The RealAge Diet: Make Yourself Younger with What You Eat

Rating:
Summary: Easy to understand but full of amazing medical info
Review: Buy this book for the captivating presentation of the results of lots of nutritional research. I've learned so much about how different foods affect our bodies. They're not selling you on some gimmicky diet. They give you a great deal of knowledge to make good decisions on your own about what to eat. You'll be shocked by all the truly nasty things that are put into food that Americans normally eat. You'll no longer have to wonder why we're plagued by obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer. I highly recommend this to anyone.

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Summary: A diet I can live with
Review: I needed some guidelines to just feel better about what i was eating. This book is a pleasure to read and gives a common sense approach to taking care of our health through the right food choices.

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Summary: HEY EVERYONE - YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT - SO READ THIS BOOK!
Review: Please forgive the soapbox style of review here. I think the authors are right-on, and if you will take what they write to heart (not just seek information, but seek transformation) you will look and feel great for the rest of your life.

It's that time of the year again and most of us are beginning to pull out the summer things. I can hear the screams now. Oh my goodness - how did my clothes shrink so much! Many are searching Amazon looking for the latest "lose weight" book.

WAIT . . . STOP . . . DON'T!

Before you spend any of your precious money on those other fad diet books, consider the following. How come some people always seem to be lean and trim, no matter what the season? Do you think it's because they are on a perpetual diet?

I don't thinks so. You see, I have been there and done that. Sure, some of those diet and exercise plans work a little, but only a little, and only while they are relentlessly followed.

Those fad plans aren't the best way for us to be lean and healthy because the weight problem is in our heads. Research now shows that the poor health of our bodies is just a symptom of improper thinking. The real problem is:

YOU HAVE TOO MUCH FEAR IN YOUR DIET!

Just like cholesterol, there are good fears and bad fears. Most likely, you are allowing too much of the bad fear to get into your mind. Bad fears cause the problems that jack up the weight, increase the waistline, and leave you short of breath when climbing stairs.

YOU CAN ELIMINATE BAD FEARS IN THREE STEPS

Eliminating bad fears from you life is not that complicated. You can rid yourself of the bad types of fears that keep you from the success and abundance you deserve.

First, you need to know what causes bad fears. Just like real estate pricing, bad fears are caused by 3 things: ignorance, ignorance, and ignorance.

THE CURE IS: LEARN, DO, AND REWARD

Eliminate the first ignorance by learning. You must learn what is right for you. Read this book and it will tell you our bodies are all different. Your needs for nourishment, exercise, and sleep are different from anyone else. Learn what your "healthy zone" is and many of the fears that cause you to be out of shape will disappear immediately.

Eliminate the second ignorance by doing. Train your brain to do what is right. Emerson said, "Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain." Start slowly and work your way up to staying in your healthy zone. Don't be afraid of mistakes. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first.

Eliminate the third ignorance by discovering the rewards and opportunities. Reward yourself for that slim waistline; buy something sexy. Take advantage of the opportunities; look great in front of that audience. If you eat something that was just too good to pass up, don't worry. Get back into your healthy zone at the next meal.

Read this book; follow these three steps and you will rid yourself of the bad fears and their accompanying health problems. Soon, success and abundance will be yours and you'll always look great!

Don't be afraid to buy this book - it is not a fad diet book.

Rating:
Summary: Evidence-based dietary 'gem of wisdom'
Review: The 'Mother' of all dietbooks... the singular standard to which all dietbooks and all-to-come must be compared!... The eminently-readable text and the interesting anecdotes and vignettes (in the form of RealAge cafe tips) render the book easily digestible!.... In tandem with "RealAge: Are you as young as you can be?", "The RealAge Diet" is a medically-compelling, must-read tome for all who aspire to live a healthful and holistic lifestyle.

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Summary: Great food tips
Review: The author does a great job sharing healthy eating ideas. I love most of this book, however I could have done without the comparisons of major trendy diets. The book is a good purchase.

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Summary: Useful Applications of Research on Food and Health
Review: The connection between food and health is a strong one. Many diet-obsessed people overly focus on this one element of health though. This book builds from the RealAge research to help you change your eating habits in permanent, healthy ways. The book's weakness is that the recommended solutions require a lot of discipline to get started.

The book's conclusion that these changes will make you physiologically younger may well be a stretch. "To be honest, there's still a lot that scientists don't know about nutrition." That sentence is the most important one in the book. A new diet could be produced every year incorporating the latest research results, and each one would be different. I suspect that this continuing change in perceptions will go on for decades. So I suggest that you not take the results of any one diet book too seriously. Some of the key conclusions of each one will probably be contradicted in the future.

Nevertheless, this book is an attempt to point you toward eating habits that reduce diseases older people get more frequently and extend longevity. On the other hand, this book does not focus on appearance or weight level. Many people who read diet books are more interested in those two areas than longevity. If you are interested in another diet currently, this book probably reviews the other diet and gives you a rating for whether or not that diet will help extend longevity. The book is most positive about Eating Well for Optimum Health and Dean Ornish's Eat More, Weigh Less. The book's advice can be encapsulated as "Eat nutrient rich, calorie poor, and delicious." These foods include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, fish, and the right fats (eaten in moderation early in the meal). If you are familiar with books about nutrition, you won't find any big "'aha's" here. The main news is that eating fish seems to have benefits separate from eating the fats that are in fish. Now, I find that I feel a lot better if I eat fish 2 or 3 times a week. I suspect that listening to your body is often as reliable as the latest evidence.

Like many of the best books about nutrition and Sugarbusters!, this one warns about paying attention to glycemic levels of foods.

I did find its focus on calorie count to be questionable. The weight set-point for people differs a lot, and some people with slow metabolisms may find this approach just another painful way to be overweight. Calories do count, but picking your target is hard to do well. Spending a lot of time measuring calories will reduce consumption. If you have a high metabolism, the effort may well bring weight-loss rewards worth the effort.

The scientific references in the back of the book are impressive, but are not well connected to the text. You would have to do a lot of reading to find out what the research really says. I would like to have seen a closer connection between the footnotes and the text. Both Eating Well for Optimum Health and Live Right 4 Your Type are better in this area.

A clear conflict exists between this book and Live Right 4 Your Type. Both seem to be equally based on scientific research, except that Live Right 4 Your Type attempts to match the advice for your blood type. This book discusses the earlier book, Eat Right 4 Your Type, which does not closely match to research references. Based on my own experiences with both the average and the blood type adjusted approaches, I think the Live Right 4 Your Type method works better for me than the RealAge Diet.

If you have heart disease, you will have to modify some of those diets to reflect that by reducing fat (see Dean Ornish's Reversing Heart Disease).

If you are well read on nutrition, this book will not add much to your knowledge. If you eat poorly and have not read about nutrition, this is a fine book for you.

I would like to commend the section in the book on eating out. There are many good ideas for how to have your food prepared in healthier ways. Even if you know nutrition, you may find the book to be a valuable asset for this reason if you are passive in restaurants.

The book also advises doing a lot of your own cooking. That's not for me. The recipes looked too hard to me to be worth looking into. You may have a different reaction. If you do, enjoy!

After you read this book, you should also think about how much effort it is worth to extend your lifespan. If you spend 10 percent of your waking hours to expand your life by five percent, is that an accomplishment? Depending on how you spend your time, it may or may not be. For example, if you live enough longer than a cure comes along that extends your life by another 10 percent, you're ahead. If you enjoy working on this, you are ahead also. If you have more energy to give to others, you may be ahead also.

Also, you might want to check out Dean Ornish's Love and Survival where he points out that human relationships have more impact on disease and health than diet.

Make food a positive part of your life!

Rating:
Summary: Too Repetitious
Review: There is a good core message in this book about the "right" way to eat... and you'll read it over and over and over again. This way waaaay more information than I needed and could honestly have been covered in a pamphlet. Check it out at the library.

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Summary: science and common sense come together
Review: This is an excellent book which educates the reader on nutrition, which lets one make informed decisions on healthy eating. What is most important is that the focus of the book is on the enjoyment of food, choosing foods which are healthy and fun.

The chapter looking at other popular diets is going to be the most controversial, as some well-established diets are, by Dr. Roizen's calculations, very unhealthy. This makes sense to me: a diet which is highly restrictive can't be healthy in the long term.

The chapter on how to make healthy food choices while at restaurants has been the most helpful for me - I have already started ordering dishes which aren't on the menu, and been very pleased with the results.

This is a great book, firmly based in science, which will make you eat healthier, and enjoy food more, if you follow its advice.

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Summary: Finally great flavor combined with great health from a docto
Review: What a pleasure it is to read, make and enjoy the food from Dr. John LaPuma's recipes. Combined with Dr. Michael Roizen, I feel I'm in good hands. The recipes are so flavorful I didn't think they could be healthy and yet they are. The more I add to my diet program, Dr. Roizen indicates I am getting younger. Not a bad page in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to understand but full of amazing medical info
Review: When it comes to calculating "true age" I feel 20+ on a good day, 50+ on a realistic day and 110 on my worst days! While there may be certain diets that might help me to "feel" younger and healthier, there is no diet that is going to "make" me younger. Whether we like it or not, time marches on and before you know it another birthday has rolled around, reminding us in a realistic way that we have used up one more year of our life here on Earth. Taking this into consideration, and short of a trip to "Never-Never Land" or finding the proverbial "Fountain of Youth", my chances of growing younger appear quite slim.

I did enjoy this book to a certain point for the information it contained and for the assessment of other well-known diets; however, the authors came across just a little too self-satisfied for my liking. Of course, every author thinks his/her diet is absolutely the best thing since sliced bread and will set the world on fire; a strong marketing strategy is what sells books, but what really irked me about this book was the constant referrals to the authors' web site. If I had wanted to find the information on a web site, I would not have bothered to purchase the book in the first place.

The approach in this book is a new concept and to the book's credit it does provide a thorough analysis of various foods, so readers will have to weigh the pros against the cons and decide for themselves if this is a book they want to purchase. Personally, I would recommend, "Eat Right For Your Blood Type" long before this one.