For the past five years, while working on my book SUGAR SHOCK!, I had the pleasure of interviewing some of the most cutting edge health experts out there.

One M.D. I interviewed is Dr. Mark Hyman, who not only is a much-acclaimed physician, but one who’s quite savvy about nutrition (unlike most doctors). Not only that, but he’s hip to the dangers of sugars and refined carbs. (You can find some quotes from him about this in SUGAR SHOCK!)

Stay tuned, because Dr. Hyman will be offering a teleseminar for my audience. (Details to come shortly.)

Anyhow, Dr. Hyman — a two-time New York Times bestselling author — has written a revolutionary book, UltraMetabolism — The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss, which contains some crucial information about YOUR health that you are JUST NOT hearing about… In fact, Dr. Hyman’s book contains information that could not only help you finally fix your chronic health problems, but also help you feel better, look better and give you an energy boost as a bonus.

You can find out more info here about this book, which is the same book that’s been featured in a public television special airing nationwide, as well as on Good Morning America, The Early Show, The View and AOL’s home page every couple of months.

I bring good news. Dr. Hyman, who I greatly admired, has agreed to offer you three gifts:

1. A sneak peek of the book;
2. A metabolism-boosting 7-step online course; and
3. A 60-minute video that will show you how you may generate automatic health and weight loss.

Learn more about Dr. Hyman’s revolutionary book here.

I don’t know about you, but there’s no way in the world I could ever go completely without chocolate in this world. Say what you want about this food, it is one of God’s greatest gifts to the human race. And there are even studies showing chocolate has health benefits. So, to all you anti-chocolate antagonists out there, go stick it where the sun don’t shine!

Of course, one of the problems with most chocolate bars has to do with one of the primary ingredients in it–SUGAR! UGH! Some people justify eating chocolate for health benefits but neglect the gobs of unhealthy carbohydrate-infested sugar they put in it. That’s why I’m very critical of the well-meaning but not-so-good-for-you CocoaVia chocolate bars.

In fact, I recently learned that according to the government standards in Europe, you can’t call something chocolate if it DOESN’T have sugar in it! WHAT?! How ridiculous is it to think you MUST have sugar in chocolate for it to be chocolate.

Here in America we know there are PLENTY of great sugar-free, low-carb options for chocolate, not the least of which is my absolutely FAVORITE chocolate bar on the planet…(you probably know, but CLICK HERE to find out if you don’t!).

Also, fellow blogger and HUGE weight loss champion Beth Badore–aka Melting Mama–has been doing a series of video reviews lately of various health food products and now she’s positively reviewed this same brand of chocolate bars I love so much.

Check out her video review of this chocolate bar for yourself:

Find out more about Melting Mama’s review and see some special recipes with this chocolate brand that is tops in the world bar none by clicking here.

“Dr. Manny” arms you with informed health information you can use

A 37-year old businessman has to leave work early to pass a kidney stone. A 62-year old grandmother keeps turning the television up louder and louder to hear it while her grandkids cover their ears. A sad and despondent teenager thinks she is too fat and begins throwing up to help her lose weight. An expectant mother-to-be has high blood pressure and wonders how that will impact the health of her baby.

If there was a way to prevent these everyday moments in life from happening, would you want to know about it? If somehow you inherently knew what was about to happen to your health in the next 5, 10, even 50 years, then how would that change the way you live your life? What if there was some sort of manual to provide guidance and direction about how to stay ahead of the curve and actually prevent the most common ailments from afflicting you before they happen?

Well, that’s exactly what the new book by Dr. Manny Alvarez entitled The Checklist: What You And Your Family Need To Know To Prevent Disease And Live A Long And Healthy Life has set out to do! Whether you are 3 months, 3 years, 33 or even 93, this book tells you exactly what you can expect in terms of your health based on the decade of life you are currently living in.

Most people know “Dr. Manny” from his fantastic work as a health correspondent on the FOX News Channel. Seeing a void in the health market for a book explaining what happens to the typical person at various stages of their life, Dr. Manny decided to write this book so that people won’t be caught off guard when calamity hits.

Of course, he is not so presumptuous to think that people can only be stricken with certain diseases and health complications during a given decade. We all know that we are susceptible to just about anything given the circumstances, so this book is merely a guide of what COULD happen in the future or maybe even sooner. That’s why it’s probably an excellent idea for you to go ahead and skip to the chapters ahead of your current age so you can prepare yourself and even ward off what for many is the inevitable.

Click here to read the rest of my review of The Checklist by Dr. Manny Alvarez.

A book about avoiding flour and sugar–a low-carber’s dream!

I live my life by the KISS motto–keep it simple stupid!

That’s because simplicity is the most effective way to make something as complicated as something like a healthy diet as understandable as possible to everyone who hears it. People are already confused enough from the health “experts” about how many calories they need to be eating, what kinds of foods they should be consuming, trying to figure out the proper ratio of carbohydrates, fat and protein they should be eating–somebody please make the madness of it all go away! AAAAACK!

Well, that is exactly what syndicated health columnist Dr. Peter H. Gott (”Ask Dr. Gott”) has attempted to do with his very simple, yet incredibly effective four-word diet plan and here it is: NO FLOUR, NO SUGAR! That’s it! Nothing more, nothing less. Just avoid the white flour and eliminate all forms of sugar from your diet and you will lose and maintain your weight forever and ever, amen. Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?

It’s this kind of bare minimum advice that is winning Dr. Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet enthusiastic fans the world over. For those of us who are livin’ la vida low-carb, we already know how important it is to remove flour and sugar from our diet because these are the kind of carbohydrates that are making Americans fat and unhealthy at a record pace. However, there can also be a case made for avoiding other high-carb foods like potatoes, rice, pasta, processed foods, and junk foods, too. But this is at least a good start.

If the issue of obesity were simply a matter of cosmetics, then it wouldn’t be such a crisis right now. But the sad fact that Dr. Gott points out very clearly in his book is that the resulting health problems that have come from the existence and prevalence of obesity alone is unnecessarily having an adverse impact on the quality of life of tens of millions of Americans. In fact, it is leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths annually and nobody seems to care!

As a diet and weight loss advocate myself, I was pleased to see Dr. Gott talk so openly about important elements of living healthy such as keeping a food journal, carefully reading nutritional labels, finding support from people who will help you lose weight, exercising regularly, adequately planning for your new lifestyle change, avoiding the real fad diets, staying focused on the plan, and making your new habits stick for proper weight maintenance for many years to come.

All of this is excellent advice, but…

Unfortunately, Dr. Gott doesn’t embrace livin’ la vida low-carb as a viable means for permanently losing weight and keeping it off forever because he thinks it is “potentially harmful” to eat the high amounts of protein and saturated fat from animal sources while allegedly decreasing the amount of fiber as well as fruits and veggies consumed with such an “extreme” plan like the Atkins diet. He sounds the warning bell that all of this will lead to an even bigger risk of heart disease, obesity, and maybe even cancer over the long-term.

Click here to read more of my review of Dr. Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet including my response to his absolutely ridiculous claims against low-carb diets.

Dr. Richard Jackson and Amy Tenderich give diabetics a useful tool

Lose 30 pounds. Get your blood pressure down. Lower your LDL cholesterol and triglycerides and get that HDL cholesterol up. Keep an eye on your blood sugar and have it checked often.

Does any of this sound familiar? Sure it does and you may have even heard it from your own doctor regarding your flailing health because of you are overweight or obese. It’s the dreaded lecture that comes from physicians when they see certain health indicators come back as irregular.

But what if what you are dealing with is something even more life-threatening than just a bout with obesity, hypertension, or a poor lipid profile? What if it

Dr. Dennis Gage says weight loss is more about living than dieting

THINDERELLA: Mirror, mirror on the wall, what’s the best diet of them all?
MIRROR: It’s the one you can make your permanent lifestyle change.
THINDERALLA: No, seriously, which diet can it be?
MIRROR: Don’t do a diet, live a diet. That’s the path to success.
THINDERELLA: There’s got to be more to it than that.

Are you a Thinderella thinking you can diet for a while and control your weight permanently? Hello?! It’s time to snap out of your diet dreamland and wake up to the reality that lasting, effective weight loss can only come when you not only equip yourself with the right eating plan but also a strategy for taking control of your weight for the rest of your life.

This is precisely what internist Dr. Dennis Gage helps you do in his book entitled The Thinderella Syndrome. While there are thousands of weight loss books available from A to Z these days, Dr. Gage is one of the only ones who shows people how to get past that long-term barrier to lasting weight control with a clear and conciise step-by-step plan to do it.

In my recent interview with Dr. Gage at my “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb” blog, he mentioned the biggest health problem Americans face to today is “yo-yo dieting.” It’s all a matter of keeping the same kind of intense enthusiasm and motivation AFTER your weight loss has happened as you did DURING your weight loss experience.

This involves not just the physical changes in your diet and exercise, but also some specific behavioral changes that Dr. Gage discusses at great length in his book.

Click here to read the rest of my review of The Thinderella Syndrome.

This book helps you understand the consequences of your dietary choices

Have you ever caught yourself thinking about how long it would take you to burn off a meal you had just eaten, especially one that was not very healthy? Maybe you have, maybe not. I know I have after splurging on an Apple Cinnamon Fruit Filled Pancakes meal at Denny’s. Those 1,080 calories and 106g carbohydrates I just consumed will take me over 4 1/2 hours on the treadmill to walk it off! Yikes! I think I’ll skip that meal from now on.

How did I know about this wonderful tidbit of nutritional knowledge? I owe it all to syndicated health columnist Charles Stuart Platkin and his new book The Diet Detective’s Count Down. This handy-dandy little guide to 7500 different foods provides you with a quick-reference exercise equivalent to just about any food that will cross your lips.

That’s right! No more excuses that you didn’t know a food was bad for you because you had absolutely no concept about the amount of calories you were putting in your mouth. That’s why the idea of seeing what you eat in the amount of time it would take you to burn it off is a revolutionary one. Platkin says he would love to see this information appear on restaurant menus and on nutritional labels. What a concept!

Before I lost over 180 pounds on the Atkins diet in 2004, I would regularly consume a whole box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls in one sitting! I know, I know, that was pretty stupid. But had I known at the time that I would have to shake my fat butt dancing for over 4 1/2 hours to keep those calories from turning into stored fat in my blubbery self, then I probably would have thought twice about doing that. Again, the Diet Detective as come to the rescue!

Read the rest of my review of Charles Stuart Platkin’s The Diet Detective’s Count Down by clicking here.

CARB WARS is a brand new low-carb cookbook releasing on April 1, 2007

Get ready low-carb storm troopers because a brand new low-carb cookbook is coming soon ready to arm you with lots of great low-carb information and recipes to delight anyone and everyone whether they are livin’ la vida low-carb or not.

What is the name of this masterpiece written by low-carb Jedi master queen Judy Barnes Baker? It’s called CARB WARS: Sugar Is The New Fat and the force is great with this one.

Okay, enough of the Star Wars-speak since I’m not as big a sci-fi fan as my wife Christine is. But I AM an overjoyed and enthusiastic fan of anything having to with livin’ la vida low-carb. Needless to say, I am thoroughly ecstatic about telling you about this new book.

Although it’s not going to be available until April 1st, you can PLACE YOUR PRE-ORDER NOW and pick up this fantastic 400-page book at nearly one-third off the list price. Cool deal!

I had the privilege of being one of the first people in the low-carb world to read CARB WARS while it was still a manuscript and to give Judy Barnes Baker my honest feedback about what I thought about it. It was such an honor to be amongst a limited, yet distinguished group of people who provided their thoughts and comments about the book, including the great Dr. Michael Eades and the lovely Mrs. Veronica Atkins.

Click here to read the rest of my review of CARB WARS by Judy Barnes Baker.

You can have your beer and drink it too on this “diet”

Wouldn’t it be great if you could drink unlimited amounts of beer and other alcoholic beverages (if that tickles your fancy) and STILL lose weight? Well, wake up from your dream buddy because it ain’t gonna happen.

But triple-digit weight loss success Bradley Scott Cailor will tell you how he incorporated beer into his unique “diet” in his enticing new weight loss book entitled The Beer Drinker’s “Diet”. Let me warn you ahead of time. This book is unlike any other weight loss books on the market today, but that’s a VERY good thing as you will quickly find out.

As someone who has lost nearly 200 pounds following what worked for me (the Atkins/low-carb nutritional approach), I thoroughly enjoyed reading the brutal honesty that Cailor brings to this book. While I certainly didn’t agree with everything he had to say regarding his philosophy on diet and nutrition, you certainly can’t beat the results–114 pounds GONE FOREVER! CONGRATULATIONS, Bradley!

Check out his incredible before and after photos:

Click here to read the rest of my review of this unique weight loss plan that’s not what you think it is.

Not another drab food book, Bowden highlights the very best

Eat this food, it’ll make you healthy. Oh, wait a minute, that was yesterday’s news. Actually, make sure you DON’T eat this food because it’s not as good for you as we previously thought. Don’t worry because we may change our minds again tomorrow, though, so keep checking back!

Do you find your head spinning round and round at all the relentless health claims you hear bantered about in the news just about every single day? Who among us has the time to keep up with it all? Do we really care?

While the information that comes out about the latest research on the various foods we eat can sometimes be humorous in its perplexing contradictions, the sincere desire by most people to eat right for the sake of maintaining their weight and health is certainly no laughing matter to them.

Especially for those tens of millions of Americans who suffer from health threats such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease, among other things, getting the right information about what to eat could very well mean the difference between living a few years longer or dying a tragic premature death.

This is a sobering thought that should be seriously examined by all those who are in charge of providing health information in America. Enough with all the hyperbolic innuendo every time a new study about the healthy benefits of a new food comes out!

All we want is to be told the truth about what foods are genuinely good for us, not constantly spoon-fed more of the same old mumbo jumbo garbage science we often hear from the plethora of company-financed studies from those who have a vested interest in a specific outcome. There’s a reason why they pour millions of dollars into this supposedly impartial undertakings–profits at the hands of the public’s ignorance!

Can’t somebody (ANYBODY!) just come up with an unbiased and reliable resource for solid nutritional information that the average person can use to determine what they should be eating for optimum health with no pretenses, just the unadulterated truth?!

Well, that resource is finally here thanks to weight loss coach and nutrition expert Dr. Jonny Bowden who has penned his most brilliant worked to date entitled The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth About What You Should Eat and Why.

While the title may fool many people into believing this is just one big yawner of an encyclopedia-type book about food, don’t be disillusioned because it is so much more than that. Bowden writes with such a personal flair for what he does borne out of his sincere passion for healthy living that he even makes discussing complex nutritional terms like flavanoids, antioxidants, and phytochemicals sound cool.

Read the rest of my review of Dr. Jonny Bowden’s latest book by clicking here.