These days, calorie counting has become an extreme sport — everyone wants to lose that extra jiggle. Well, some tough love help has arrived. Skinny Bitch, a New York Times bestseller written by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, talks to you in a hard-hitting-no-BS kind of way. The book sends you to boot camp, but with an older sister who keeps encouraging you to better yourself. Plus, the authors throw a fact at you, and actually back it up with more facts.

I despise every fad diet, from Atkins to the cabbage soup diet, but finally, here is a book that hits the reader over the head a million times with the truth: there are no shortcuts. Want to be skinny? Start eating healthy — fruits, veggies, and organic food — and exercising almost daily. The cold hard truth is you are what you eat. As the book states, “If you eat crap, you are crap.”

The main course of this book is in prompting you to turn vegan. That probably is not just going to magically happen after you read this book (though it could). I think that moderation — and not going cold-turkey on meat and dairy — is the key to maintaining a healthy diet. One aspect of the Skinny Bitch mantra that I do adhere to is that “Soda is liquid Satan.” Personally, I despise soda – the taste, the stickiness if you spill it, and the unneeded calories. But what I hate more is diet soda, which the book states contains aspartame, artificial sweeteners that increase your appetite and has been blamed for all sorts of diseases. Oh, and when it enters your body, it turns into formaldehyde. FORMALDEHYDE! Stop preserving that.

And I know we’re in a “social ivy”, but if you want to be a skinny bitch, and not a fat one, you better stay away from alcohol. Here is my motto: Give up a jug handle. Lose a love handle.

Overall, this book can be a great eye-opener into how to not only become slimmer, but also healthier. This book is not a fad diet — it is a lifestyle. Read it, and think about what you’re putting in your body — your temple. It’s time to feel fabulous and look incredibly, incredibly sexy.

- Susan Luo