Review of It Must Be My Metabolism (Paperback)

I found this book incredibly helpful for I finally understand why the fad diets just don't work.This book is not just another diet book nor is it a weight loss book; so don't expect to find weight loss tricks here and there. I have used this book as part of the program offered at the Doctor's center in Connecticut. For the first time in my life I am losing weight while I am eating plenty of healthy foods. I feel satisfied, calm, and much happier, plus I am exercising and enjoying it too! I feel great and have more energy than ever. The best part is that my health has dramatically improved.Finally, I am learning that it is not about dieting as much as it is about my lifestyle that needs to change to maintain good health.

I personally found the discussion of how stress and fad dieting can cause weight gain very insightful. The book also has excellent and easy to read chapters on metabolic syndrome, a pre-diabetes state that causes heart disease and full blown diabetes if not reversed. The recipes, meal plan and the six-month clinical program in part II of the book are the same as the plan I have followed at Dr. Yavari's center. I recommend this great book to anyone who is tired of fad diets and is interested in living a healthy lifestyle while preventing diabetes


Product Description

A comprehensive plan to help you combat metabolic syndrome, lose weight, and restore overall health


First recognized by the World Health Organization in 1998, metabolic syndrome has become one of the hottest topics in health care. A collection of seemingly unrelated medical disorders, metabolic syndrome includes heart disease, excess abdominal fat, sleep problems, infertility, insulin resistance and full-fledged diabetes. When combined, these disorders pose a serious


health risk that doctors and consumers are increasingly aware of. It Must Be My Metabolism shows readers, step-by-step, how to make the changes necessary to lose the "apple" shape that so often comes at midlife, and regain both a youthful figure and better health.



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Review of Judaism and Vegetarianism (Paperback)

I have read this book thoroughly, and I think it is the most informative, most complete and most readable book about vegetarianism I have ever read. The book is very well structured, the information given is presented clearly and is up to date. Since I am a vegan, I have paid extra attention to what is being said about veganism, and I found the author is objective, accurate and gives sound advice. The B12 issue is dealt with in a responsible manner and I think it is very wise to present the transition to vegetarianism and from there to veganism as a process of growth, where every step counts. The author gives many practical suggestions on how to make changes in your lifestyle without losing touch with family or friends and manages to be firm and friendly at the same time. These things alone make the book a purchase well worth the investment. For me, however, the particular merit of the book lies in the spiritual values that have inspired it. Reading the book from a non-Jewish perspective, what struck me most was that the author has chosen focal points which are relevant to people from all kinds of different backgrounds, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and people who are not religious in the 'traditional' sense. In short, all those who are concerned about the way we relate to our environment from a spiritual point of view. The first focal point is that ethical considerations are more important than habit, convenience, or tradition, and the second is that there will be a price to pay if we chose to ignore the ethical imperative to change our ways. There are many books explaining why it is better for your body to become a vegetarian; there are not many books explaining why it is better for your soul. Richard Schwartz makes the reader see how the themes of inclusion and compassion towards animals are woven all through the Torah. Having read theology at a fairly orthodox Christian college, I have often heard the argument that `since Man was created in the image of God, he was given dominion over all creation' as an excuse for the maltreatment of animals and their reduction to `meat-producing units'. Guided by Richard Schwartz, we are shown that according to the Torah both man and beast are creatures of God, and that our being created in the image of God is not a given, but rather a potential; something to be brought into manifestation by following the pattern God has laid out for us, and that one of the qualities we must manifest is compassion. Instead of feeling very proud of ourselves and thinking that we are like God already, we should realise that we are asked to imitate God in love and concern for all living beings. Instead of 'dominion' we should read 'compassionate stewardship', and that is something else entirely. From the idea of our potential for goodness and compassion, the theme of responsibility is developed. The author shows us how we are responsible, in the sense of being accountable for the wrongs we do not try to stop. By means of the voice of Amos and other prophets he poignantly asks how we can be content and comfortable while others are in great distress, humans or non-humans. I feel that now Europe has recently been plagued by BSE and foot-and-mouth disease, and we have watched the horrors of what is happening every night on television, this question is more pressing than ever. How are we to answer for these things? That is one side of responsibility. The other side is that human beings are called to do justice, to liberate the oppressed, to care for every living being and that it is the way we act in this world, the choices we make and the goals we chose, which form our answer, our response, to God. For me, our human capacity to answer to this call is the basis of faith in a better future for all beings and Richard Schwartz's book has given me every reason not to give up believing. Human beings have the potential to be compassionate and just, and they can learn how to express these qualities. And they will learn more willingly if they are given the facts about oppression and hunger and are shown ways how to change. This is exactly what Richard Schwartz has done. Like the good teacher he is, he shows people what their calling is, where they go wrong, and what they can do to change for the better. This calling is not just for Jews; many people feel that they have a responsibility for the planet and for all that lives there; they just don't know what exactly is going wrong and how to make it better. By enumerating the facts, by showing the consequences of present practices, and by showing the way out, Richard Schwartz makes a very strong case for the vegetarian imperative, no matter what the reader's religion is. I sincerely recommend the book.



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Review of The Fat to Muscle Diet (Paperback)

I first saw this diet in " Ladies Home Journal" back in 1989ish.
It had a page size color chart to figure your fat index, which the paperback book lacks.
I used this diet back in 1992 and lost 48 pounds. However, during the holidays over the years, the weight crept back.
Now my wife and I are both on this diet and in the first two weeks, I have lost:
14 pounds
2 inches in the hips
3 inches in the waist
1 1/2 inches across the breast
My wife keeps her weight secret, even after 14 years of marriage, but she has lost 4 inches in the waist, 3 inches in the hips, and 2 inches across the breasts, in our first two weeks. HINT: Buy a scale with a memory!
I would say the diet still works. In addition, I don't feel any hunger pangs between meals.
The exercise is important, but drinking 64 oz of water each day is more important, to wash out those fatty acids that accumulate from burning your stored up fat. DON'T WAIT until you are thirsty, start with water before the first cup of coffee.
There is no mention of increasing your water intake after drinking caffeinated drinks, that in hot weather would leave you dehydrated. The typical rule is to drink 2 times the amount of water for each amount of caffienated diet soda. Apparently, the fluid intake and outgo with 64 ounces of any liquid is enough to flush the system.
Our sample supper meal for one person:
Fruit: 4 oz high pulp Orange juice
1 Vege: 2 cups salad mix with 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar dressing
Protein; 1 Vege; 2 starch & 1/2 dairy:
2 yellow no fat tortillos
1/2 can no fat refried beans
1/2 can diced tomatoes with green chillies
grated cheese on top
Heated in microwave 2 1/2 minutes. Magnifique!
I whole heartedly recommend this diet. DON"T FORGET to exercise at least 30 minutes every other day. Walk, spade your garden, put up stuff upstairs or like I'm doing this morning...unloading 20 sacks of humas, 40 pounds each, which I found last night @ 49 cents each.

Product Description
A longtime backlist staple still going strong, The Fat-to-Muscle Diet shows readers how to transform their metabolism and go from flabby to firm-to get out of the dastardly dieting cycle.

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Review of The Great American Detox Diet: 8 Weeks to Weight Loss and Well-Being (Hardcover)

I found "Supersize Me" to be one of the great documentaries (of sorts) in quite a while, not the least of which was the healthy dose of irony in that the girlfriend of star Morgan Spurlock, Alex Jamieson, was a vegan chef witnessing this diet he went on.

Well, the movie's a huge success, Morgan and to a lesser extent Alex are mild celebrities, and they both took the time to write books.Admittedly, this wreaks of commercialism, but remarkably both turned out good pieces, Spurlock's a companion to "Supersize Me", and Jamieson's revolving around the "Detox Diet" that she put Spurlock on after his month of McDonald's.

The book essentially is broken into three parts-- the first part is sort of introductory/background material-- Jamieson describes her journey from confessed junk food nut to vegan/health maven.It makes for an interesting read, but I felt the level of repetition (and endless reinfocement about processed sugar, etc.) that get to be kind of a drag.

The second part is the "detox diet"-- a week by week transition plan for abandoning the many processed and chemical additives that are throughout our food.

The third part is a series of healthy vegan recipes, some of which look quite interesting, and while I've used none of them, I've stolen a couple ideas for my own cooking.

My thoughts on this-- before I go further, I'm not a vegan, nor am I likely to become one anytime soon, but I derived a lot of value in this book, in particular from its advice in reading food labels and what's missing from them, and its advice in checking ALL food labels-- for example, we all know High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is a corn-based sugar syrup (and at least some of us know that the body doesn't seem to register it as consumed calories and so hunger isn't effected which is why many folks can down ten cans of soda and still eat a full meal-- but if you didn't know that, Jamieson points it out to you).But what I don't think I knew is how prevelent it is-- on advice from the book, I read labels of seemingly innocent product-- bread.In my local grocery store I read about two dozen bread variety labels, and most of them (including a number advertized as "whole grain" and "multigrain" and "healthy") contained HFCS.In fact, I STOPPED looking when I found one that didn't have HFCS.And that scares me.

She also spends a lot of time talking about the flour enriching process, oil processing, water chemical additives, and so on-- I found all of this quite valuable in its own way as well, and armed with this knowledge, I made some subtle changes in my purchasing habits.

Mind you, Jamieson also recommends against plastic, I don't suspect I'd ever purge my life of plastic, and against caffeine, another thing I don't particularly want to go without (while I can and have gone weeks without my morning coffee, I enjoy the taste and decaf never tastes right to me).But its certainly all worthwhile to read, the more knowledge you have, the better.

One thing to point out-- adhering to the changes wholesale she advocates would get rather expensive-- there's a reason HFCS is all over the place, its cheap.This is true of all sorts of things from enriched flours to hydronated oils.While I'm certainly not hurting for cash, I think it'd be a bit too much of an impact on me financially to move in this direction.One other thing is that Jamieson recommends a wholesale purge of your diet of negative substances while overlooking that a number of people love this kind of stuff.I'm not advocating any behavior, but I know personally that when I restructured my diet about a year and a half ago, I still had to make room for the occasional deep fried takeout order to keep myself sane.

The recipes like I said look very interesting-- I haven't tried anything (yet), but I may, and like any good recipe book, there's a lot of worth-stealing suggestions in here.

Its a good book, packed with information, and well worth the read.Recommended.



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