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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Improve Your Weight Control by Increasing Your Metabolism, 15 May 2004
The best part of this book is its confident support for the idea that being overweight is not a sign that you are mentally and psychologically deficient, as so many people would have overweight people believe. Being overweight usually means that you have a slow metabolism, something you were born with.This book is one of two valuable new books on creating a more individualized approach to eating for better health and weight control. The other book is "Live Right 4 Your Type." I suggest that you read both of these books and apply their lessons together. If you are a woman, I suggest you also read "Outsmarting Female Fatigue" as a good complement to these two books. One of Dr. Van Schoyck's best qualities is that he listens carefully to his patients when they describe their weight issues. While almost everyone has a stereotype of fat people as binge eaters with no self-control, he has found that "fewer than 20 percent of my patients actually overeat." The culprit instead is a slow metabolism, the rate at which the body burns calories. His book offers you a chance to find out the extent to which your weight level is maintained by overeating, by not enough exercise, and by a slow metabolism. For most overweight people, the last will be the primary reason. The good news is that with the proper diet, you can actually increase your metabolism to its full potential (which still may not be that of the skinny person next to you) so that you can have a more enjoyable, healthy life. That may also mean that your ideal weight is not what the insurance companies and physicians use. It may be higher than that. But you will probably be healthier at that weight than at a lower one that is all but impossible for you to maintain. So this approach should help you avoid yo-yo weight loss and gain. Getting started is the tough part. You have to follow a test diet that will tell you what your metabolism is for two weeks. Since I just got the book, I have not yet done that. The diet is not too difficult. It is not designed to cause you to lose weight, and you can substitute a lot. The diet is what a "normal" person could eat and maintain weight. So, for some people, it will be an increase in eating. The book then tells you how to take the results (how much you gain or lose) and construct an on-going menu-planning system that fits your metabolism. You can also use the authors' web site (for free) to do this, which is what I would recommend. That's easier. The book has an excellent discussion of other diets and what is right and wrong with them that you will find valuable. It also is very strong on the idea of customizing how you eat to fit yourself. There is a wonderful discussion of how the body burns newly-ingested food, and stored food already in the body that helped me to understand how to adapt how I eat. Some people (I am one of them) can live off of burning stored fat for more hours than others. I always find that I feel best when I only eat once or twice a day. That's because I am burning fat evenly the rest of the time. Other people feel fatigued when they are burning fat, and need frequent meals. My wife is a good example of that. So we each need to eat quite differently for our metabolisms to be optimized. It also happens that we have different blood types. I am an "O" and she is a "B." From reading "Live Right for Your Type" I had learned that we need to eat a different mix of foods. She should strive for balance and more frequent eating while I should emphasize proteins, especially beef, a bit more. With the combined knowledge from these two books, I should be able to manage both my energy and my weight in much more healthful and easy ways. I look forward to the results! By the way, if you like to snack, that may be just the right thing for you to do. And this book has many good suggestions for how to make snacking improve your energy and metabolism. You will also get to eat foods that I have never seen on another diet. In fact, it's not really a diet in the sense of a weight-loss diet. Rather it's a way of eating that will maintain your weight at its natural level. I suggest that you also share this book with everyone else in your family. Since you will be eating a lot of meals together, that will make it easier for all of you to follow through on what makes sense for each of you. Otherwise, your new eating plans could simply cause disruptions in your relations with everyone else. I can still remember my Mother happily feeding us "O" people in the family her idea "A" meals. They didn't work very well for us, but she sure loved them. May your life be filled with lots of health, happiness, peace, and prosperity as a result of the new understanding of your metabolism and how to eat that this book provides you!
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