Product Description

DESCRIPTION: Following the success of The Ultimate Smoothie Book, Cherie Calbom offers this diet based on groundbreaking research that proves coconut oil promotes weight loss.

Low-carb diets like Atkins and South Beach are the hottest weight loss programs on the market, but they could work faster and more effectively with the addition of one ingredient: coconut oil. Not only does it boost metabolism and speed weight loss, there is evidence that suggests that adding a small amount of coconut oil into ones daily diet can help lower cholesterol; improve conditions such as diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS, Crohns, and other digestive disorders; enhance thyroid production; and increase overall energy. THE COCONUT DIET offers a 21-day weight loss program and includes a four-week cleansing regimen for readers who want more benefits. With meal plans and more than 70 recipes to help readers put the plan into action, as well as nutritional facts, tips for easy preparation, ingredient explanation, storage suggestions, and many other creative details, readers will learn how to start reaping the benefits of coconut oil today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31909 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Amazon.com Review
A slight variation on the standard low carb theme, The Coconut Diet's biggest strength is the recipes. Author Cherie Calbom (The Ultimate Smoothie Book) includes a wide range of easy, deeply flavorful sauces, soups and condiments that will keep the interest of the pickiest palate while still following the fairly strict limitations of the accompanying diet.

While the ostensible goal is weight loss, many of the chapters concern themselves with the varied symptoms of poor health--low energy, general aches and pains and digestive troubles particularly. Suggestions for feeling better center around cleansing juice fasts, supplements, and colonics, along with a recommendation of adding virgin coconut oil (a saturated fat created with medium-chain triglycerides) to each meal, for a total of two to three tablespoons every day. A healthy fat with a bad reputation, it does have the benefit of helping you feel full during a limited-calorie diet--and if you find that it lives up to the somewhat miraculous claims outlined in the book, so much the better.

Aimed more at folks trying to achieve a point of basic health rather than already active people working towards optimum fitness, many of the chapters shun allopathic health care, claiming that many standard tests aren't up to scratch and that proper diagnosis can be achieved by attending to your symptoms. For readers who are open to looking at a range of possible solutions to their health issues, the naturopathic ideas offered here may well provide assistance--but whether a single tropical oil can measure up to all the claims is something lab scientists and natural nutritionists will argue about for some time to come. Jill Lightner

Customer Reviews

Two corrections to info herein
I have no need to lose weight, but have been looking for alternative to soymilk (which many discover as their alternative to animal milk), because soy oil and the pseudo hormones in soy are not good for you, I believe.

Probably due to lingering, and by now undispellable, anti- "tropical oil" propaganda I still harbor a worry that coconut oil's saturation is not good. Any info on the subject is welcome, and there is much info in this book about coconut oil VS soyoil, and the anti-thyroid qualities of soy (and peanuts) are of particular interest (tho I have no official diagnosis of hypothyroid).

This is a well-written book, friendly and compassionate, but two items should be corrected, and I say that knowing this same bad info has been promulgated in other books, TV shows, magazines, and commercials. The Coconut Diet book, in listing foods to eat, and in what quantities, mentions rice and almond milk. The amounts of nuts, for example, to be eaten daily are (recommended to be) restricted due to the "high carb content" of nuts. Ricemilk, on the other hand, is on the list of allowed foods, but with no mention of quantity restrictions on it. But ricemilk is almost all carbs. Not only is it almost all carbs, but those carbs are comprised in hi degree of simple sugar (maltose). It's bad food, period. Matter of fact, it aint even food. It's watered-down candy. Ricemilk is made from rice syrup, a sweetener. The sweetener, yes, is made from rice, perhaps brown rice, but the "milk" is made from the syrup. Almond milk is also recommended, and when unsweetened, it is better than ricemilk--but most people are too "wimpy" to endure the taste of unsweetened almond milk, which, with or without sweetener is, IMO, also not worth its unrecyclable "Tetrapak" container.

Another error, made not only in this book, but in countless other places, is that eating fish is good for you because fish supplies the body with Omega 3 oils. Fish supplies clean protein, and does NOT supply animal fat like tallow or lard. That's why it's good. But it is not a supply of bio-USABLE Omega 3 oil UNLESS you eat RAW fish, because Omega 3, like any oil, is oxidized by heating (cooking), and thus eating fish, especially when grilled, supplies you with OXIDIZED Omega 3. Since this "super-unsaturated" oil is very fragile under heat, it sustains more damage from heat than even soy or corn oil, which turn almost to plastic (polymerize) when heated (never, never eat deep-fried foods). So, whenever you hear or read a "health" tip to eat fish because of its Omega 3 either plan to eat the fish raw (and it's best not to), or discard the info as false. Rely on your source of Omega 3 to come ONLY from supplements made from raw fish (oil).

Generally, the advice in this book to eliminate vegetable oils--soy, corn, sesame, canola, etc--is, imo, very good advice. The coconut oil issue, however is yet perplexing to me, and, notwithstanding proven anti-viral properties of the lauric acid in coconut oil, the jury is still out about whether or not I should start ingesting it in significant, that is, "therapeutic", quantities.

love the coconut
I look forward to trying some of the recipes. The couple that I did try did not give me the best results but I'm still going to try them.

Want something different? Your weight is over...
Perusing its title, I couldn't help but pick up this book and check it out, imagining a book that would be telling me how I could lose those unwanted pounds by eating just coconuts everyday. However what I found was something completely different. This is a diet book that advocates the ever popular low carb diet to lose weight, but with a twist- incorporating coconut oil into your diet. Written by a nutritionist (a welcome change among diet books) and very easy to follow, if you're up for someting different, this might just be for you. Also recommend Strength Training Anatomy for readers who need a good resource for all the different weight training exercises.