The Way to Eat: A Six-Step Path to Lifelong Weight Control [Hardcover]

David L. Katz (Author), Maura Gonzalez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2002

The Way to Eat is a comprehensive guide to a lifetime of eating well in support of three goals: overall good health, weight control and the enjoyment of food. The Way to Eat helps readers identify the common barriers to healthful eating in the modern nutritional environment, including busy schedules, the easy access to fast, fatty foods and our predisposition to prefer fats and sweets. Strategies for overcoming barriers are stressed.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Katz, a professor at Yale University School of Medicine and director of Yale's nutrition center, offers a comprehensive overview of food and diets. The book begins with a guide to nutritional basics and what people need to eat vs. what they may want to eat. Katz debunks common myths and offers specific suggestions such as how to eat less salt, what percentage of different foods should be consumed daily, how to limit foods, etc. The book contends that people can train themselves to eat certain foods and not eat other foods by eliminating less healthy choices. For example, by knowing something contains both excessive fat and salt, people can plan for a healthier substitute. Much of the book offers prescriptive steps designed to help people make these smarter food choices. The advice, while not completely original, is still worthwhile. For example, in a section on the right way to snack, Katz says, "For snacking to be beneficial, the snacks themselves must be well chosen, and used in substitution for, rather than in addition to, other items in the diet.... Good snacking should have a certain rhythm, with certain types of snacks eaten at certain times of day." While not offering a specific diet plan, the book provides practical tips, along with persuasive reasons, for changing eating habits. This title is a solid addition to the nutrition and diet shelves.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From the Introduction

Polar bears in the Sahara Desert are apt to find themselves in serious trouble. Not because of anything wrong with the bears. Rather, simply and obviously, because such bears in the Sahara would not be where they belong. Not being in the environment for which all of their remarkable adaptations prepare them places the polar bears in jeopardy.

Just like polar bears, human beings, Homo sapiens, are a species. And like all species, we have a native habitat and a relationship with it. We have compensated admirably for climate and terrain, using our ingenuity to devise air conditioning and heating systems, building materials, and clothes for heat and cold. But we are adapted to a particular nutritional environment, and in moving outside of it, we have not done so well.

This matters, and matters profoundly, for two reasons. First, a species in the wrong environment is a lot different from individuals lacking willpower. Individuals have blamed themselves for being overweight, beat themselves up for not eating right or exercising, and felt like failures for not staying on a "diet," but they have simply not understood the plight of the species. Polar bears are designed to retain and conserve heat. It's not their fault; it's just a fact. In the Arctic it keeps them alive. In the Sahara it would threaten their survival. We, adapted to a world where getting food was always a struggle, are designed to retain and conserve food energy (calories). In a world of subsistence, where there is barely enough, it kept us alive. In a world of constant abundance, it is threatening our well-being, and at times even our survival.

A majority of American adults are overweight. Diabetes is epidemic. Obesity causes, or contributes to, nearly four hundred thousand premature deaths annually. The chronic disease and psychological toll of an eating pattern at odds with our needs and adaptations is quite overwhelming.

The second reason this matters is that we are, as the saying goes, smarter than the average bear! And so, if we understand the specific ways in which we are designed for a world of too little food, we can apply strategies that will allow us to achieve dietary health and weight control even in a world of constant abundance.

Then & Now The mood of a Neanderthal living one hundred thousand years ago may well have risen to optimism or sunk to despair in concert with the flesh between their ribs. In that world, the struggle to survive was simply all abiding. Living was the time spent between the fear and anxiety of an empty belly, and the calm, reassuring comfort of fullness.

Now, we all struggle against the hazards of plenty with a Stone Age physiology, and persistent Stone Age attitudes and inclinations. We are still very much what the circumstances of our evolutionary past have made us, and cannot stop being who and what we have always been just because the environment has changed, any more than polar bears, set down in the Sahara, could suddenly stop being or acting like polar bears.

The creatures we are designed to be by countless evolutionary ages and the slow, steady sculpting of natural selection cannot be denied. Our ancestors adapted to a world of intense physical labor in which getting enough food was a constant struggle. And the adaptations that resulted, that enabled their survival, have been passed along to every one of us. Just as some of us are taller, shorter, darker, lighter, faster, or slower than others, so too, do we differ with regard to our metabolism and physiology. But that variation all occurs over a range designed for surviving in a world of too little food, not too much. So, until you are prepared to blame a polar bear in the desert for overheating, you cannot blame yourself for struggling to avoid overeating, to control your weight, or to optimize your health, in the modern nutritional environment.

You can overcome the challenge of the modern nutritional environment by understanding it and our relationship with it. Understanding and knowledge are the basis for power-the power to meet challenges, to surmount barriers, to convert obstacles into opportunities. We are confronted with a modern nutritional environment that is at odds with our every trait and tendency, that is in many ways toxic to us, very much like polar bears in the Sahara. But with power born of knowledge, and with will based on realistic hope, we can get home from here. There is, indeed, a way.

Is This Book for You? Probably! The struggle with food in our modern environment is nearly universal, and very few people have the resources they need to engage in it successfully.

Many books about weight control offer approaches that ignore the essential role of diet to overall health-this one does not. So it is also for you if you have concerns about, already have, or are at risk for, any chronic ailment, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or arthritis. Because this book addresses how to eat well for overall health, it is also for you if you are healthy and would like to put nutrition to work in your efforts to remain that way.

Finally, this book is for you if you are willing to acknowledge that dietary pattern is important to health, pleasure, and weight control--and that, ideally, no one of these should be pursued at the cost of the others!.... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks; 1 edition (December 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570719837
• ISBN-13: 978-1570719837
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #956,333 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We chose it for our "Let's all read the same book" project., November 20, 2003

By 

M. Perdue (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Way to Eat: A Six-Step Path to Lifelong Weight Control (Hardcover)

Review for Amazon

Healthy U of Delmarva recently selected The Way to Eat as the book we would use for our "Let's all read the same health book" program and also, this book won our $1000 award for the Best Lifestyles Improvement Book. If you're considering buying The Way to Eat, you might enjoy knowin what went into selecting this book out of all the hundreds of diet and exercise books that are out there.

For a start, we were a little skeptical about all the currently popular diet books. We are aware of studies that show that even though virtually all of the popular diet books will enable you to lose weight initially, a year after starting their diet, you'll almost certainly have gained all the weight back and then some. We wanted a book that would give readers the best chance at long term, healthy weight control, and that meant the book we selected would have to be one that took into account the kinds of diets that actually work long term. What you're about to read isn't the biggest reason we chose the Way to Eat but we were impressed by the fact that this book is based on a review of literally thousands of long term studies on which diets really work.

In addition to wanting a book that had the best chance of achieving what it aimed at, we were also looking for a book that is scientifically sound, one that was written by someone with true medical and scientific credentials. Dr. Katz is a medical doctor, a scientist, and a professor at the Yale University Medical School. He wrote the technical book on nutrition that your doctor may be using as a reference book.

The book we selected also had to pass yet another screen, once our committee of librarians and physicians were satisfied that the book would be reliable and scientifically sound: the book would have to be written in a popular style. Dr. Katz writes the nutrition column for Oprah's O Magazine, so he has experience writing in a popular style. Our county librarians agreed that The Way to Eat was written in a clear, accessible and reader-friendly style.

We recommended The Way to Eat to the 156,000 people in the Tri-County area that Healthy U serves because it scored the highest among the dozens of books that our local librarians and physicians reviewed. They felt that it had the greatest chance of helping people improve their lifestyles, that the author had credentials that they would trust, and that it was written in a people-friendly style.

If you want a book that can make a difference in your health and your family's health as well, Healthy U of Delmarva recommends this book. Why not use this book for your area's "Let's all read the same book" program? E-mail me and I'll tell you how we did it.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars what it is, July 28, 2004

By 

Phili foodie (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Way to Eat: A Six-Step Path to Lifelong Weight Control (Paperback)

I wanted to lose about 10-15 lbs. Everyone I knew (thin people overall)were suddenly doing the no-carb thing. But as someone who has never been on and never wants to go on a diet I could not get myself to accept that grains are my downfall and meat is the answer. I was leary of trying to, quote, trick my body into thinking it is starving, during an induction period that was being recommended by the other diets. I wanted a diet that would be heart healthy long-term and that I would want to share as a way of life with my children. I believe that the no-carb folk are motivated by the quick results of the induction period, not as much due to restricted carbs as restricted calories. My sister wouldn't eat a single grape the first few weeks.

But they are a convincing lot and I decided to take out a few of the popular diet books from the library and decide my path to a healthier/leaner life at leisure. The clear winner was The Way to Eat. It provides the motivation to break the bad habits (sugars, bad carbs, too few veggies, junk food). It acknowledged the existence of bad carbs and without blacking the name of all carbs. In fact it differntiates the good, bad or ugly in all the food groups with it's recommendations. The diet (and its presentation in the book)is balanced, positive, and backed by the bulk of professional studies over the course of years. A fun read, it made getting on track easy and delicious. So now, with the right foods on my shelves, I have returned all the books to the library's shelves and am here on Amazon.com to purchase my own copy of Dr. Katz's book. And I plan to share it with my no-carb crowd!

Note to the reviewer a few down who complains that the reveiws are from CT and MD: your e-mail was so not helpful...it had nothing whatever to do with the content of the book! Some free advice: grow up, stop being a nudge, and read the book before you comment.

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THIS IS THE BOOK DOCTORS AND THEIR PATIENTS HAVE BEEN WAITIN, February 4, 2003

By 

John F. Setaro, MD, Director, Cardiovascular ... (New Haven, CT, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Way to Eat: A Six-Step Path to Lifelong Weight Control (Hardcover)

The Way To Eat is a superb book by nutritionist and preventive specialist Dr. David Katz. He explains in clear terms how we have gotten into the present epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease (our bodies are originally adapted for intensive physical activity in a setting of constant food scarcity), and why binging and weight gain are natural outcomes (in our new high-fat high-calorie low activity environment). Katz then dispenses with both guilt as well as fad diets, explaining how we can alter our eating habits to suit the modern environment. Simple and intelligent food choices (including how to read and really understand "Nutrition Facts" product labeling), healthful snacking, and providing children with healthful early eating habits serve as major points of emphasis in this outstanding guide. The Way To Eat is a major achievement in the nutrition field. I have already begun recommending it to patients and their families, and readers everywhere will be richly rewarded when they embrace Dr. Katz's insightful, enjoyable, and common sense advice.