Trim Healthy Mama Review – Food Sanity, or Just Another Diet?
This Trim Healthy Mama review is an opinion piece.
Iโve gotten countless requests over the years to do a Trim Healthy Mama review, so here we are!
I bought the book and was infuriated pretty much as soon as I opened it. In fact,ย I was clenching my jaw so much while I was writing this, I literally had to put my mouthguard in.
Thatโs a first in my diet review-writing history.ย
What Is Trim Healthy Mama?
With its cute butterfly logo, the healthy-looking sisters who authored the book who are just like you (actually, no theyโre not, but anyhow), and tagline of โkeep it simple, keep it sane,โ THM seems like itโs pretty evolved, at least for a commercial diet program.ย
โJoin the food freedom movement!โ the book proclaims.
But, then comes the language. Cheat. Naughty. โUncleanโ meats. โDrive-thru Sueโ and โGrazing Grace.โ โCan-haves.โ โslimming beveragesโ and โGood Girlโ foods.ย
Oh. My. God. Hold me back.ย
And in the foreword? This:
โWe want to offer you food sanity. Finally, an ease of eating that flows without having to muster up a lot of self-denial or by making the kitchen a concentration camp.โ
Excuse me?
As a Hebrew, Iโm deeply offended at the comparison of a kitchen to a concentration camp.ย
Itโs just incredibly ignorant.ย
Soooo, weโre not exactly starting off on the right foot here. But Iโll keep an open mind.ย
The Trim Healthy Mama Store
Thereโs a THM online store with THM branded everything from face cream to sweetener to deodorant. Thereโs a ridiculous window decal announcing to everyone that youโre following this diet. Thereโs a special stevia spoon called a โdoonk.โ When your diet contains so much artificial sweetener that you can buy a special spoon for it, thatโs maybe a red flag, donโt you think?
The sisters are practicing Christians, and the book (600 pages long) has plenty of biblical references and even a chapter on relationships. What in actual fuck are they doing, giving sex advice in a diet book? What does erectile dysfunction have to do with being a trim healthy mama?
Thereโs a ton of references to keeping your husband happy, or how he wonโt โneed a raiseโ when you start following this diet.ย Yeesh. I mean, I respect those who choose to live a traditional lifestyle, but I’m not sure this all has a place in a book about food.ย
The book gets even weirder when the sistersย discourage vegan diets because the bible says to eat โcleanโ meat, and say that the bible is correct over doctors who promote veganism or vegetarianism.ย They insist that raw diets are bad, because Jesus cooked his food. Although both sisters admit earlier on in the book that they used to be raw diet followers and later in the book, refer to the life-giving properties of raw lettuce.
Iโm telling you, you canโt make this shit up. Again, following the bible is a personal preference, but I guess my point here is that choosing biblical philosophy over modern-day research makes this book an opinion piece versus something that’s evidence-based.
Is Trim Healthy Mama a Good Diet?
Just as an aside, even though the sisters said this isnโt a diet, Iโm not sure what fairytale world theyโre living in. itโs 1000% a diet:
It has rules about what you can and canโt eat.
It focuses on weight loss.
It stipulates being โon-planโ for the long-term in order to maintain your weight.
If this isn’t a diet, I’m not exactly sure what is. Just because a plan doesn’t order you onto the scale doesn’t mean it’s not a diet.
What Is The Trim Healthy Mama Diet?
THM is based on the following rules:
Never eat carbs and fat at the same meal.
Carbs should be limited to sourdough or sprouted breads, fruits (except not fruits like pears, peaches, nectarines, oranges, bananas, etc), and vegetables. NO added sugars are allowed, only stevia and other sweeteners (but NOT Splenda, oh my god!! NOT SPLENDA!!)
Eat every three hours.ย
In the book, thereโs a very stern, all-in-caps warning about the proper food combinations:
NEVER INCLUDE LARGE AMOUNTS OF BOTH FATS AND CARBS IN THE SAME MEAL UNLESS YOU ARE TRYING TO GAIN
OR MAINTAIN WEIGHT. IN OTHER WORDS, DONโT TANDEM FUEL!
If you donโt follow this rule, you will have no control over your body fat.ย
Look at what theyโre saying. Follow our rules or youโll LOSE CONTROL OVER YOUR FAT.
Iโm speechless. I really am. That is fucked up. And FYI – this is not true AT ALL.ย
Trim Healthy Mama Meals
Meals are categorized into either โS (satisfying) meals,โ which are high-fat, low-carb, or โE,โ (energizing) which are moderate-carb, low-fat.ย
Both S and E meals contain protein.
Crossover meals are meals that contain both carbs are fats.
A food thatโs low in fat and carbs is called a โfuel pull,โ and can go in either the E or S group.ย
A meal thatโs based on a fuel-pull food and protein is called a โfuel pull meal.โ
You can add carbs to a meal with โS helperโ foods.ย
Are you still with me here?
I could do an entire post on just the meals, but itโs enough to say that some are high fat, some are moderate carb, you follow the food lists, blah blah blah. Enough.
The sisters talk a lot about net carbs and calories, even though THIS IS NOT A DIET!
They tell followers to cook only with saturated fats, because โtheyโre the only ones that donโt turn to trans-fats with cooking.โ This is unbelievably false. Like, so untrue. Same as when they say that red palm oil โfights cancer aggressively.โ
I just canโt.ย
There are plenty of THM recipes, including one for dairy-free cheese made with tahini and collagen (I just threw up a bit in my mouth), a โslimmingโ coffee made with coffee, collagen, and oil; and a drink called โThe Shrinker,โ which apparently โwent viralโ when it was first posted.ย
This drink โhelps shrink your fat cells. The combined thermogenic boosting ingredients promote energy and speed up your metabolism.โ (here’s my blog on metabolism)
What a load of bullshit. But THIS IS NOT A DIET!!
Can you see why Iโm so irritated right now?
The Shrinker contains a gag-inducing mixture of tea, vanilla extract, almond milk, cayenne pepper, stevia, salt, and cinnamon.ย
Not only will this โshrinkโ fat cells and boost metabolism, it will taste like shit.ย
STOP!!!ย
The Research Behind Trim Healthy Mamaย
Okay, well, there is none.ย
Thereโs plenty of anecdotal evidence from overzealous Facebook THM groupies, but this diet isnโt evidence-based at all.ย
Letโs look at some of their claims.
The sisters talk about phytates, saying that a high-grain diet causes mineral deficiency and all sorts of symptoms, most of which are nebulous (โthe regular blahsโโฆso scientific).ย
This is untrue.
They talk a lot about insulin, saying that excess belly fat is always a matter of eating too much carbs. This is categorically untrue. They teach us that a diet high in carbs causes elevated blood sugar, which causes insulin resistance. But thatโs not the way it works.ย
They quote Gary Taubesโ carbohydrate-insulin theory, which has never been proven.
They say that eating fat doesnโt make you fat if carbs are kept to a minimum.ย
This would be fine, if youโre referring to a ketogenic diet. However, this diet is far from being keto. So this claim doesnโt hold up.ย
THMโs reasoning behind separating fat and carbohydrates is that cycling low and moderate-carb meals gives your cells a chance to clear themselves of glucose and then be re-fed.
They also claim that meals high in carbs and fat make us fat because our bodies can only deal with one of those macronutrients at a time.ย
This is oversimplified, sketchy, and absolutely unproven by either basic physiology or research. But thatโs not surprising, given that the authors have zero nutrition training.ย
They also quote a quack doctor from Suzanne Somerโs book. Everything he says is garbage – from soy foods causing cancer to glutamate and manganese being neurotoxic. They concur with him when he says that GMOs cause sterility (they donโt).ย Who quotes anyone or anything from a Suzanne Somers book? Oh yeah…people who are clueless.
If my 12 year-old daughter wrote a diet book, it would be #THM.
And speaking of 12 year olds, this would be a great time to mention that THM has a ‘kids curriculum’ to teach kids about nutrition.
“They will dive deeper into discovering how keeping a stable blood sugar
is the key to long-lasting health and how eating (or drinking) high amounts of sugar
and devitalized, packaged foods can cause lasting harm.”
Can we talk about ‘lasting harm?’ The kind that comes from teaching kids garbage bullshittery with the THM agenda written all over it?
But one of the worst things the sisters do is backtrack on their assertions.ย
This sort of crazy-talk is frequent in THM – saying one thing and then backtracking. This isnโt a diet! But wait! Youโll lose weight by following our rules! We donโt count calories! But wait! X food is full of calories! We donโt count carbs! But wait! You have a 45-gram threshold!ย We only eat according to the bible! But wait! Baked potatoes โignite your blood sugar!โ
They put this crap about soy being terrible into their book, then turn the other cheek and say that theyโre not trying to speak evil of soy and say that you shouldnโt ever eat it.
Itโs confusing, itโs unintelligent, and itโs disingenuous.ย
In other words, Trim Healthy Mama is clearly written by people who donโt know what the hell theyโre talking about and would do everyone a great service by 1. shutting up and 2. taking a university-level course on physiology.
You know what guys?
Iโm done. Iโm sorry, but I canโt do this anymore. And if you know me, and you know my diet reviews, youโll know that I really never – maybe except for once – had to cut one off in the middle. But THM is THAT BAD.ย My Trim Healthy Mama review is done.ย
I want my $10 back for this shitty, shame-ridden, horribly-illustrated, gross diet book.ย
It. is. so. fucking. bad.
If you lose weight on Trim Healthy Mama, itโs because youโre cutting calories from all the stupid, crazy rules it has. Thereโs nothing special or great about it.
Most of the claims and explanations of how the body works and processes food are grossly inaccurate.ย
My Trim Healthy Mama Review:
This diet is simply a low-carb plan with silly rules and bad information about food and your body.
Donโt listen to people who have no nutrition training.
Just because a ton of people are following a plan, doesnโt mean itโs good. Most often, it means that theyโre all completely misled.ย
When a plan has rules and is focused on weight loss, itโs a diet. Period.
I have never heard of this one either and I guess that’s a good thing. Thanks for your honest review and thoughts
definitely a book to stay far far far away from.
I didn’t know there were so many crazy diets out there! This one seems to be full of a lot of confusing misleading stuff too!
I had not heard of this before, but it sounds pretty out there! Thank you for the review…now I know not to buy the book! ๐
I haven’t read it (and never really planned to) but your review was as insightful as it was hilarious.
WOW. I’ve heard about THM from homeschool buy/sell groups that I’m in, but I had no idea that it was so schizophrenic in its approach. It sounds absolutely maddening! Also, I’m a Christian and a vegan, and I wish I could confidently say “not all Christians are like thissss promise! :-D” but idk man…I have heard some truly insane claims as it relates to diet from my fellow believers. And from my fellow vegans as well. I really appreciate you covering this book, as insane as it was. Love your diet reviews!