The Doctor Cooks: Lose Weight This Year

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Resolving to lose weight is always one of the top ten New Year’s resolutions. With 2/3 of Americans considered overweight, it’s probably one of the top ten resolutions abandoned by the end of January. You can succeed this year by adopting a new way of life that includes healthy eating. Here are a few books to guide you.

If It’s Not Food…Don’t Eat it is my favorite book to recommend to people who can’t seem to break the junk food, fast food life way of life. Author Kelly Hayford was once a tobacco addicted junk food junkie. She is now a nutrition and health coach. I agree with Hayfords conclusion: the key to health, energy and a natural body weight is to eat real food. The rub is that most of what we have come to know as food is far from real. Instead of nourishing us, it depletes our bodies of essential nutrients, making us fat, sick and tired. Hayford helps you step out of the fast food rat race and eat for health. Learn more at www.FoodFitnessByPhone.com.

The premise behind The Paleo Diet is that diseases of western civilization such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer, did not exist until humans began to grow their own food. Backed up with studies, author Loren Cordain, PhD shows how eating like a hunter-gatherer can help you return to an “ideal body weight, optimum health, and peak athletic performance.” On this diet, you eat grass fed meats, fish, nuts, seeds, vegetables and fruits. You won’t find grains, dairy or beans in this diet. The hunter-gatherers couldn’t stop a wooly mammoth long enough to milk it, nor could they gather enough wild grains and beans for a loaf of bread or stew. This way of eating is naturally low in carbohydrates, yet high in plant nutrients and healthy fats. Unlike Atkins, who died with severe heart disease, you can follow a low carb approach, lose weight and restore your health. Learn more at www.thepaleodiet.com.

We’ve all heard of wheat grass juice by now, thanks to Ann Wigmore. She decided to let food be her medicine and cured herself of colon cancer. She went on to found the Hippocrates Health Institute, now located in West Palm Beach, Florida. Her book The Hippocrates Diet and Health Program details the “living foods” or raw foods lifestyle. Wigmore’s research confirmed that food loses its enzymes and much of its nutrients when heated beyond 115 degrees Fahrenheit, and along with it, its ability to heal. Raw foods have a special ability to induce detoxification. As the body detoxifies it repairs itself. The staff at the Hippocrates Health Institute is accustomed to seeing improvements in a wide variety of conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and chronic fatigue. Insulin dependent diabetics have normalized their blood sugar and discontinued insulin use within a matter of weeks. The living foods lifestyle is a big change for most of us, but with 2/3 of Americans overweight, most of us need a big change. This could be the most significant step you will make in the direction of lasting health, energy and natural body weight. Learn more at www.hippocratesinst.com.

The Book of Whole Meals by Annemarie Colbin is still one of the best guides to whole foods eating, even though it was written back in 1979. Colbin, the founder of the Natural Gourmet Cookery School, now the Natural Gourmet Institute of Health and Culinary Arts in New York City, explains how our body seeks balance. A diet of caffeine, alcohol, sugar, white flour and other processed foods creates wide metabolic swings that are difficult to balance, leading to obesity and disease. Whole foods on the other hand center our metabolism so we can heal and maintain our health. Colbin deftly explains the theory and the practice, right down to seasonal menus from which lunch is made from the dinner leftovers. My copy has been rebound and the pages clearly show its use. Find this book at your local bookstore.

This article originally appeared in the January 2008 issue of the Kansas City Wellness Magazine in my monthly column, The Doctor Cooks. Look for it in every issue!