Product Description

You know how it is. That special event just around the corner and you can’t fit into your designer jeans. You need a fool-proof, emergency weight-loss method that really works and works fast. So how do you safely and quickly lose those extra pounds?

Once again, renowned health pioneer and bestselling author Ann Louise Gittleman has a quick, no-strings-attached solution that is also good for you. She is always on the cutting edge of developing new methods to rejuvenate the body and facilitate weight loss and she’s done it again in The Fast Track One-Day Detox Diet. Gittleman takes the age-old method of fasting and incorporates it into a safe and healthy one-day plan that helps you lose weight fast, gets rid of toxins, and gives your body a cleansing boost to prepare it for even more weight loss down the road.

The plan itself is blissfully simple:

THE PREQUEL: Seven days of adding detox support foods to your diet to prepare your body for the one-day Fast

THE FAST: One day of sipping Gittleman’s “Miracle Juice,” a deliciously spiced mixture of herbs and spices specially designed to stave off hunger, balance blood sugar, boost metabolism, and replenish nutrients (no kidding, the juice is completely delicious)

THE SEQUEL: Three days of reintroducing supportive and immune-boosting foods into your diet to seal in the results

That’s all. There’s no need for a strict maintenance plan or more dieting because the Fast Track One-Day Detox Diet purges your body of fattening toxins so that you’ll keep losing weight once you’re finished. What’s more, if you can’t add those healthy foods to your diet in the Prequel and Sequel, Gittleman provides a list of replacement supplements that you can easily find in your local health food store or online.

So, use The Fast Track One-Day Detox Diet to jump start an over-40 metabolism, melt away vacation or holiday pounds, break a diet plateau, get in shape for that high school reunion or wedding, and even help heal a chronic illness. Even if you’ve been slow to lose weight in the past, the pounds will melt away quickly during your one-day fast. Inside there are recipes to prepare for the fast, shopping lists, and tips for sailing through the fast.
In addition, Ann Louise Gittleman shares the wisdom she’s gained from years of research on health, diet, and nutrition. You’ll find out about hidden toxins found in the environment and in everyday foods, and learn easy steps you can take to live healthier every day.

The perfect diet: simplicity, effortless weight loss, and obvious health benefits from a nutritionist with a proven tack record. You’ll feel so good after your first fast, you’ll want to incorporate the Fast Track’s cleansing principles and periodic fasting into your life for good.

Don’t delay, it’s time to jump on the Fast Track to a lighter, healthier you.

Ready, Set, Glow

What if you could lose three to eight pounds in a single day?

What if that nearly instant weight loss made you feel lighter, freer, cleaner, and more energized?


What if that single day began a healing, cleansing, revitalizing process, raising your awareness of the poisons that pollute our environment and purging your body of the toxins that set you up for weight gain, fatigue, and a host of deadly, debilitating diseases

What if that one day of weight loss could help jump-start a long-term weight-loss plan?

Well, that single day is here. With Ann Louise Gittleman’s The Fast Track One-Day Detox Diet you can:

Cleanse your system back to health

Get rid of unhealthy, fattening toxins

Safely lose up to 8 pounds overnight and keep them off for good

The Fast Track One-Day Detox Diet is a whole new way to think about weight loss. This is the first crash diet that not only works in the long run, but is also good for you.


GET ON THE FAST TRACK
IT’S SAFE. IT FEELS TERRIFIC. AND IT WORKS.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12034 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-26
• Released on: 2006-12-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780767920469
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
“In The Fast Track Detox Diet, the visionary nutritionist Ann Louise Gittleman has skillfully transformed the age old concept of fasting into a highly effective, rapid, but safe weight loss program that is perfect for twenty-first century living.”
Paula Baillie-Hamilton, M.D., Ph.D., author of Toxic Overload


“Ann Louise Gittleman brings one of the oldest medical traditions - fasting - into the 21st century. Our bodies’ toxin load is so high and at last, someone helps us address this issue in a way that makes sense.”

—Fred Pescatore, M.D., M.P.H., C.C.N., author of The Hamptons Diet


“Brilliant, enlightening, and powerful are just a few words that describe Ann Louise Gittleman's Fast Track Detox Diet. This is not just a diet book but rather an extraordinary analysis of how we should eat in our toxic world. Offering ground breaking solutions that will definitely improve the status of your health, Ann Louise Gittleman confirms my own belief that detox is a poorly understood missing link in the quest for optimum health. I can't wait to try her program!"
 
—Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., F.A.C.C, C.N.S Author of The Sinatra Solution: Metabolic Cardiology


“The Fast Track Detox Diet makes common sense and is on the cutting-edge of health. I predict that within the next five years it will be common knowledge that ‘fattening chemicals’ like the ones this program uncovers, are a primary underlying factor sabotaging our best weight loss efforts.”

—Hyla Cass, M.D., Author of 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health



“I consider cleansing and detox dieting to be the missing link in Western nutrition and a key to the vitality of our civilization. Ann Louise Gittleman is to be commended for getting the detox message out to mainstream Americans. I couldn't agree more with her message and her methods.”
—Elson M. Haas, M.D., author of Staying Health With Nutrition and The New Detox Diet



“As a researcher in the arena of environmental medicine, I fully endorse Ann Louise Gittleman's work and methodology in The Fast Track Detox Diet.”
—Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D., author of Death by Modern Medicine
 
“Again, Ann Louise Gittleman has connected the dots in a very important and overlooked area that plays a part in our obesity epidemic – the toxicity-weight connection. Thanks to Ann Louise everyone can now have access to a program that can enhance their detoxifications systems, boost their metabolism and help them feel fantastic.”

—Mark Hyman, M.D., Editor in Chief, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, co-author of Ultraprevention, and author of The Detox Box





“Gittleman’s The Fast Track Detox Diet brings together two problems that usually are treated separately - detoxification and weight loss - and does a credible job at answering the needs of both. In short, this is a good and useful book.”
— Dallas Clouatre, Ph.D., Author of Anti-Fat Nutrients

“Ann Louise Gittleman should be congratulated for her courage. This book is a must read.”
— D. Lindsey Berkson, Consulting scholar with the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane and Xavier Universities, and author of Hormone Deception

“Dr. Ann Louise Gittleman has, like me, devoted her career to bridging the gap between the halls of academia and the general public. Now she is bringing to the public the theory- which we've been hearing and discussing at cutting edge nutrition and medicine conferences for years- that chemicals in the environment can slow down the weight loss process and overburden the liver with toxins which have profound health effects. I'm going to follow her sober and sound advice to patients.”
—Jonny Bowden, M.A., C.N., C.N.S., author of Living the Low Carb Life

“Anything is do-able if you break it down into small enough components. That’s just what Ann Louise has done in her Fast Track Detox Diet. If you’ve been put off by complicated regimes or ineffective cleansing programs, this book will hold your hand and walk you through to a new, more vital ‘you.’”
—Nan Kathryn Fuchs, Ph.D., Editor, Women’s Health Letter

About the Author
ANN LOUISE GITTLEMAN, Ph.D., C.N.S., is the award-winning author of over twenty books, including the New York Times bestsellers Before the Change and The Fat Flush Plan. There are more than 3.5 million copies of her books in print. She has appeared on Dr. Phil, The View, Extra, Good Morning America, PBS, and CNN, among countless other programs, and she writes a monthly column for First for Women magazine. Gittleman holds a Ph.D. in holistic nutrition and a master’s degree in nutrition education, and is a Certified Nutrition Specialist. She lives in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1


Get on the Fast Track!


Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand
mediocre minds appointed to guard the past.
—Maurice Maeterlinck


What if you could lose 3 to 8 pounds in a single day?

What if that nearly instant weight loss made you feel lighter, freer, cleaner, and more energized?

What if that one day of weight loss could help jump-start a long-term weight-loss plan? What if that single day began a healing, cleansing, revitalizing process, raising your awareness of the poisons that pollute our environment and purging your body of the toxins that set you up for weight gain, fatigue, and a host of deadly, debilitating diseases?

Well, that single day is here. It's called the Fast Track One-Day Detox Diet. It's safe. It feels terrific. And it works.


A One-Day Miracle Diet:
Too Good to Be True?


Who doesn't like quick fixes and magic bullets? They're the reason that weight-loss products promising instant results have become a multibillion-dollar industry that's growing every year. The fact that most of these trendy diets don't work, don't last, and often put us at risk for serious health problems seems less important to many desperate dieters than the glittering promises these plans make.

As a nutritional maverick, I have always bucked the system Yet for more than twenty years, even I believed that there's no such thing as a magic bullet—although my internationally best-selling Fat Flush Plan has certainly come close! Throughout my hands-on experience with thousands of patients and clients in the public health arena (including a stint as the chief nutritionist for the pediatric clinic at New York City's Bellevue Hospital) and in the private sector (several years as the director of nutrition at the Pritikin Longevity Center in Santa Monica, California), I've always advocated long-term lifestyle changes, avoiding the one-shot answers that seem so popular in the weight-loss world. Although many diet gurus preached the gospel of exercising more and eating less, of cutting out fats, or—more recently—of eliminating carbs, I've always understood that our bodies and metabolisms are too complex for such simple solutions.

When I introduced my two-week program in Beyond Pritikin nearly two decades ago and then brought out a more extensive version of that diet in The Fat Flush Plan, I helped revolutionize weight loss by introducing the concept of detox to the diet world. Years before Atkins, South Beach, and the Zone, I predicted that the low-fat, high-carb diets so popular in the 1980s were actually creating weight gain, sugar cravings, fatigue, and diabetes—health concerns that have taken on epidemic proportions today. I was the first to point out the importance of the essential fatty acids for weight loss as well as for overall health and beauty, a recurring theme in my two dozen books. My millions of readers around the world, and the millions more who visit my Web site (www.fasttrackdetox.com), have always known that they can count on me for sound, well-researched nutritional advice based on both real-life experience and scientific evidence.

Then, in November 2003, Woman's World magazine came to me with an unusual request. They wanted a one-day juice fast, the recipe for a special brew that would enable readers to quickly lose 3 to 5 pounds so they could fit into that special outfit or take off that holiday weight.

A fast can be a terrific weight-loss method because during a fast, the primary source of fuel for the cells is fat. Of course, I'd known for years that an improperly done fast can actually sabotage weight loss by disrupting your metabolism. The wrong kind of fasting can also threaten your health by stressing your liver, clogging your colon, and flooding your bloodstream with the oil-soluble toxins that your body had been storing in its fat.

On the other hand, a fast done right—with your body prepared for fasting and properly supported during the regime—can flush the accumulated toxins from your cells, accelerate your weight loss, cleanse your body, and combat the effects of aging. Periodic fasting of this type can clear up skin conditions, boost your energy, and put a sparkle in your eyes.

Moreover, a properly done fast offers you a chance to detoxify your body. A body overloaded with toxins and pollutants suffers from a weakened immune system, a stressed-out liver, and, in all probability, a malfunctioning colon. Such "toxic" bodies are far more vulnerable to disorders great and small, ranging from colds, flu, and fatigue to arthritis, asthma, and allergies--all the way up to autoimmune conditions, heart disease, and cancer. In other words, properly done fasting is the missing link to better health.

And fasting and detox have one more benefit, perhaps the most dramatic and the least well-known of all. Fasting is the missing link to long-term weight loss. That's because detox and weight loss go hand in hand. So the more toxic your body becomes, the more difficulty you will have losing weight and keeping it off.


Weight Loss and Toxicity:
The Missing Link


The connection between weight loss and toxicity is so important, I'll say it again: The more toxic your body becomes, the more difficulty you'll have losing weight. Does that sound like an extreme statement? Then consider for a moment the "obesity epidemic" that you've no doubt read about. We now know that more than sixty diseases have been linked to obesity. More than 80 percent of Americans are overweight, while at least 30 percent of U.S. adults are obese—and close to 20 million children. Think of it—a whopping eight out of ten Americans face a weight gain that might literally kill them by setting them up for diabetes, heart disease, and other deadly conditions.

Now recall the almost daily warnings about the growing amount of pollutants, toxins, and synthetic chemicals in our food, water, and air. The use of pesticides alone has doubled every ten years since 1945. Every day, corporations, cars, and homes release 700,000 tons of pollution into our air. Farmers spray seventy-two different pesticides on our fruits and veggies. Our cows and sheep are injected with estrogens to fatten them up and then stuffed with pesticide-laden grains to satisfy their artificial hunger.

Well, I'm here to tell you that there's a connection. Based on my twenty years as a practicing nutritionist, I see a clear link between rising levels of obesity and the fact that most of us are becoming more toxic every year.

1. Our bodies are staggering under the enormous load of industrial toxins that have entered our food, water, and environment—and these toxins are making us fat. First, we ingest the hormone-laden foods meant to fatten up cattle and sheep for market. Then our hormones are further disrupted by the pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and heavy metals that these poor animals consume with their feed. Finally, our poor polluted planet bombards us with new toxic invaders every day, from the methyl mercury in our fish, to the solvents in our acrylic nails, to the rocket fuel, of all things, that has seeped into the groundwater of twenty-two states. These toxins are in our homes, our workplace, our cosmetics, and our food. They're deadly to our health and disastrous for our weight.

2. Most of us eat far less fiber than we need and consume far more sugar, refined flour, saturated fats, and protein than we should. In this toxic era, we need fiber more than ever, to help us neutralize the toxins and scrub them out of our system. A diet rich in whole grains, legumes, fruits, and fresh vegetables offers us plenty of fiber—but how many of us eat that way? We're more likely to consume fatty, sugary, and floury foods or to go on the low-carb, low-fiber diets like Atkins and South Beach. Previous generations of Americans ate twenty to thirty grams of fiber per day. Our current average has dropped to less than twelve. So the food we eat sits in our colons for weeks, months, even years, where it slowly putrefies, bloating our stomachs and poisoning our bodies. Our poor, overloaded livers are supposed to detoxify our bodies, but they can't keep up with this toxic challenge. They do the best they can, but how can they properly metabolize fat when they're assaulted by this daily dose of toxins? Once again, we gain weight.

3. Low-carb diets are adding new stresses to our liver, colon, and entire digestive system. Some people can lose weight on low-carb diets—I'll be the first to admit it. But the long-term consequences of low-carb diets can be disastrous for both health and long-term weight loss. First, low-carb diets like Atkins and South Beach steer dieters toward high-protein foods like beef, chicken, fish, and pork—the very foods simply loaded with the toxins we've just discussed. Then they urge dieters to avoid the fiber-rich fruits and vegetables that might help purify and eliminate those toxins. Finally, they load us up with so many proteins that we can't produce enough stomach acid to digest them all. Stress, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and poor eating habits have already deprived most Americans of the stomach acid we need. So we end up with an acid reflux epidemic while the undigested meat and cheese rots right there in our gut, overloading our liver and intestines with such poisons as indican, ammonia, cadaverine, and histidine. And—you guessed it—our weight continues to rise.

Clearly, we Americans are sorely in need of both diet and detox—a safe, effective way to lose weight based on supporting our livers and colons. Maybe, I thought, the one-day weight-loss miracle that Woman's World had requested would allow me to kill two birds with one stone. With the right fast, dieters could lose significant amounts of weight virtually overnight, and they could also take advantage of fasting's age-old abil...

Customer Reviews

A bit complicated, but worth it for certain people
I had about 20 pounds to lose, and tried other methods but couldn't seem to budge them. The key thing about any diet or eating program is that everyone's chemical makeup and metabolism responds differently, and so they don't work for everyone.

The people who would benefit the most from this book and this program are those with a combination of certain symtoms and habits, plus a willingness to spend time, energy and money on shifting how they eat.

This is a good book for you if (like me) you suffer from a collection of symptoms:
- overweight
- bloating
- fatigue
- bad skin/rashes
- gastric issues
- problems sleeping
- cholesterol problems (among other things)

While at the same time you have erratic eating habits, such as:

- lots of restaurant meals & takeout
- non-organic food
- fast-food or processed prepared meals
- a passion for sugar, alcohol or caffeine
- overeating/portion control problems
- too much starch, not enough vegetables in your diet

And:
- you decide you can live without coffee
- you're not dependent on drugs or alcohol
- you have accessibility to a steady supply of organic fruits, vegetables and meat into your diet (read: a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's near you)
- the pocketbook to afford more expensive food, plus supplements

This book would probably benefit these types of people the most, as it changes your focus toward food, and makes you understand why certain foods and habits are bad for you. The focus on the liver/colon is especially helpful if you've never given these two organs much thought. For me, it was a major eye opener. Her arguments for organic foods (especially meat) are especially persuasive.

All that said, this is not a one-day detox, and I agree that the title is misleading. I lost six pounds in 11 days on this program, despite a sluggish thyroid. Since then, I've lost an additional two pounds in about a week. I don't stick to it daily but I've incorporated some lessons and I'm continuing to lose. I now find it almost impossible not to eat organic, and I realized that I had a sensitivity to gluten that I was not aware of which surely affected my weight.

One thing you have to keep in mind when selecting an eating program is choosing one that has foods that you like. To be successful on this program, you must like or be willing to eat some dark leafy vegetables (kale, mustard greens, chard, etc.), plus your choice of asparagus, artichokes, broccoli, brussel sprouts and the like. And eggs, you've got to eat some eggs on this plan. But otherwise, you can eat a lot of your normal foods - the key is on elmininating wheat, sugar, alcohol and caffeine. (I cheated, and drank a cup of decaf organic coffee each morning so I didn't lose the "ritual" and it had a sort of placebo effect.) Someone posted that you can't use olive oil, which is erroneous; it's encouraged as part of "healthy oils" intake.

You must also like cranberry juice, which is required for the fast to help stave off hunger. The requirement for unsweetened cranberry use probably makes this impractical for most people living outside the U.S.Canada, as it's difficult or not impossible to get in Europe, Asia and Australia.

Many people complain about the cost of her supplements. But if you take her book into a local health food store, they can hook you up with an equivalent of whatever she's offering. I bit the bullet and ordered Colonix (you can find through a search engine) instead and while spendy, it's been incredibly effective as part of this program.


One secret to the 11 day diet for me was vegetable soup. I made a couple of batches of different soups on the weekend (such as cabbage soup, broccoli/cauliflower, kale/white bean) and ate those each day for lunch to get several of the required vegetables. I also learned that I really like mustard greens and chard - I'd just never realized it. Just visit a recipe site like [...] for the recipes and plug in the ingredients.

She has recipes in the back of the book, but I didn't try them save for the flax "pancake" that I made after the fast. It was fine, mostly apple-y, but I hadn't eaten in a day so anything tasted good!

Combined detoxification and weight loss for the real world
Gittleman's Fast Track Detox Diet brings together two problems that usually are treated separately--detoxification and weight loss--and does a credible job at answering the needs of both. Moreover, no matter what approach one ultimately takes toward losing weight and establishing weight maintenance, her book is a good starting point. The reason is simple: whether or not an individual gained weight because of environmental toxins, it is certainly the case that toxins are stored preferentially in fatty tissues and are released when a person diets. This release of toxins has been shown to be one of the major factors involved in dieting mood swings and in the slowing of weight loss. Simple fasts cause toxins to be released, but these compounds are quickly reabsorbed under fasting conditions, plus the body reacts badly to being suddenly pushed to the wall with fasts. Gittleman knows this and therefore carefully prepares the dieter in the period up to the fast, tells the dieter what to consume to prevent the metabolism from plummeting during the fast, and then maps out an approach for the days following the fast.

Something that I have always liked about Gittleman is that she is very aware of the maxim, "do no harm." Are there more thorough detoxifications available? Of course, but few of us have the luxury of following them, which sometimes I think is a good thing. Are there faster weight loss approaches being marketed? Of course, although speed and lasting weight loss seldom go hand-in-hand. Gittleman describes an initial approach that gets results for the dieter about as quickly as anyone could ever reasonably hope for, yet does not lead to a nasty rebound in weight gain. Thereafter, I would suggest that dieters follow, instead, the approach given in The Fat Flush Plan for consistent and lasting weight loss.

In short, this is a good and useful book. I agree with Gittleman that the data is overwhelming linking environmental toxins to metabolic disorders. Yet even aside from the issue of stored toxins, the preponderance of individuals with weight problems suffer from sub par liver performance and can use Gittleman's tune-up to improve their results from dieting. Highly recommended.

Enlightening Book, Great Results, Tough Diet
I recently finished fast track and it definitely worked. I went on the diet to break a weight loss plateau and I lost about 7 pounds: 4 on prequel, 2 on fast and 1 on sequel. More than I expected. I followed it pretty much exactly, with one or two mess-ups or omissions here and there. I had plenty of energy - worked out almost every day - and wasn't hungry most of the time, nor did I experience constant cravings. The science behind the diet makes sense, and I definitely felt like I was retraining my body and learning about the importance of adding certain categories of food into my diet.

Be warned - I didn't feel this fabulous euphoric feeling that the book alludes to. I actually just felt fine throughout. I will say though, the diet was worth it for me. But if you are like me and love lattes, turkey sandwiches, wine, cheese, crackers, etc. and are used to having them in your weekly routine...it will be a little tough. You should also know that the diet was pretty difficult to follow for me in a social setting. It is relatively expensive, and you must prepare in advance (example - I went into my office building's store for a snack one afternoon and couldn't find one thing that was `allowed'). It was hard to incorporate all of the things that I was supposed to eat (how do you eat a cup of raw parsley?!?), but I got creative, used the book's recipes, and it did get easier.

Some tips (my humble opinion, of course):
-Give up caffeine a few days before you start. Find some `legal' recipes you want to try. Warn your spouse/friends that if they eat out of the cracker box in front of you, you might get irritated. Seriously, telling people you are doing it makes you accountable.
-Start on a Monday or Tuesday so you only have to diet over one weekend (I fasted on a work day and just made plans to run an errand during lunch, was fine for me).
-If you are used to a weekend evening cocktail, mix some cranberry juice, fresh lemon, sparkling water and stevia in a wine glass. It almost fooled me.
-Make a chimichurri sauce with parsley, cilantro, lemon juice, olive oil and garlic and have it on hand to help you meet that `requirement'.
-For the fast, drink the juice and water exactly as suggested by the book. I tried to conserve some juice because I was scared of getting hungry at night, and it didn't work.
-Try to exercise during prequel and sequel, you will have enough energy and it might focus you away from food.
-Start the diet with a partner, I will next time.

I hope this helps. And while I can't imagine a world without Starbucks and Wheat Thins, it is definitely worth it to try this diet a few times a year. If anything, it reprograms you to appreciate food and to be conscious of your veggie, fruit, fiber and water intake. Good luck!