It’s true! Best-selling author and popular TV chef, Devin Alexander, has whipped up a hot new cookbook that reveals the savory secret to successful weight loss: EAT THE FOODS YOU LOVE!
Thanks to Devin, you no longer have to think of diet as another word for deprivation. Instead, you can lose weight and get in shape while salivating over great-tasting, low-fat foods like bacon cheeseburgers, lasagna with meat sauce, chocolate layer cake and even brownie sundaes!
Starting with a recipe for Sausage Biscuit Sandwich and working her way to Honey Glazed Spiced Pork Tenderloin, Chef Devin takes us on a trip to comfort food heaven in The Most Decadent Diet Ever, her smash follow-up to the highly successful Biggest Loser Cookbook she crafted for the popular TV show.
Devin tells Diet.com The Most Decadent Diet Ever!is “The Secret” of food.
"When I stopped labeling this food 'bad' and that food 'bad' and me 'bad' for eating something I 'shouldn’t have' and concentrated on what I was actually craving and how to satisfy those cravings, I was finally able to lose weight and keep it off," she says.
Diet.com chief editor John McGran sat down with Chef Devin recently to chew the fat about good eating and healthy living.
JM: So Devin, what was your inspiration for Most Decadent Diet Ever?
DA: After gaining 10 to 15 pounds per year from the time I was 8 to the time I was 15 (weighing about 190 by the time I was 15), I started living this book and lost (and have kept off!) over 55 pounds for over 15 years. I tried dieting for years, but the thought of giving up my favorites FOREVER!was too much for my brain to handle. It would force me to overeat and obsess.
When I realized that I could still have all of the foods I love just as deliciously, as long as I cook them myself, I stopped dieting and lost weight. I wrote this book for others who struggle with weight or with high cholesterol or any other food-related ailments... so they, too, can keep eating the foods they love!
JM: What do you think are the food issues that doom most diets?
DA: Most diets are really limiting. You can work anything into this plan for life - even alcohol and chocolate! And you don’t have to count calories once you get the hang of the plan.
Though this book may sound like a fad diet, it’s actually the opposite. It encourages folks to stop dieting and adapt changes that they can live with forever — simple changes like swapping my Chocolate Chocolate Brownie Cups for fatty brownies that truly don’t taste any better!
JM: I must confess... kitchens scare me. I prefer drive-thrus, deliveries or pick up. So what will I get out of Most Decadent Diet Ever?
DA: First John, cooking is like riding a bike. When you start, you don’t have the few pieces of equipment you need, you don’t know that the applesauce is in aisle 7 and you have to read each recipe very carefully. But once you learn a few simple things, it’s easy and ANYONE can do it!
My recipes are exceptionally easy to follow on purpose because I want families making them together. Not only will the whole family enjoy it, people will be setting their children up for healthy lives that don’t rely on eating out.
People don’t realize how much unnecessary fats and oils are used in foods in restaurants. Veggies for burritos and things are often soaked in oil to be kept from drying out, buns for sandwiches (even when you’re being “good” and ordering the grilled chicken sandwich) are slathered with hundreds of calories worth of butter or lard, when you ask for steamed veggies, they often steam them, then toss them in butter or oil and egg white omelets are cooked in a scary amount of butter so they don’t stick to the pan (rarely do restaurants use non-stick). You can eat SO much more food if you cook it yourself.
JM: But Devin, my spare time is precious. Cooking sounds like work!
DA: By spending 20 minutes in your kitchen, you can save 3 hours on a treadmill! You can still enjoy the flavors you love if you cook them yourself without putting your health at risk or inches on your hips. Also, as a society, we’re plagued with so many food-related illnesses, it’s ridiculous.
As I see it, we don’t have time NOT to cook. Would you rather spend your spare time in your kitchen or at your doctor’s office? There are so many folks with Type 2 diabetes that are spending a ton of time and money on insulin and monitoring their illness. There are tons of folks who are spending a fortune on blood pressure and cholesterol medications. Imagine if some of those folks didn’t have to work so many hours to cover the cost of those prescriptions and the gas getting back and forth to the doctors' offices?
Cooking is fun when you get used to it and you get the results you get from recipes inThe Most Decadent Diet Ever!
JM: OK, I am sold. So will you reveal your favorite recipes from Most Decadent Diet.
DA: This is by far my least favorite question about this book. It varies daily based on what I’m in the mood to eat. I love the Chicken Enchilasagna, I love the Sweet & Slim Italian Sausage (it’s real pork sausage and it’s leaner than any chicken or turkey sausage I’ve ever seen sold in stores), I love the Chocolate Not-Only-In-Your-Dreams Cakes (warm chocolate flourless espresso cakes like the ones you get in restaurants that I used to call, “a heart-attack in a pan” and would always dream about eating).
I seriously love so many of them! At a taste-testing party, everyone went crazy over the Chinese Pepper Steak and I carry the Chocolate Chocolate Brownie Cups almost everywhere I go because with a book like this, I think “Tasting is Believing.” I literally sold this book based on them.
Everyone is always so skeptical about healthy food tasting good. Not only does this taste good, if you serve the dishes in The Most Decadent Diet Ever! to your friends, they won’t believe you that they are healthier. I recently had one of the Producers of “The Biggest Loser” and my manager over for dinner and made only recipes from the book. I had the Editors and P.R. team for Women's Health magazine over for breakfast and made only recipes from the book. The recipes are not only amazing for “diet food”, but they are good enough to impress anyone — even your mother-in-law!
JM: How did you select the foods in Most Decadent Diet Ever, and do YOU really stay home and cook for yourself using these recipes?
DA: For years, I’ve been adapting my family recipes and recipes that others have sent to me. Many of the dishes in the Most Decadent Diet Ever! are those recipes... and my family now uses my versions instead of the originals, even on holidays. I’m also constantly combing menus at popular chains looking for the most popular dishes. I tackle those often, as well.
And YES!! I absolutely cook the recipes from the Most Decadent Diet Ever! when I am at home and I miss them and feel like I suffer when I’m on the road which is way too often these days. I love food and I love real-sized portions (I don’t know how to eat 2 bites of anything). When I’m on the road, I have to eat smaller portions of foods that I don’t even enjoy as much or I gain weight. It really frustrates me.
When I’m on the road for a stretch doing appearances, I get excited when I have a few days in a city where I have friends; I often borrow their kitchens and make a couple of meals. I just borrowed my sister’s kitchen in New York City to get a reprieve from eating out. I left her a freezer full of the
Chocolate Chocolate Brownie Cups and she was so excited. When I stopped at my parent’s lately, I made the Skinny Scampi and the Chicken Enchilasagna, both of which my parents are still talking about.
JM: You've now covered fast food makeovers and comfort foods -- what's the next food topic to tackle?
DA: Convenience foods! The recipes in The Most Decadent Diet Ever are extremely decadent, which, in some cases do take a bit of time. But, they are worth every second. The next book will be slightly less decadent (still absolutely delicious), but will really focus on the 5-10 minute recipes.
JM: What's your personal philosophy on food and dieting?
DA: “Just because it tastes great, doesn’t mean it can’t be good for you!” I say that to close every episode of my show “Healthy Decadence with Devin Alexander” on Discovery Health and FitTv. And I believe it with every ounce of my being.
I’m not a tofu and carrot stick chef and I use “real” ingredients. Food is an art to me. Nothing frustrates me more than watching a “healthy chef” say that they’re going to make-over “my” favorite food then use turkey legs to make “pulled pork” (the leanest cut of pork is leaner than turkey legs!) or stuff a burger full of mushrooms or to have someone tell me that they’re making “me” a bacon cheeseburger then stack a veggie burger with a piece of fat free cheese, a couple pieces of turkey bacon and some fat free mayo and tell me I’ll love it.
I had an ex-boyfriend who wouldn’t let me watching cooking shows before bed because he said I got too riled up. He said I was worse than watching a guy watching a football game (I did yell at the TV). I recently picked up a "healthy" cookbook and the woman who wrote it said she started making over recipes because she took her favorite so-called low-fat baked goods to a lab to get them tested because they tasted “too good” to be low fat. She said that the lab proved that she was right, so she was writing the book because she is obsessed with food. I believe without a doubt that she would be compelled to take every one of my dishes to a lab to have them analyzed then she would take them back for a second and maybe even third opinion because they cut tons of fat and calories and are amazing.
There is no such thing, in my view, as too good to be healthy. My team and I work almost obsessively on recipes until they are good enough to serve to my most important guests and then we put them in my books and not one second before.
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