Protein Power: The High-Protein/Low Carbohydrate Way to Lose Weight, Feel Fit, and Boost Your Health-in Just Weeks! [Paperback]

Michael R. Eades (Author), Mary Dan Eades (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 1, 1997

An effective, medically sound diet that lets you eat bacon, eggs, steak, even cheese?

It's true!  Lose fat.  Feel fit.  Stop craving.  Without counting fat grams and without giving up the foods you love.

Based on cutting-edge research, this revolutionary and deliciously satisfying plan has already helped thousands of patients lose weight and achieve other lifesaving health benefits, including lower cholesterol and blood pressure readings and an improvement or reversal of common disorders such as heart disease, adult-onset diabetes, and gout.  Developed by Doctors Michael and Mary Dan Eades, the simple regimen calls for a new way of eating: a protein-rich, moderate-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that will have you feeling better and more energetic within a week, and help correct blood sugar levels, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol within three weeks.  So if you've been living the low-fat, no-fat way and still haven't lost weight, stop blaming yourself! Instead, turn to the breakthrough metabolic program that replaces lifelong dieting with lifelong health.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If smoked salmon and cream cheese omelets, sautéed jumbo shrimp, and double-patty burgers suit your palate, belly up to the Protein Power diet: "Not a high protein diet" but "an adequate protein diet." Doctors Michael R. and Mary Dan Eades make a persuasive case in favor of "the diet we were meant to eat."

Similar to Dr. Robert Atkins's New Diet Revolution, the authors cite insulin as the main culprit in weight gain and expound the benefits of a diet extremely low in carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, which are changed into sugar during digestion, stimulate the body to store fat, making weight loss virtually impossible. The most revolutionary idea put forth in Protein Power is that the fat you eat has very little bearing on the fat you gain: in other words, we aren't what we eat after all. Researchers have found that eating larger portions of protein in conjunction with severely reduced portions of carbohydrates causes people to burn the excess fat stored in their bodies.

Protein Power is packed with helpful charts and formulas, so you can estimate your body-fat percentage and your ideal weight for your particular body composition. There are worksheets to calculate your protein need and carbohydrate and protein equivalency charts, as well as charts that allow you to track your fat and weight loss. But this book is not all grams and percentages: it also shows you what a day of eating on this diet would look like and includes sample menus and 70 pages of recipes. If you've been starving yourself for years and just can't seem to lose weight, this may be the diet for you. --Jhana Bach

From Publishers Weekly

The Eades, who share a weight-loss and family-medicine practice in Arkansas, have each written a popular medical book?his is Thin So Fast; hers, The Doctor's Complete Guide to Vitamins and Minerals. In their first shared volume, they turn popular weight-management beliefs?and the latest FDA food-guide pyramid?upside down. For years, overweight Americans have been counseled to turn away from meat and fat and embrace a high-carbohydrate diet. Joining a growing band of researchers that includes Barry Sears (The Zone), the Eades discuss the biochemical roles of hormones in the metabolic process to demonstrate why low-fat, high-carb programs don't always result in weight loss and present a convincing case for their high-protein, low-carb alternative. The key is preventing, through diet, overproduction of insulin, which itself "controls the storage of fat" and is triggered by the ingestion of carbohydrates. Their eating plan?which is bolstered by lists of protein and carbohydrate counts for common foods, a collection of about 75 appealing recipes and discussion of the necessity of exercise?will lead, they aver, to the body's more efficent burning of fat, leading in turn to reduction in one's percentage of body fat. Cholesterol, vitamins, minerals and various risk factors are also discussed. Chapters end with fairly complete summaries that will be appreciated by readers who are not willing or able to work through the fairly extensive scientific data cited by the Eades in this iconoclastic program.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 429 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books; 1st edition (December 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553574752
• ISBN-13: 978-0553574753
• Product Dimensions: 4.3 x 1.2 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (497 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #26,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #74 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Diets & Weight Loss > Low Carb

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

332 of 334 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Eades and Eades have changed my life ---- forever! July 25, 2000

By Larry E.

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Dec 2008: I just came across this review and reread it. It is 8 years later and it is still all true. I have had to fight with my weight (I absolutely love to eat) and have had to remind myself that calories count as well. The news is that even after 8 years my glucose tests (A1C blood test) come back excellent, my cholesterol is still at the same levels and my weight is not quite as great as 8 years ago but it is still way better than 220 (I am at 180). I owe the continued improvement in my health to the premises in this book.

July 2000: The past ten years have been hell. I had high cholesterol, high triglycerides and Diabetes, Type II. I was totally unable to get my weight to a reasonable level. I was dieting, exercising, riding a bike 5 days a week, and doing everything I was told, but my weight hit a wall at 224 pounds.

I discovered Protein Power, read it and gave it a try. In only 8 weeks I had lost inches from my waist and dropped 20 pounds. Today, after 1.5 years I am in the best health of my life, I weigh 170 lbs, I have stopped taking the Lipator. My blood tests show that my cholesterol, triglycerides and sugar levels are all perfect.

The results are exactly what the authors predicted - control the Insulin enemy through diet and the body will clean itself up and function properly. They presented me an easy to understand explanation of what happens inside my body and how to control it. They gave me a life style and eating regimen I can maintain the rest of my life. My advice to you is buy it, try it and live longer and better with it. It is simple!

236 of 237 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Measured Results November 24, 1999

By William Duffy

Format:Hardcover

I am an Engineering Manager working for a well known measurement company. As such, I have access to blood chemistry measurement equipment and I've used it to document results.

I've used this approach to eating for 18 months and I'd like to share the measured results. I am 49 years old and I am 6'4" tall. My weight has gone from 260 to 208. My blood pressure has dropped from 140/90 to 106/60. My Total Cholesterol has dropped from 217 to 174; my LDL is 127 mg/dl, my HDL is 50 mg/dl and my triglycerides are down to 78 mg/dl. These are all within healthy ranges. For those who believe that this way of eating is unhealthy I ask, what else should I measure?

Try this out; it may save your life!

141 of 143 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars AMAZING April 21, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I have lost 50 pounds on this diet over a year and I feel simply amazing. My serum cholesterol/lipid levels are incredible. (LDL: 89, triglycerides: 84, down more than a hundred points from the days when I ate high-carb, whole grain and low protein.)

I cannot adequately emphasize how thoroughly it has changed my life and my health for the better.

Major myths about this plan and low carb eating in general:
-It is not true that you will overload your kidneys and liver and get stinky breath.
-It is not true that it is "just like Atkins" (it departs from Atkins on many significant points--the most obvious of which is that there is no induction of ketosis. Ketosis, although not considered a danger to someone with healthy kidneys, is totally irrelevant. Carb intake is not quite as restrictive as on Atkins.)
-This is not a "diet" so much as a sustainable and healthy nutritional approach.
-It is not a "fad diet." People have been eating low carb for CENTURIES. (How odd that these cultures which eat low carb tend to be healthier and have less CVD than those who do not, hmm?)
-Eating low carb does not mean you sit around noshing on bacon, meat, cheese and pork rinds all day. (The only difference between the way I eat and the way the standard American eats: my plate does not have french fries soaked in trans fats and a piece of bread around my burger. If I should choose to eat a burger, I will have a whopping side of healthy vegetables and nuts and I will *not* chase it with carbonated sugar-water.)
-People who eat low carb are not necessarily constipated all the time (on this plan fiber is theoretically unlimited. With all the veggies, fruits and nuts, etc. I venture that low carb people eat MORE fiber than most.)
-Eating low carb does not mean you automatically eat more fat.
-Even if your fat intake goes up, as long as it is healthy fat, it is not that big a deal because dietary fat is not the boogeyman they wanted us to believe in the 80s and 90s--sugar is! Eating fat does not make you fat.
-Eating low carb will not make you feel weak and dizzy all the time. (If you feel weak and ill during the early phases, be sure to re-read the chapter on potassium. Many people get discouraged because as the body begins to flush, potassium is flushed along with a lot of "water weight" and they complain of weakness or dizziness that may or may not go away after they settle into the plan. Adding a supplement or potassium-based salt substitute will often cure the problem!)
-The weight one loses on this plan over time is *NOT* all water weight. I am now 50 lbs lighter than I was when I started. I guarantee that was not 50 lbs of water.
-This plan does not work solely because it is calorie restrictive and for no other reason. (I tried calorie restriction for years--it never worked. All calories are not created equal--calories from various sources will make your body respond differently physiologically as they are burned. If I try a calorie restrictive approach, I have to eat fewer than 1000 calories in order to lose. On this way of eating, I can eat up to 3000 and still lose.)
-This way of eating will not necessarily raise your serum cholesterol-more often than not, it LOWERS LDL and raises HDL.
-This is not a "High Protein Diet." The figures in this book for minimal protein intake are not that far from standard RDA recommendations! However, this book does emphasize ADEQUATE protein as necessary for maintaining physical health and for losing weight.

People (especially doctors) who crusade against low carb eating have a reality check in the mail. For what its worth, my doctor is now on the Protein power plan herself. She was nervous at first, but is now one of its most outspoken defenders.

I am so grateful for this book.