Books, books, and more books! I got ‘em coming out of my ears for the Summer of 2010, so I’m doing this special series of reviews of the newest and best low-carb, health, and nutrition books that you may want to take a closer look at. Many of the authors of the featured books are scheduled to be guests on my podcast show in the coming months. My goal is to try to feature at least one new book review a day, every day all summer long. There’s a lot of great stuff out there you need to know about and I can’t wait for you to see what all is available! ENJOY!

It’s obvious to anyone who has been paying attention over the past few decades that the direction of our overall health in the United States is rapidly DECLINING with seemingly no end in sight. Obesity, diabetes, cancer, and death are all increasing at astronomical rates that make you wonder what in the world is going on that our proverbial house is on fire and nothing effective is being done about it. If the problem is really that serious, then shouldn’t every solution be brought to the table in order to properly tackle this issue head-on? That’s precisely the question that health writer Alan Watson seeks to answer in his explosive and humorously-titled book Cereal Killer: The Unintended Consequences of the Low Fat Diet.

Click here to read the rest of my review of Cereal Killer by Alan Watson.

Books, books, and more books! I got ‘em coming out of my ears for the Summer of 2010, so I’m doing this special series of reviews of the newest and best low-carb, health, and nutrition books that you may want to take a closer look at. Many of the authors of the featured books are scheduled to be guests on my podcast show in the coming months. My goal is to try to feature at least one new book review a day, every day all summer long. There’s a lot of great stuff out there you need to know about and I can’t wait for you to see what all is available! ENJOY!

The alarming rate of diabetes growth over the past two decades alone has quite literally become an international health epidemic in 21st Century society. As the numbers have continued to rise and rise while blood sugar disorders have become much more common than ever before, the health experts have attempted to put on their thinking caps to come up with a solution that will help people suffering with diabetes have the ability to beat this problem once and for all. So far, there have been no cures found. What we need are people who can come up with solutions to this monstrosity of a disease and Dan Hurley has attempted to do just that with the release of his book Diabetes Rising: How a Rare Disease Became a Modern Pandemic, and What to Do About It.

Click here to read the rest of my review of Diabetes Rising by Dan Hurley.

Books, books, and more books! I got ‘em coming out of my ears for the Summer of 2010, so I’m doing this special series of reviews of the newest and best low-carb, health, and nutrition books that you may want to take a closer look at. Many of the authors of the featured books are scheduled to be guests on my podcast show in the coming months. My goal is to try to feature at least one new book review a day, every day all summer long. There’s a lot of great stuff out there you need to know about and I can’t wait for you to see what all is available! ENJOY!

She is the reigning queen of low-carb cuisine and for good reason–Dana Carpender knows her stuff when it comes to easily making a carbohydrate-restricted eating plan a part of a normal, everyday way of life. While the media and health pundits choose to denigrate low-carbohydrate nutrition for whatever their reasons, people like Dana just keep living by example and sharing with the world the knowledge and experience she has attained as a decade-plus low-carb veteran. And more than anything else, she recognizes that people need help keeping track of their carbohydrate and calorie intake which is why she’s released Dana Carpender’s NEW Carb & Calorie Counter-Expanded, Revised, and Updated 4th Edition: Your Complete Guide to Total Carbs, Net Carbs, Calories, and More.

Click here to read the rest of my review of Dana Carpender’s NEW Carb & Calorie Counter by Dana Carpender.

Books, books, and more books! I got ‘em coming out of my ears for the Summer of 2010, so I’m doing this special series of reviews of the newest and best low-carb, health, and nutrition books that you may want to take a closer look at. Many of the authors of the featured books are scheduled to be guests on my podcast show in the coming months. My goal is to try to feature at least one new book review a day, every day all summer long. There’s a lot of great stuff out there you need to know about and I can’t wait for you to see what all is available! ENJOY!

If you’ve been paying attention at all to the subject of diet and health over the past few years, then there’s no doubt you’ve heard of the name Michael Pollan. A trained journalist, he’s transitioned from reporting on the story to BECOMING the story with his highly-influential New York Times bestselling books The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food as well as a major appearance in the critically-acclaimed film on the state of our food supply in America called Food, Inc.. Yes, Pollan has been a busy man and he’s doing great work educating the public about what healthy eating is all about. While most people tend to make their diet more complicated than it needs to be, the reality is it’s rather elementary if you stick with a few basic principles to guide your daily decisions. That’s the concept behind Pollan’s latest offering called Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.

Click here to read the rest of my review of Food Rules by Michael Pollan.

All the talk of the Internet for the past month has been centered around a brand new sandwich introduced at a popular fast food restaurant chain that features two pieces of chicken, bacon, cheese, and sauce. The media has predictably been scoffing at the fat content of the new “Double Down” sandwich from KFC, but low-carb forums like mine have had people asking whether this would be an acceptable food to eat when you are livin’ la vida low-carb. My low-carb blogging buddy Tom Naughton “Doubled Down And Lived To Tell” and I have literally received nearly 100 requests from my YouTube channel subscribers to do a review. So when Christine and I received coupons for a FREE “Double Down” in our e-mail box, we decided the time was right to head on down to our local KFC to see what all the fuss was about.

In Episode 88 of “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb On YouTube”, we tasted the “Double Down” for ourselves on camera while sharing about the nutritional information on camera. Interestingly, despite all the negative press this sandwich without the bread has received, I was pleased to see some responsible journalists exposing the hypocrisy of the feigned outrage. This was my favorite line from Katharine Shilcutt’s Houston Press column: “So it’s a sandwich that doesn’t have any buns. Good for the Double Down! It simply replaced all that sugar and starch and overprocessed “flour” with a bunch of protein…It’s closer to actual “real” food than those buns were.” WOW! You gotta love it when you see quality writing like that coming out of the mainstream.

Click here to learn more and to watch our 10-minute YouTube video review of the new KFC “Double Down” sandwich!

Drs. Mike and Mary Dan Eades have armed frustrated low-carbers with a plan!

For those of us who have been livin’ la vida low-carb for years, the temptation is always there to allow a few more carbs and/or calories slip into our diet than we did when we originally followed our chosen controlled-carbohydrate plan. It’s perfectly within human nature for this to happen for those who desire variety in their menu choices while still attempting to eating in a healthy high-fat, adequate protein, and low-carb way. Low-carb diet experts and bestselling authors Drs. Mike and Mary Dan Eades know about this all too well.

After shooting a pilot episode of their hit low-carb television cooking program called “Low-Carb Cookworx,” the producer of the show told the honest truth to Dr. Mike and Dr. Mary Dan about their major problem — you’re “too fat” for a health-related television show! Shocked by this revelation from an outsider of their condition at the time, this caused the well-known low-carb authors of the bestselling Protein Power books to reevaluate their own personal dietary habits, devise a plan for ridding their bodies of a little excess weight that had come on them, and make it happen as quickly as possible. Thus was born the concepts for what would become The 6-Week Cure For The Middle-Aged Middle: The Simple Plan to Flatten Your Belly Fast!.

While the Eades are abundantly aware of the long-term, lifestyle change approach to losing weight the low-carb way, they admit that sometimes there are compelling reasons to take the weight off a little faster as in the case of their TV show, an upcoming wedding, or some other significant life event that is coming. That’s exactly what this book offers in just a 6-week period. And the plan is PERFECT for both the people who have been low-carbing for years or for the newbie low-carber alike. This is a great way to kickstart your low-carb lifestyle into high gear.

So what do you have to do for 6 weeks, starve to death? Not hardly!

The first two weeks is a period where you release the toxins in your liver — the organ most responsible for helping you get rid of the visceral fat stores in your body. This is the fat that accumulates around your organs that can be dangerous if left unchecked. Using a proven 3 and 1 plan drinking a trio of specially-formulated protein shakes along with one meal (the delicious recipes are included in this book) along with certain restrictions on alcohol, caffeine, medications, and other interesting requirements (like donating blood?), you only have to stay in this phase for two weeks. Anybody can do this for a measly fourteen days!

The second two weeks when your liver is cleaned up and ready to help you burn off a ton of stored body fat, you get to enjoy what the Eades affectionately call the “Meat Weeks.” Your meals will consist primarily of meat, fish, poultry, game, and eggs consumed throughout the day in quantities enough to keep your hunger at bay. What most people will find is the fat and protein content of these foods will keep them PLENTY satisfied.

Lest you think you’ll need to opt for the “lean” cuts of meat like chicken or turkey — NOPE! In fact, fat is ENCOURAGED, including liberal amounts of butter, olive oil, avocado oil, and macadamia nut oil, just to name a few. This will allow your body to rev up your metabolism by switching from being a carb-burning machine to a high-octane fat-burning one instead by reducing the typical insulin rush seen by most carb-focused dieters. Vroom vroom!

Finally, the last two-week period of The 6-Week Cure For The Middle-Aged Middle should look very familiar to people who have read the Protein Power books or followed any number of low-carb plans like Atkins. After getting your body going with a month-long restoration and revitalization, the Eades turn your attention to establishing good long-term healthy eating patterns into your lifestyle so you can prevent the dreaded weight gain from happening to you again. That includes keeping total carbohydrates in check, limiting your consumption of starchy carbs as much as possible, and transitioning to a low-carb maintenance phase.

If trouble ever arises again, you just get right back on the plan again getting back to the basics of what it takes to lose the weight again. Don’t be discouraged because we’ve all been there before. NEVER GIVE UP!

We owe Drs. Mike and Mary Dan Eades a huge THANK YOU for the tireless efforts they invest in helping people who are livin’ la vida low-carb day in and day out with the work they are doing. I consider it an honor and a privilege to know them as friends, be continually educated by their nutritional wisdom, and to follow their example of humility and selflessness towards others in this journey to better health. You owe it to yourself to pick up several copies of The 6-Week Cure For The Middle-Aged Middle and give it to as many friends and family members that you can think of who feel frustrated by the failure of the low-fat dogma that has dominated American culture for decades.

The tide is turning because the truth about low-carb living is finally penetrating the minds of health-conscious people. Will you become the next to join the low-carb revolution that is taking America by storm?

LISTEN TO MY PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH THE EADES ABOUT THIS BOOK!

Finding a book about diet and health these days isn’t difficult at all. Just go to Barnes & Noble or Amazon and you’ll see title after title after title of people trying to tell you what you need to do to lose the pounds and get the body you’ve always dreamed of! Lemme tell you, no such book exists that can deliver on that, so you better not expect it from any book you ever read. You’ll be in for a great disappointment.

But one thing books can help you do is look at your own personal weight problem and overall health to see if there are principles that can help you along in your own journey. I honestly believe most authors of these diet and health books truly feel they have some kind of positive message to share with their readers or they wouldn’t have bothered spending months or even years of their life writing them.

When I wrote my debut book Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb: My Journey From Flabby Fat To Sensationally Skinny In One Year in 2005, my intention wasn’t to try to come up with some grand new diet that nobody had ever heard of yet to bring earth-shattering revelations to the public. As if! Nope, I simply wanted to share my low-carb success story in a fun, engaging, and entertaining as well as educating way that would give people the hope they needed to have so that they too could change their life forever like I did.

For the nearly 10,000 people who have purchased my first book so far, my goal was to leave them with a clear uplifting and encouraging message. It will ALWAYS be my aim when I write a book (and I’m working on one right now with a couple of more ideas for future books germinating in my head!) to motivate, encourage, educate and inspire all those who read it. That’s what a GOOD diet and health book SHOULD be all about.

I’ve blogged about new diet and health books that I’ve read before and now I’ve got a collection of 25 more invigorating ones to share with you today. I thought you’d like to see what I thought about each of these books that have something to do with food, diet, health, low-carb, or cooking in some form or fashion. I liked most of these books and I think you should take a second look at them for yourself!

Click here to access these 25 new diet and health books, including several that are explicitly low-carb in nature even if the title doesn’t suggest it. ENJOY!

I don’t know about you, but ever since I started livin’ la vida low-carb I’ve had such an unprecedented hunger and thirst for information about nutrition, fitness, diet and health like never before in my life with any other subject. Even when I was studying government and politics in college and graduate school, I never felt THIS excited about reading so many books and resources. It’s an educational awakening that I think most low-carbers go through because of the enlightenment we see happening to our own weight and health.

To that end, I’m always happy to share with you some of the most current and not-so-current books I have come across and read while studying this fascinating subject. But, as will often be the case, the books do tend to pile up on me a bit, so today I’m gonna highlight 15 new and essential books about diet and health that I’ve been reading lately along with a few comments about each one.

Keep in mind that not all of these “diet” books are explicitly low-carb friendly, but that’s okay since I think we can still find merit in the experiences shared by the authors of those books (even if we have to hold our noses with some of their “expert” opinions). Likewise, several of these books will have you stand up and cheer because they quite clearly espouse the basic tenets of a healthy low-carb lifestyle.

Click here to see my reviews of these 15 new and popular diet and health books.

Dietitian Tanya Zuckerbrot says eat your fiber, but don’t cut out foods

There’s not a doubt in my mind how healthy consuming fiber is as part of my healthy low-carb lifestyle. When I lost 180 pounds on the Atkins diet in 2004, my adequate consumption of delicious sources of fiber was a major part of my success. For people who complain about constipation on low-carb, there’s no better cure than big gulps of water and enough fiber to allow your bowel to shake, rattle and roll!

With high-fiber low-carb foods such as coconut flour, ChocoPerfection chocolate bars, NexGen low-carb muffins, Konjac brand shirataki noodles, GoLower nut bars, and Atkins Advantage bars, there’s no reason why anyone who is livin’ la vida low-carb can’t get PLENTY of fiber in their diet.

The subject of fiber is somewhat controversial within the low-carb community, but I am convinced fiber is an excellent addition to your diet especially during weight loss. That’s why I was attracted to and intrigued by a new diet book centered around fiber consumption. It’s called The F-Factor Diet: Discover the Secret to Permanent Weight Loss.

Oooh, the “secret to permanent weight loss” is certainly a compelling a bold claim to make. But nutritionist Tanya Zuckerbrot is convinced she can confidently back up that claim made by her book with the principles she shares in it. And I must say, some of what she writes about is right in line with what I personally believe regarding a healthy weight loss diet. Unfortunately, some is not.

Click here to read the rest of my review of The F-Factor Diet by Tanya Zuckerbrot.

Basing a diet on the glycemic index sounds good, but is it?

It’s interesting to see how many diet books have come out in recent years taking portions of the wildly popular Atkins diet and tried to transform them into nicely packaged “new” diets. Sadly, most of these so-called diets greatly miss the mark of the masterpiece of the original.

Such is the case with Rick Gallop and his series of books on The G.I.Diet. It’s an interesting concept that Gallop has capitalized on selling millions of his little books. But is the information he provides useful to people who are livin’ la vida low-carb? Let’s examine his latest book to find out.

It’s called The G.I. Diet Express: For Busy People and is aimed to reach the active dieter. Isn’t that ALL of us who are attempting to lose weight? Yep and Gallop knows that, too!

Looking at the “diet in a nutshell” outlined in this book, Gallop explains what the glycemic index is since most Americans haven’t really caught on to it yet. It’s all about the impact of foods on blood sugar and to choose foods that will slowly digest to prevent your body from making too much insulin which can lead to diabetes.

Here’s a key point to remember: All low-carb foods are also low-G.I. foods, but not all low-G.I. foods are low-carb. This is too important to be overlooked as you delve deeper into this new diet. The ratio of carbohydrates/protein/fat is 50/40/10. Yikes!

Click here to see why this G.I. Diet is nothing more than a high-carb food lovin’, saturated fat hatin’, low-fat and low-cal diet that closely resembles the failed Food Pyramid that we’ve been forced to endure for decades!