC: I received a product sample in order to write my review.  I received no monetary compensation.  All opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.

Article first published as Book Review: Carrots 'N' Cake by Tina Haupert on Blogcritics.