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Myth-Busting Your Body: The Scientific Facts Behind The Headlines by Dr. Sarah Schenker (book review).

Sometimes with non-fiction, I find it easier to start a book not knowing what I am going to discover or when it becomes pertinent. A lot of this is selecting by name and cover far more than content hype as, after all, this is what you might be selecting books by as well. It gives the author a chance to win me over to their point of view than too many preconceived ideas. As you can often tell when I focus on the title or give the sub-title, I’m not always convinced that it a good selling point, so depend on what I read.

With Dr. Sarah Schenker’s book, ‘Myth-Busting Your Body: The Scientific Facts Behind The Headlines’, to use its full name, it isn’t until the fourth section that I realised that it could pose as a self-care book. This is where she focuses on diet and to disregard most diet plans that are out there. The best way for you to really lose weight and keep it off is to cut your calorie intake and keep to it. Your body will then get down to the weight you need most. Having a high-fibre diet also slows down how fast your body absorbs its food as well and so you don’t take it all in. That and a handful of nuts, the eating kind that is. I expect this advice alone should have many of you reading here grabbing this book to see what else she has to offer. Schenker shreds dubious information with a flourish and at the same time imparts a lot of useful knowledge so you will come away from it better informed than trying a fad diet because it is flavour of the month.

Objectively, although I’ve read a little of some of these diets, as a Type One diabetic, I would be instinctively against anything that is against my regime that needs a certain amount of carbohydrate a meal. Even so, there is a lot of nutritional knowledge here regarding the needs for roughage and fibre in your diet and the need for certain trace elements for well-being that I ended up check-listing against. I should point out that Type Two diabetics are covered but they have to lose weight.

The real problem with any diet is that as soon as you stop doing it, you start putting on your original weight. I tend to usually think that it would be safer to stay on the diet until I realised how many of them are there purely to lose weight. As Schenker points out, if you are going to succeed at a diet then you need to lose weight gradually than quickly and, generally, just eat less. Basically, those kinds of diets aren’t healthy and no wonder the weight bounces back when you revert to your normal foods as you’re left craving for basic foods.

Oddly, when it came to sweeteners, Schenker misses out noting some of them should have their own health hazards. Aspartame in prolonged doses will give your arthritis effects after all.

There are a lot of things I’ve learnt here or been reminded of. Amongst them all foods are processed in some way. Schenker points out that it’s down to the ingredients as to how much is done. The vegan diet is covered but the reason why we eat meat is because it is part of our natural diet. If you’re anaemic with an iron deficiency then don’t drink tea or coffee with meals because it reduces your ability to digest iron containing foods. As I don’t drink anything with caffeine in it, it looks like I’ve been doing the right thing all my life.

If you are contemplating starting a diet this time of year then buy and read this book first, so at least you’ll make informed choices as to what you need to do and, more importantly, what to avoid. Schenker puts nothing forward as a definitive diet plan other than to eat less but of the right kinds of foods and exercise more, although not necessarily strenuously. It might even offer you thoughts that might make it work for you.

GF Willmetts

January 2018

(pub: Andre Deutsch/Goodman Books. 191 page illustrated indexed medium hardback. Price: £20.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-0-23300-528-7)

check out websites: http://www.andredeutsch.com and www.goodmanbooks.co.uk

 

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

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