Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It


Gary Taubes - 2010
    The result of thorough research, keen insight, and unassailable common sense, Good Calories, Bad Calories immediately stirred controversy and acclaim among academics, journalists, and writers alike. Michael Pollan heralded it as “a vitally important book, destined to change the way we think about food.” Building upon this critical work in Good Calories, Bad Calories and presenting fresh evidence for his claim, Taubes now revisits the urgent question of what’s making us fat—and how we can change—in this exciting new book. Persuasive, straightforward, and practical, Why We Get Fat makes Taubes’s crucial argument newly accessible to a wider audience.Taubes reveals the bad nutritional science of the last century, none more damaging or misguided than the “calories-in, calories-out” model of why we get fat, and the good science that has been ignored, especially regarding insulin’s regulation of our fat tissue. He also answers the most persistent questions: Why are some people thin and others fat? What roles do exercise and genetics play in our weight? What foods should we eat, and what foods should we avoid? Packed with essential information and concluding with an easy-to-follow diet, Why We Get Fat is an invaluable key in our understanding of an international epidemic and a guide to what each of us can do about it.

Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers


David Perlmutter - 2013
    Perlmutter, the devastating truth about the effects of wheat, sugar, and carbs on the brain, and a 4-week plan to achieve optimum health.In Grain Brain, renowned neurologist David Perlmutter, MD, blows the lid off a finding that's been buried in medical literature for far too long: carbs are destroying your brain. Even so-called healthy carbs like whole grains can cause dementia, ADHD, anxiety, chronic headaches, depression, decreased libido, and much more. Groundbreaking and timely, Grain Brain shows that the fate of your brain is not in your genes, it's in the food you eat. Dr. Perlmutter explains what happens when your brain encounters common ingredients in fruit bowls and bread, how statins may be erasing your memory, why a diet high in "good fats" is ideal, and how to spur the growth of new brain cells at any age. And his revolutionary 4-week plan will show you how to keep your brain healthy and sharp while dramatically reducing your risk for debilitating neurological disease -- without drugs. Featuring a blend of cutting-edge research, real-life stories of transformation, and accessible, practical advice, Grain Brain teaches you how to take control of your "smart genes," regain wellness, and enjoy lifelong health and vitality.

The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss


Jason Fung - 2016
    Weight gain and obesity are driven by hormones—in everyone—and only by understanding the effects of insulin and insulin resistance can we achieve lasting weight loss.In this highly readable and provocative book, Dr. Jason Fung sets out an original, robust theory of obesity that provides startling insights into proper nutrition. In addition to his five basic steps, a set of lifelong habits that will improve your health and control your insulin levels, Dr. Fung explains how to use intermittent fasting to break the cycle of insulin resistance and reach a healthy weight—for good.

The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Astonishing Dialogue Taking Place in Our Bodies Impacts Health, Weight, and Mood


Emeran Mayer - 2015
    While the dialogue between the gut and the brain has been recognized by ancient healing traditions, including Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, Western medicine has failed to appreciate the complexity of how the brain, gut, and more recently, the microbiome—the microorganisms that live inside us—communicate with one another. In The Mind-Gut Connection, Dr. Emeran Mayer, executive director of the UCLA Center for Neurobiology of Stress, offers a revolutionary look at this developing science, teaching us how to harness the power of the mind-gut connection to take charge of our health.The Mind-Gut Connection shows how to keep the brain-gut communication clear and balanced to:• heal the gut by focusing on a plant-based diet• balance the microbiome by consuming fermented foods and probiotics, fasting, and cutting out sugar and processed foods• promote weight loss by detoxifying and creating healthy digestion and maximum nutrient absorption• boost immunity and prevent the onset of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s andAlzheimer’s• generate a happier mindset and reduce fatigue, moodiness, anxiety, and depression• prevent and heal GI disorders such as leaky gut syndrome, food sensitivities and allergies, and IBS, as well as digestive discomfort such as heartburn and bloating• and much more.

The Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy, and Transform Your Health from Morning to Midnight


Satchin Panda - 2018
    Like most people, you probably wake up, get hungry for meals and doze off in bed around the same time every day. If you’ve ever experienced jet lag or pulled an all-nighter, you know that this schedule can easily be thrown off kilter. But for some people, that imbalance—difficulty sleeping at night, hunger at odd times, or sudden fatigue at noon—is a constant. If you're one of those people, Dr. Satchin Panda, one of the leading researchers on circadian rhythms, has a plan to reset your body clock.Beginning with an in-depth explanation of the circadian clock—why it’s important, how it works, and how to know it isn’t working—The Circadian Code outlines lifestyle changes to make to get back on track. It's a concrete plan to enhance weight loss, improve sleep, optimize exercise, and manage technology so that it doesn’t interfere with your body’s natural rhythm. Dr. Panda’s life-changing methods show you how to prevent and reverse ailments like diabetes, cancer, and dementia, as well as microbiome conditions like acid reflux, heartburn, and irritable bowel disease.

The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain


Steven R. Gundry - 2017
    Stephen Gundry believes that these defense strategies make the seemingly virtuous plants that we consume every day--fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and seeds--far less "good for us" than we assume. Dr. Gundry outlines the health hazards posed by lectins. The main sources of lectins in the American diet include conventionally-raised dairy products, beans, and other legumes, wheat and grains, and specific vegetables and fruitsWith a full list of lectin-containing foods and simple substitutes for each; a step-by-step detox and eating plan; and easy lectin-free recipes, The Plant Paradox illuminates the hidden dangers lurking in your salad bowl—and shows you how to eat whole foods in a whole new way.

How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease


Michael Greger - 2015
    In How Not to Die, Dr. Michael Greger, the internationally-renowned nutrition expert, physician, and founder of NutritionFacts.org, examines the fifteen top causes of premature death in America -- heart disease, various cancers, diabetes, Parkinson's, high blood pressure, and more -- and explains how nutritional and lifestyle interventions can sometimes trump prescription pills and other pharmaceutical and surgical approaches, freeing us to live healthier lives.The simple truth is that most doctors are good at treating acute illnesses but bad at preventing chronic disease. The fifteen leading causes of death claim the lives of 1.6 million Americans annually. This doesn't have to be the case. By following Dr. Greger's advice, all of it backed up by strong scientific evidence, you will learn which foods to eat and which lifestyle changes to make to live longer.History of prostate cancer in your family? Put down that glass of milk and add flaxseed to your diet whenever you can. Have high blood pressure? Hibiscus tea can work better than a leading hypertensive drug-and without the side effects. Fighting off liver disease? Drinking coffee can reduce liver inflammation. Battling breast cancer? Consuming soy is associated with prolonged survival. Worried about heart disease (the number 1 killer in the United States)? Switch to a whole-food, plant-based diet, which has been repeatedly shown not just to prevent the disease but often stop it in its tracks.In addition to showing what to eat to help treat the top fifteen causes of death, How Not to Die includes Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen -- a checklist of the twelve foods we should consume every day. Full of practical, actionable advice and surprising, cutting edge nutritional science, these doctor's orders are just what we need to live longer, healthier lives.

The Ultra Mind Solution: Automatically Boost Your Brain Power, Improve Your Mood and Optimize Your Memory


Mark Hyman - 2007
    The invisible epidemic has led to the suffering of millions who spend billions on drugs, only to find they don't work. This is an epidemic of broken brains."Broken brains" go by many names -- depression, anxiety, memory loss, brain fog, attention deficit disorder, autism, and dementia, to name a few -- and show up in radically different ways from person to person, making each seem like a separate problem.But the truth is that these "diagnoses" are all the result of a few basic problems with our biology. Pinpoint these biological problems, fix them, and let your body's natural healing intelligence take over to repair your brain. Now you can experience an UltraMind -- one that is highly focused and able to pay attention at will, with a strong, reliable memory and a mood that is calm, confident, in control, and in good spirits.We have all heard of the mind-body connection or how our thoughts affect the health of our body. But the reverse is far more powerful: what you do to your body, your basic biology, has a profound effect on your brain.Have you ever experienced instant clarity after exercise? Alertness after drinking coffee? A mental crash after popping candy? Does your brain inexplicably slow down during stress, while multitasking, or when meeting a deadline? Each is an example of how what we do to our bodies -- whether through nutrition, sleep, exercise, or stress -- has a dramatic effect on our brains.Conventional treatments don't help, or provide only slight benefit, because they just manage symptoms rather than deal with -- and heal -- the underlying problem. And just as brain problems all stem from the same root causes, they all have the same solution -- The UltraMind Solution.Our ancient genes interact with our environment to create systemic imbalances that affect our brains. Correct those imbalances -- most caused by nutritional deficiencies, allergens, infections, toxins, and stress -- and you can achieve optimum mental health without drugs or psychotherapy.The UltraMind Solution is the future of medicine, the culmination of the last twenty years of research on what makes the brain happy, focused, and calm; research that has uncovered a few simple factors that explain why things go wrong and how to fix them.Don't wait for this revolution in medicine to trickle into your doctor's office: it usually takes research twenty years to move from the lab to the patient. The answers are here, right now, in The UltraMind Solution.

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health


William Davis - 2011
    As a result, over 100 million of them experience some form of adverse health effect, ranging from minor rashes and high blood sugar to the unattractive stomach bulges that preventive cardiologist William Davis calls "wheat bellies." According to Davis, that excess fat has nothing to do with gluttony, sloth, or too much butter: It's due to the whole grain wraps we eat for lunch.After witnessing over 2,000 patients regain their health after giving up wheat, Davis reached the disturbing conclusion that wheat is the single largest contributor to the nationwide obesity epidemic—and its elimination is key to dramatic weight loss and optimal health. In Wheat Belly, Davis exposes the harmful effects of what is actually a product of genetic tinkering and agribusiness being sold to the American public as "wheat"—and provides readers with a user-friendly, step-by-step plan to navigate a new, wheat-free lifestyle.Informed by cutting-edge science and nutrition, along with case studies from men and women who have experienced life-changing transformations in their health after waving goodbye to wheat, WheatBelly is an illuminating look at what is truly making Americans sick and an action plan to clear our plates of this seemingly benign ingredient.

Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease


Robert H. Lustig - 2012
    Now, in this much anticipated book, he documents the science and the politics that has led to the pandemic of chronic disease over the last 30 years.In the late 1970s when the government mandated we get the fat out of our food, the food industry responded by pouring more sugar in. The result has been a perfect storm, disastrously altering our biochemistry and driving our eating habits out of our control.To help us lose weight and recover our health, Lustig presents personal strategies to readjust the key hormones that regulate hunger, reward, and stress; and societal strategies to improve the health of the next generation. Compelling, controversial, and completely based in science, Fat Chance debunks the widely held notion to prove “a calorie is NOT a calorie”, and takes that science to its logical conclusion to improve health worldwide.

The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-term Health


Justin Sonnenburg - 2015
    The microbiota interacts with our bodies in a number of powerful ways; the Sonnenburgs argue that it determines in no small part whether we’re sick or healthy, fit or obese, sunny or moody. The microbiota has always been with us, and in fact has coevolved with humans, entwining its functions with ours so deeply, the Sonnenburgs show us, humans are really composite organisms having both microbial and human parts. But now, they argue, because of changes to diet, antibiotic over-use, and over-sterilization, our gut microbiota is facing a “mass extinction event,” which is causing our bodies to go haywire, and may be behind the mysterious spike in some of our most troubling modern afflictions, from food allergies to autism, cancer to depression. It doesn’t have to be this way.The Good Gut offers a new plan for health that focuses on how to nourish your microbiota, including recipes and a menu plan. In this groundbreaking work, the Sonnenburgs show how we can keep our microbiota off the endangered species list and how we can strengthen the community that inhabits our gut and thereby improve our own health. The answer is unique for each of us, and it changes as you age. In this important and timely investigation, the Sonnenburgs look at safe alternatives to antibiotics; dietary and lifestyle choices to encourage microbial health; the management of the aging microbiota; and the nourishment of your own individual microbiome. Caring for our gut microbes may be the most important health choice we can make.

Wired to Eat: How to Rewire Your Appetite and Lose Weight for Good


Robb Wolf - 2017
    - One month to reset your metabolism for lasting fat loss - One week to discover the carbs that are right for you- With weekly shopping lists and over 70 fully-anglicised recipes In WIRED TO EAT, superstar US diet expert, Paleo sensation and New York Times bestselling author of THE PALEO SOLUTION Robb Wolf will show you how to change your eating habits for good, tailor your diet to fit your personal needs and shed weight fast – and never put it back on!

The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet


Nina Teicholz - 2014
    She documents how the low-fat nutrition advice of the past sixty years has amounted to a vast uncontrolled experiment on the entire population, with disastrous consequences for our health.For decades, we have been told that the best possible diet involves cutting back on fat, especially saturated fat, and that if we are not getting healthier or thinner it must be because we are not trying hard enough. But what if the low-fat diet is itself the problem? What if the very foods we’ve been denying ourselves—the creamy cheeses, the sizzling steaks—are themselves the key to reversing the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease?In this captivating, vibrant, and convincing narrative, based on a nine-year-long investigation, Teicholz shows how the misinformation about saturated fats took hold in the scientific community and the public imagination, and how recent findings have overturned these beliefs. She explains why the Mediterranean Diet is not the healthiest, and how we might be replacing trans fats with something even worse. This startling history demonstrates how nutrition science has gotten it so wrong: how overzealous researchers, through a combination of ego, bias, and premature institutional consensus, have allowed dangerous misrepresentations to become dietary dogma.With eye-opening scientific rigor, The Big Fat Surprise upends the conventional wisdom about all fats with the groundbreaking claim that more, not less, dietary fat—including saturated fat—is what leads to better health and wellness. Science shows that we have been needlessly avoiding meat, cheese, whole milk, and eggs for decades and that we can now, guilt-free, welcome these delicious foods back into our lives.

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art


James Nestor - 2020
    Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren't found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

The Bulletproof Diet: Lose up to a Pound a Day, Reclaim Energy and Focus, Upgrade Your Life


Dave Asprey - 2014
    He also weighed 300 pounds, despite the fact that he was doing what doctors recommended: eating 1,800 calories a day and working out 90 minutes a day, six times a week. When his excess fat started causing brain fog and food cravings sapped his energy and willpower, Asprey turned to the same hacking techniques that made his fortune to "hack" his own biology, investing more than $300,000 and 15 years to uncover what was hindering his energy, performance, appearance, and happiness. From private brain EEG facilities to remote monasteries in Tibet, through radioactive brain scans, blood chemistry work, nervous system testing, and more, he explored traditional and alternative technologies to reach his physical and mental prime. The result? The Bulletproof Diet, an anti-inflammatory program for hunger-free, rapid weight loss and peak performance. The Bulletproof Diet will challenge—and change—the way you think about weight loss and wellness. You will skip breakfast, stop counting calories, eat high levels of healthy saturated fat, work out and sleep less, and add smart supplements.In doing so, you'll gain energy, build lean muscle, and watch the pounds melt off. By ditching traditional "diet" thinking, Asprey went from being overweight and sick in his twenties to maintaining a 100-pound weight loss, increasing his IQ, and feeling better than ever in his forties. The Bulletproof Diet is your blueprint to a better life.