Healthy Diet

            New Year, new diet books. Here are some recently published ones.

            The Economists’ Diet: The Surprising Formula for Losing Weight and Keeping It Off is written by Christopher Payne and Rob Barnett. They are two economists who met while working at Bloomberg, both were formerly obese. They modified their diets using behavioral techniques based on economic principles. Their recommendations include weighing yourself every day, being calorie conscious but not a calorie counter, occasionally splurging, limiting variety, and more.

            Brain-Powered Weight Loss: The 11-Step Behavior-Based Plan that Ends Overeating and Leads to Dropping Unwanted Pounds for Good is written by Eliza Kingsford, a licensed psychotherapist specializing in weight management, food addiction, and eating disorders. Her goal is to show the reader how to modify high-risk situations, cope with stress, and prevent a slip from continuing to a setback or binge. Learn how to overcome your addiction to fatty, sugary, and salty foods.

            The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection is written by science journalist Scott C. Anderson, and medical researchers John F. Cryan and Ted Dinan. They explain how a healthy gut can manage depression and anxiety, by adjusting your intestinal bacteria. The typical American diet, often highly processed and rich in sugar and white flour, is very unhealthy for the body’s microbiota. It also is blamed for causing such illnesses as Crohn’s Disease and diabetes.

            Diet Right for Your Personality Type: The Revolutionary 4-Week Weight-Loss Plan that Works for You is written by health and fitness trainer Jennifer Wlderstrom, featured in NBC’s The Biggest Loser. She describes the requirements for the five personality types and presents a four-week diet and exercise plan for each. Recipes are included.

            Food Can Fix It: The Superfood Switch to Fight Fat, Defy Aging, and Eat Your Way Healthy is written by Dr. Mehmet Oz, well-known television host and health book author. He presents a 21-day weight loss jumpstart plan, and includes healthy recipes accompanied by full-color photographs. Learn to fix problems such as fatigue, pain, bad moods, run-down immunity, and more.

Healthy Living: New Books to Promote Wellness

            Proactive advice to maintaining your health is available at the library. Here are some new books that can help.

George Demirakos is the author of Fix My Knee: A Guide to Preventing and Healing from Injury and Strain. He is a licensed physical therapist who has worked with Canadian professional hockey, tennis, and Olympic teams. Demirakos explains how the knee works, why your knee is at risk for injury, and the different types of knee injuries. Then he discusses different techniques that help such as acupuncture, yoga, Pilates, cortisone injections, and more. Strengthening exercises, accompanied by photographs, are included.

You Are Getting Sleepy: Lifestyle-Based Solutions for Insomnia provides techniques based on research to induce sleepiness. To aid with this, authors Paul Glovinsky and Arthur Spielman discuss changes to make to your daily routines and show you how to use cognitive behavioral treatments. They also instruct on managing anxiety, depression, an out-of-sync biological clock, and dependence on sleep aids in order to lessen insomnia.

The Diabetes Carbohydrate & Fat Gram Guide, 5^th edition, is a concise guide to preventing or delaying the complications of diabetes. The reader learns how to plan meals using carbohydrate counting, calorie counting, and food lists as published by the American Diabetes Association. The main part of the book consists of nutrient tables that include the amount of carbohydrates, sodium, sugar, fiber, protein, and fats from a wide variety of foods, along with calorie counts and serving sizes. 

Take Charge of Your Diabetes: November is American Diabetes Month

            29.1 million Americans have diabetes, but 8.1 million more may be undiagnosed. Learn all you can about this disease by reading these books.

            Reverse Your Diabetes in 12 Weeks: The Scientifically Proven Program to Avoid, Control, and Turn around Your Diabetes is written by George L. King, M.D, the chief science officer at Harvard’s Joslin Diabetes Center. He presents the eight proven strategies, which include a modified rural Asian diet deriving seventy percent of its calories from carbohydrates, a five to seven percent reduction in body weight, exercise, reducing stress, using your body’s brown fat, getting at least seven hours of sleep per night, and more.  

            Your Type 2 Diabetes Action Plan: Tips, Techniques, and Practical Advice for Living Well with Diabetes, is a publication of the American Diabetes Association, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to simplifying diabetes management, since 1940. The book includes information on improving glucose management, optimizing medication, designing an exercise program, creating a nutritious meal plan, coping with complications, and other beneficial material.

            Diabetes Meal Planning Made Easy, 5^th Edition, provides the diabetic reader with updated information on revised food groups and updated food lists. The author is Hope S. Warshaw, who is an expert on health and meal planning with diabetes who has written many other books on this topic.

            The Perfect Diabetes Comfort Food Collection: 9 Essential Recipes You Need to Create 90 Amazing Complete Meals, is written by Robyn Webb, the food editor of Diabetes Forecast and the author of 14 cookbooks. This book contains more than ninety recipes based on variations of nine cooking techniques, along with one hundred classic side dish recipes to accompany them.

New Year"s Resolutions: Diet & Nutrition

            New Year, new resolutions! Or, you can begin your self-improvement program any time of year! Here are some recently published books to help you out.

            The Change Your Biology Diet: the Proven Program for Lifelong Weight Loss, written by Dr. Louis J. Aronne, is his life-changing program and diet plan to effectively overcome addictions to sugar, fat, and salt, and achieve permanent weight loss, through adjustments to one’s metabolism.

            The American Cancer Society New Healthy Eating Cookbook, 3^rd edition is written by Jeanne Besser, a former food columnist and author of several cookbooks. This is a compilation of recipes for healthy eating that also include substitution suggestions, kitchen tips, shopping ideas, and advice on portion sizes.

            The Big Five: Five Simple Things You Can Do to Live a Longer, Healthier Life, is written by Sanjiv Chopra, the former Faculty Dean of Continuing Education at Harvard Medical School. He expands upon these five things which include drinking coffee, exercising regularly, adding nuts to a diet, getting Vitamin C and practicing meditation.

            Eat Right for Your Type: the Individualized Diet Solution is written by Peter D’Adamo. This is a revision of his earlier works and includes cutting-edge research. There is more guidance on weight loss, information on the latest diet trends, examination of healthy microbiomes, and a ten-day jump-start diet.

            The Mindspan Diet: Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk, Minimize Memory Loss, and Keep Your Brain Young is written by Preston Estep, a Harvard University geneticist. The book is based on research done on long living populations with the lowest levels of dementia. The author recommends important dietary changes to protect cognitive functions; fifty recipes are included.

            The Love Diet: a Personalized, Proven Program that Changes the Way You Feel to Transform the Way You Look is written by Dr. Connie Guttersen and Dr. Mark Dedomenico of the 20/20 Lifestyles Clinic, a medically based weight loss clinic. They hypothesize that self-doubt, self-loathing, and low self-esteem are the reasons for destructive eating habits, and present their seven-stage diet program to promote permanent change through emotional reinforcement and healthy meals.

            Food Freedom Forever: Letting Go of Bad Habits, Guilt, and Anxiety around Food is written by Melissa Hartwig, a nutritionist. She shares advice on how to improve energy and health while letting go of negative food habits, outlining a three-part plan for long-term control and recovery from restriction breaks taken during the holidays, vacations, and times of stress.

Fit and Healthy for the New Year

            January 1^st is around the corner! After the overindulgences of this holiday season, we’ll all be ready for our resolution to be fit and healthy for the New Year. Here are some books to help you plan your course.

            Eat Clean, Stay Lean: 300 Real Foods and Recipes for Lifelong Health and Lasting Weight Loss is a publication written by registered dietitian Wendy Bazilian and the editors of Prevention magazine. The reader is introduced to the basics and benefits of clean eating with whole foods like fresh fruits, vegetables, unprocessed meats and fish, and unrefined grains, then learns how and where to shop for these foods. Chapters follow on each type of food (fruits and veggies, proteins, condiments, etc.) with recipes, color photos, and preparation tips.  

            Yoga Therapy for Stress & Anxiety: Create a Personalized Holistic Plan to Balance Your Life, is written by three experts on yoga and meditation. The authors explain what creates a stress-filled life and how to use exercises, breathing techniques, meditation and other tools to relieve this stress. Over fifty illustrations of yoga postures are presented to assist the reader.

          Core Fitness, written by Hollis Lance Liebman, is a fully-illustrated introductory guide to working the body’s core, which is a system of muscles in the lower-trunk area that includes the lower back, abdomen, and hips. After learning about the necessary equipment and nutritional requirements, the reader is presented with over seventy exercises for warm-up, core stabilizers, core strengtheners, and cool-downs. 

Alternative Diets

            Here are some more diet and cookbooks featuring healthy foods, as selected by librarian Nicole. Two books are based on the Paleo diet, and the other three on juicing.

            Nom Nom Paleo: Food for Humans, written by Michelle Tam, offers a variety of family-friendly Paleo recipes as well as strategies for stocking the pantry, feeding kids, maximizing flavor, and saving time in the kitchen.

            The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat, written by Loren Cordain, presents a breakthrough nutrition program based on eating the foods we were genetically designed to eat – lean meats and fish and other foods that made up the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors.

            The Blender Girl: Super-Easy, Super-Healthy Meals, Snacks, Desserts and Drinks is written by Tess Masters. This debut cookbook from the powerhouse blogger behind theblendergirl.com, features 100 gluten-free, vegan recipes for smoothies, meals, and more made quickly and easily in a blender.

            The Joy of Juicing: 150 Imaginative, Healthful Juicing Recipes for Drinks, Soups, Salads, Sauces, Entrees, and Desserts is a creative collection of juicing recipes from award-winning broadcast journalist and bestselling author Gary Null.

            The Reboot with Joe Juice Diet: Lose Weight, Get Healthy and Feel Amazing is written by Joe Cross. He gives readers all the tools they need to embark on their own journey to health and wellness, including inspiration and encouragement, recipes, and diet plans.

 

Healthy Living: Cookbooks, Diets, and More

            Anytime is the right time to eat healthily. Librarian Nicole offers an assortment of books to help us along.

            100 Days of Real Food: How We Did It, What We Learned, and 100 Easy, Wholesome Recipes Your Family Will Love, is written by Lisa Leake. Lisa decided her family’s eating habits needed an overhaul. She, her husband, and their two small girls pledged to go 100 days without eating highly processed or refined foods.

           A Slice of Organic Life is written by Sheherazade Goldsmith. It features over 90 self-contained projects, from growing your own food organically, cooking home-grown produce, keeping selected livestock, and leading a more sustainable lifestyle. This down-to-earth, yet practical guide is the perfect start for someone looking to go “green”.

           The Naked Foods Cookbook is written by Margaret Floyd. This cookbook, organized by the amount of time it takes to prepare a recipe, collects tasty, gluten-free dishes made with whole foods and healthy fats.

           Gluten-Free Girl Every Day is written by Shauna James Ahern. The book features food you want to cook every day: fresh, satisfying and filled with great flavors. Vegetables in season are the key to these recipes, along with whole grains, beans, and a few key spices and homemade sauces.

          The How can it Be Gluten Free Cookbook: Revolutionary Techniques, Groundbreaking Recipes is written by the editors at America’s Test Kitchens. They tried thousands of recipes to figure out the secrets to making favorite foods without gluten. This landmark book tells what works, and why.

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

    Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss presents this in-depth report on the growth of the American processed food industry in conjunction with the increase of obesity and chronic diseases in the American public. Because of the qualities of convenience and savings in time, our society has increased its reliance on processed and fast foods. And, in line with growing their industry, the conglomerate companies lure their customers by increasing the amounts of sugar, fat and salt that they add to their products. This causes the consumer to reach a “bliss point” and to crave an increased amount of the food or drink. Moss compares this to a virtual addiction.

    Basing his information on company documents and interviews with former executives, Moss shows us how the industry is between a rock and a hard place: decrease the amounts of sugar, fat and salt to benefit the American public’s health, while exposing processed food’s off-tastes that will reduce sales. And, this is the dilemma that our nation finds itself in: continue on the path to ill health or change. Some of the answers might be to increase government food regulations, become more educated consumers, and go back to the basics in food preparation, however inconvenient that might be.