The Core Balance Diet

Is your weight gain making you miserable? Have you noticed that you’re packing on pounds in unpleasant new places? Or is the scale—and the way you feel about yourself— just stuck, no matter how much you diet and exercise? If you’ve struggled without success to lose weight and keep it off, there’s always a reason, and—surprise!—it probably has little to do with how hard you’re trying or how many calories you’re counting. Now a pioneering practitioner of women’s health care shows why willpower doesn’t work in the long run and, finally, gives you a solution that does.

Marcelle Pick, co-founder of Women to Women—one of the first clinics in the country devoted to providing health care for women by women—draws upon decades of experience, her patients’ and her own, to solve the mystery of the stubborn weight gain. Explaining the science of the body with uncommon clarity, she describes the complex web of connections—between organs and systems, hormones and other biochemicals—that keep your physiology in balance and your metabolism functioning well. Because when it isn’t, your body reacts by packing on protection in the form of pounds that won’t budge, an excess that can be so harmful and intractable that Pick has named it “toxic weight.” Bringing your body back into Core Balance is the only way to heal your metabolism, soothe your body, and lose the weight for good.

The Core Balance Diet is a breakthrough plan designed to restore your body’s equilibrium and return you to a healthy, sustainable weight. With her engaging style, Pick explains six common biochemical imbalances—digestive, hormonal, adrenal, neurotransmitter, inflammation, and detoxification—and helps you determine which is affecting you most. In the first two weeks, she teaches the simple lifestyle changes and smart nutrition choices that will show you how to tune into your body and identify your fundamental obstacles to weight loss. Then Pick guides you through a customized two-week program geared to restoring your Core Balance and shedding those toxic pounds once and for all. Far from depriving yourself on this program, you’ll eat—often and well—enjoying delicious recipes made from whole foods that give your body the support it needs to heal. At the same time, you’ll start to explore underlying issues and emotional patterns that may be getting in your way, as Pick connects self-care with self-knowledge to show you the way to lasting wellness.

By picking up this book, you’re about to toss out the old way of thinking about yourself and your weight. The Core Balance Diet heralds a whole new chapter in weight loss, proving how easy it is to work with your body and the right foods—not against them—to rid yourself of weight and unhealthy habits for good. Within a month, you’ll be on your way to a lean, fit, and balanced body that is ready to support you—and look great—for  the rest of your life.

Marcelle Pick, MSN, OB/GYN NP, co-founded Women to Women with a vision to change women’s health care. The clinic pioneered the combination of alternative and conventional medicine, using a holistic approach that not only treats illness but also helps women make life choices to prevent disease. Women to Women continues seeing thousands of women from around the world each year.

Marcelle Pick earned a B.S. in nursing and a B.A. in psychology from the University of New Hampshire and an M.S. in nursing from Boston College–Harvard Medical School. Certified as a nurse practitioner for both OB/GYN and pediatrics, Pick has served as medical advisor to Healthy Living magazine, lectured on a variety of topics, and appears regularly on television to discuss women’s health.