cover image Balance Your Body, Balance Your Life: Dr. Taub's 28-Day Permanent Weight Loss Plan

Balance Your Body, Balance Your Life: Dr. Taub's 28-Day Permanent Weight Loss Plan

Edward A. Taub, Taub. Kensington Publishing Corporation, $23 (448pp) ISBN 978-1-57566-386-9

The director of the California Wellness Medicine Institute and the Wellness Medical Doctor for the QVC home shopping channel, Taub is a proponent of ""integrative medicine,"" an approach that encourages readers to work with their doctors and assume personal responsibility for overall well-being. For Taub, the road to wellness begins with nutrition. The book addresses the physical, emotional and cultural issues underlining poor nutrition and eating behaviors and refutes popular ideas about nutrition (e.g., the USDA's four basic food groups). Readers explore their underlying attitudes about food by completing a series of questionnaires on body image, physical wellness and stress resilience. In lieu of a rigid, calorie-counting diet, Taub's 28-day plan ambitiously aims for ""cognitive restructuring,"" a process that trains readers to overcome habitual food cravings and to eat healthier, more nutritious foods. Advocating a largely vegetarian and carbohydrate-based diet,Taub offers a 12-step ""Food Energy Ladder""; its first five rings emphasize fruits, vegetables, pasta-rice-potatoes, whole-grain breads and cereals, and olive oil and nuts, respectively. Recipes, exercises--such as walking and yoga stretches--and a discussion on nutritional supplements appear in the latter half of the book. Seasoned with medical statistics and nutritional facts, the prose alternately cajoles and instructs followers in achieving a permanent lifestyle change. (Feb.)