Food Rules for Weight Loss

The number one bestseller on Amazon right now is Food Rules
by Michael Pollan. It's a slim paperback and costs just $5.00

Here's one review from Amazon;

This book cuts through all the garbage health information out there and gets back to real food and real nutrition. The format is simple and so is the message: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Our growing habit of eating packaged, processed foods has an impact on our bodies, our minds, and our planet, and Pollan outlines these while offering straightforward suggestions for getting real food back on the table. Great book.

The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone

Celebrity Alicia Silverstone, age 33, is a vegan and has written a book about her way of eating; The Kind Diet.

Here's the description on Amazon;

In The Kind Diet, actress, activist, and committed conservationist Alicia Silverstone shares the insights that encouraged her to swear off meat and dairy forever, and outlines the spectacular benefits of adopting a plant-based diet, from effortless weight loss to clear skin, off-the-chart energy, and smooth digestion. She explains how meat, fish, milk, and cheese—the very foods we’ve been taught to regard as the cornerstone of good nutrition—are actually the culprits behind escalating rates of disease and the cause of dire, potentially permanent damage to our ecology.

Yet going meat- and dairy-free doesn’t mean suffering deprivation; to the contrary, The Kind Diet introduces irresistibly delicious food that satisfies on every level—it even includes amazing desserts to keep the most stubborn sweet tooth happy. Alicia also addresses the nutritional concerns faced by many who are new to a plant-based diet, and shows how to cover every nutritional base, from protein to calcium and beyond.

Alicia knows that changing life-long dietary habits is a process, and that each person progresses at a different pace. For that reason, The Kind Diet encompasses 3 separate levels, from Flirting to Superhero. Flirts learn to dip a toe into the vegan pool, reducing their meat-eating and swapping out a few key foods for plant-based substitutes to see quickly how even small changes can reap big results. Vegans get to experience the life-altering effects of forgoing animal-products entirely, while still enjoying many convenience foods and meat substitutes in addition to the wonderful grains, vegetables and fruits that form the core of that diet. True enlightenment comes with the Superhero program, based on the principles of macrobiotics and built on a foundation of whole grains, vegetables, and other yummy foods that Alicia describes in detail.

Whether your goal is to drop a few pounds, boost your energy and metabolism, or simply save the world, Alicia provides the encouragement, the information, and the tools you need to make the transition to a plant-based diet deliciously empowering.

See the video below for an intro by Alicia;



This second video gives more detailed information about her book;

Losing 2 Pounds a Week

Here's a before photo of Max. He is 17 years old and has been overweight for many years. Last year he changed his lifestyle and lost the excess weight gradually. He lost an average of two pounds a week and went from 212 pounds to his current 160 pounds. See his photo at a fit 160 pounds and his story here.

Losing the Belly

Max made the decision to lose some weight a few weeks ago. He has two toddlers and found it really hard to find time for exercise. But he's managed to do it and his belt size has already gone from 38 to 34.

See his story here.

The Best Diet for 2010?

Mirror mirror on the wall, what is the best diet of them all?

The Daily Beast has done a statistical analysis of the top 10 diets where clinical results are available and have ranked these diets in order of effectiveness. See their slideshow of the 10 best diets.

You may be surprised to hear that the #1 most effective diet is not Jenny Craig, not Weight Watchers or Atkins. It may be one you've never heard of. It's called Volumetrics.

This diet focuses on eating lots of foods which have a high water content. This means lots and lots of vegetables and soups.

With Volumetrics you can literally eat many pounds of food each day. What I had for dinner last night would be a good example. I was eating alone, so I steamed a big bunch of kale, then added a a can of broccoli soup (250 calories) to give it more taste. This was really nice as was, and I had two huge bowls of it (with a calorie total of probably less than 350?).

(Since some of you may consider this a bit too granola head overboard, i'll just add as a sidenote that in my case i also mixed in a couple of tablespoons of nutritional yeast (which is one of the most nutritious foods, and is quite a bit more tasty than Brewer's yeast. It has tons of protein and B Vitamins).

Check out the The Volumetrics book on Amazon. It sells for $6.99

The WiFi Scale

Here's a neat idea for a weight scale. It's the first WiFi scale that connects to the internet to automatically register your weight, fat and BMI calculations.

We first heard about it via a Leo Laporte podcast. He was very impressed with it and has attached it to his tweets on Twitter so that each morning when he steps on the scale, an automatic tweet goes out about his current weight.

The scale is rated five star on Amazon, but it's not cheap at $159. See it here Withings WiFi Body Scale at Amazon.