Amazon.com Review

If smoked salmon and cream cheese omelets, sautéed jumbo shrimp, and double-patty burgers suit your palate, belly up to the Protein Power diet: "Not a high protein diet" but "an adequate protein diet." Doctors Michael R. and Mary Dan Eades make a persuasive case in favor of "the diet we were meant to eat."

Similar to Dr. Robert Atkins's __, the authors cite insulin as the main culprit in weight gain and expound the benefits of a diet extremely low in carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, which are changed into sugar during digestion, stimulate the body to store fat, making weight loss virtually impossible. The most revolutionary idea put forth in Protein Power is that the fat you eat has very little bearing on the fat you gain: in other words, we aren't what we eat after all. Researchers have found that eating larger portions of protein in conjunction with severely reduced portions of carbohydrates causes people to burn the excess fat stored in their bodies.

Protein Power is packed with helpful charts and formulas, so you can estimate your body-fat percentage and your ideal weight for your particular body composition. There are worksheets to calculate your protein need and carbohydrate and protein equivalency charts, as well as charts that allow you to track your fat and weight loss. But this book is not all grams and percentages: it also shows you what a day of eating on this diet would look like and includes sample menus and 70 pages of recipes. If you've been starving yourself for years and just can't seem to lose weight, this may be the diet for you. --Jhana Bach

From Publishers Weekly

The Eades, who share a weight-loss and family-medicine practice in Arkansas, have each written a popular medical book?his is Thin So Fast; hers, The Doctor's Complete Guide to Vitamins and Minerals. In their first shared volume, they turn popular weight-management beliefs?and the latest FDA food-guide pyramid?upside down. For years, overweight Americans have been counseled to turn away from meat and fat and embrace a high-carbohydrate diet. Joining a growing band of researchers that includes Barry Sears (The Zone), the Eades discuss the biochemical roles of hormones in the metabolic process to demonstrate why low-fat, high-carb programs don't always result in weight loss and present a convincing case for their high-protein, low-carb alternative. The key is preventing, through diet, overproduction of insulin, which itself "controls the storage of fat" and is triggered by the ingestion of carbohydrates. Their eating plan?which is bolstered by lists of protein and carbohydrate counts for common foods, a collection of about 75 appealing recipes and discussion of the necessity of exercise?will lead, they aver, to the body's more efficent burning of fat, leading in turn to reduction in one's percentage of body fat. Cholesterol, vitamins, minerals and various risk factors are also discussed. Chapters end with fairly complete summaries that will be appreciated by readers who are not willing or able to work through the fairly extensive scientific data cited by the Eades in this iconoclastic program.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.