The DASH Diet Younger You: Shed 20 Years--and Pounds--in Just 10 Weeks by Marla Heller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I started reading this book while I was in cardiac rehab after open heart surgery to replace my calcified aortic valve. I also read Heller's The DASH Diet Weight Loss Solution, and I had an easier time sticking to its recommendations at first. Now, I think the easier time I had with that book was because I still had little appetite and my husband was doing most of the cooking for the two of us.
I grew stronger while I completed my three-times a week formal exercise program. While we exercised, other members of my cardiac rehab group discussed meal options they used, and my husband and I attended a nutrition session with a nutritionist as part of this formal program. As I returned to the task of meal planning and making a grocery list, I found myself becoming resistant and objecting to information in this book. This was the same kind of resistance I formerly encountered from friends and members of my extended family during the years (1981-2003) I was a lacto-ovo-vegetarian, and I cooked that way when they visited me. My progress with this book was stuck . I was stuck until I started reading Kevin Horsley's book, Unlimited Memory when one of his questions challenged me: "What excuses are you going to make for not using the information that I am going to learn?" That woke me up to the idea that the excuses and objections I had with this book were not my own excuses; these were other people's excuses and objections that I heard so many times that I had been manipulated to agree with them. It was not only the people I knew, the food industry has advertised enough to convince me to agree to use their "vegetarian" options that contain too much high-fructose corn syrup and other sugars, too much sodium, and too many other ingredients that are not really necessary to preserve the food while making my choices for meal preparation "easier" and "more convenient".
I finished the book, and now I am ready to use these menu planners and suggestions with no excuses, only with more information about what works for me and my husband. Now my only objection to this book is the lack of nutritional analysis with each recipe. I rely on MyFitnessPal to track for sodium content.
I strongly and fervently recommend this book and other books by Heller to all readers.


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