THE NO GRAIN DIET by Dr. Joseph Mercola with Alison Rose Levy Book Review By Monika Dery It was most interesting, after having read Dr. Mercola's "The No-Grain Diet," to see a new article in a national newspaper extolling the virtues of Dr. Atkins' diet. It's been "scientifically" proven through stringent studies that the Atkins' diet does cause people to lose weight....in the short term. Hmmm, what does that mean, in the scheme of healthy living? Dr. Mercola goes one step further and promotes a lifestyle change with a much broader range, allowing people to lose weight and keep it off. He incorporates self talk (a special form of removing cravings by tapping called Emotional Freedom Technique, left) and common sense to change people's eating habits which are almost always reward driven. The good doctor helps to incorporate eating plans, menu choices as well as recipes into this comprehensive lifestyle no-diet diet. Incidentally, the word diet has been taken over by companies who purport to provide quick weight-loss. It is actually the word for all the food we eat and has nothing to do with losing weight. Dr. Mercola works through preconceived notions on what tastes good and ends up with healthy eating and good diet for life! The long-held myth that fat causes fat has been exploded, but more importantly, the knowledge that carbohydrates are converted quickly into sugars that are stored almost immediately makes Dr. Mercola's health plan much more effective. Dr. Atkins had the fat part right but did not think that fruits and vegetables had any redeeming qualities because they too convert to sugar. I understand one of the problems of "that faulty other plan" is constipation. Dr. Mercola's healthy eating program has no such drawback. The "No-GRAIN DIET" works in three phases with healthy living being the goal. The START-UP phase takes three days with stringent measures to work through issues and to get the mind programmed. Then the STABILIZE phase continues for at least 50 days depending on how much weight needs to be lost or how addicted one is to carbohydrates. The final phase, the SUSTAIN phase carries on forever. Period! Three food plans go hand in hand with the system including the BOOSTER plan (many allowable foods) giving you a leg-up to the CORE level where the results are faster because of more restrictions. The ADVANCED food plan is the toughest and is geared to those who need to lose a lot of weight for health reasons, such as diabetes. Dr. Mercola has been in the alternative medicine field for many years so the recipes in THE NO-GRAIN DIET book are geared to healthy fare which is very important to many people nowadays. For example he believes butter is good and margarine is bad....flax oil is good and hydrogenated oils are bad. He's a wonderful integrative medicine doctor, well-versed in allopathic (mainstream) medicine as well as alternative, osteopathic therapies. He is convinced that leaving fruits and vegetables out of our daily diet (ala Dr. Atkins) is dangerous. His diet plan is much more sensible and easier to live with for the rest of one's life. Dr. Mercola is the director of the Optimal Wellness center just outside Chicago, Illinois. He has served as the chairman of the Family Medicine Department at St. Alexis Medical center for 5 years and lives in Schauburg, Ill. His training in alternative medicine has allowed him to write this book which took years of research to put together, and I'm sure it won't be his last. He has had many papers published in prestigious medical journals around the world and hosts the second-highest traffic natural health site on the internet at www.mercola.com. Alison Rose Levy collaborated with Dr. Mercola on the writing of the book. She is a freelance writer in New York City, and knows a great deal about alternative health as well. I was a little concerned when I read "no-grain" thinking that this would be another fad diet because it's almost impossible to keep grain out of the daily food intake. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that, after a person reaches optimum weight and the cravings are gone, small amounts of grain can be re-introduced...mainly whole grains. He seems to be in favor of preparing food from scratch allowing the cook to know exactly what is and what isn't in the final result. Take ketchup, for instance....the ubiquitous red sauce. Take away the sugar, additives, preservatives and unseen products...can we hope to have a tasty ketchup that's actually good for us? Here is Dr. Mercola's recipe for KETCHUP...tasty and satisfying! 4 cups tomatoes, chopped and closely packed 4 onions, chopped 1 red pepper, chopped 1 tbsp each: allspice, cloves, celery seed, pepper 1 cinnamon stick (1" long) 1/2 tsp dry mustard 1 clove garlic 1 bay leaf 1 cup apple cider vinegar 1. Simmer tomatoes, onions and peppers until soft. Pass through a strainer to catch skins. If you don't have a good strainer, peel the tomatoes first by pouring boiling water over the raw tomatoes and stripping off the skin by hand. Measure the amount of tomato puree to be sure of having 4 cups. 2. Add spices and bring to a boil, stirring often. Continue cooking till mixture is reduced to half the measured amount (2 cups.) Add small amount of salt and cayenne pepper to taste. Pour into bottle. Have a healthy life....as soon as you've put Dr. Mercola's plan into place! Back to the Writing Index