Healthy Weight

A guide to achieving a healthy weight by eating right and exercising includes low-calorie recipes and tips on choosing healthy foods when eating out or shopping.

Don't think you'll get the Mayo Clinic Instant Weight-Loss Diet in this book--there's no such thing. Instead, you get the information that the esteemed Mayo Clinic physicians and dietitians give their patients about weight control. There's no doctor-speak here: every point is explained simply and clearly, organized with frequent bold headings for easy skimming, and illustrated with helpful charts.

Mayo Clinic on Healthy Weight is divided into three parts: "Getting Motivated," "How to Lose Weight," and "When You Need More Help," including medications and surgery. The information is highly individualized, encouraging you to identify your unique challenges, eliminate your overeating triggers, and try new foods. The authors set the record straight about low-carb diets ("people do not gain weight on high-carbohydrate diets unless they are eating excess calories") and low-fat diets ("low-fat does not necessarily mean low-calorie"). They prompt you instead to use the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid to eat moderate portions of a varied, nutritious diet, emphasizing lower-calorie foods that make you feel full because they contain fiber and/or water.

Mayo Clinic on Healthy Weight has plenty of extras that make the book interesting and instructive: how to read a food label; recipe ingredient substitutions; eight luscious-looking, illustrated recipes; the number of calories burned during various exercises; and tricks for changing bad habits.

The Mayo Clinic is one of the country's most prestigious medical institutions, with more than 2,000 physicians and scientists in Rochester, Minnesota; Jacksonville, Florida; and Scottsdale, Arizona. This book doesn't offer shortcuts or fad diets--just the truth about weight loss, as the experts understand it. --Joan Price