Fat Free, Flavor Full: Dr. Gabe Mirkin's Guide to Losing Weight & Living Longer

I started researching this topic about 2 years ago when my 35 year old husband became violently sick one night, he went the next morning for a blood test and his triglycerides were over 1800. They should be around 150 for a normal person. My husband has what Dr. Murkin calls Diabetic genes (all of his siblings and father suffer from high tri's & cholesterol). His HDL was 20 and his cholesterol was 400. After 2 weeks on Murkin, tricor and niacin he's bloods were in a good range. Since my husband & I prefer not to take medicine, he dropped the niacin and tricor after about a month. His bloods remained low with just the Murkin Diet. He began cheating about 6 months ago and spiraled out of control, a recent blood test showed tri's up above 2000. We are back on the diet in a big way and we will never go off of it again. I highly recommend this book!!

The book is inspiring, and I highly recommend it. What made this diet extremely easy for me (as a working mom with a nursing 1-year-old I have little time to cook) is that there's a company near me called Diet-to-Go that delivers Mirkin Meals to my home. I feel like I could eat this way forever. I have lots of energy, and after just two months of eating Mirkin-style, even my pre-pregnancy clothes are all loose on me. For people who like whole grains, beans, veggies and fruit, this way of eating is extremely satisfying. The food is filling, and it seems like I'm getting a very nutritious diet every day, with enough protein, complex carbs, vitamins and minerals. I find that I really don't crave the fat, and that 20 grams of fat per day is plenty. I think this type of diet also boosts the immune system, because even though others in my household (who are not on the diet) have been coming down with colds and viruses, I've stayed healthy. Mirkin recommends exercise, but with so little time, the best I can manage is to wear a pedometer and try to walk 10,000 steps each day. But, I've found that even walking an average of 4,000 steps seems to be sufficient to cause weight loss on the Mirkin diet.

I lost 30 pounds in 6 months on this diet and kept it off. The reason this book succeeded for me where all other diets failed is that it supplied me with lots of recipes for food that I could stuff myself silly with. There is no limiting portions or stopping at one serving (with the high fiber, low fat recipes). I can make a whole pot of stew and eat the whole thing at one sitting if I want. It works for me because I find the recipes absolutely delicious. This book won't help people who dislike grains, beans or the exotic flavors it uses. But if you like this type of food, this is THE weight loss book to use!

Dr. Gabe Mirkin and Diana Rich (his wife) have a talk show in the DC area where they discuss nutrition, diet, medicine, disease, etc. This book covers mainly his philosophy on eating. However, half of the book is a compendium of his low-fat, high fiber recipes, most of which are vegetarian, but some of which involve fish and shelfish. Basically Mirkin's philosophy involves eating low-fat, high-fiber foods. You are supposed to eat no more than 20 grams of fat per day. And you are allowed only 2 or 3 serving per day of low-fiber foods (like milk, jam, bread, pretzels, etc.). This may seem a harsh regimen, but Mirkin includes some leeway as well: for one or two meals a week you can have whatever you want, which makes eating out much easier; and you can have as many whole grains (whole wheat, barley, oats, etc.), beans, fruits, and vegetables as you want. The idea is that you will never feel deprived because you can always go to the cupboard and eat two cans of beans, a pineapple and a pound of broccoli. Mirkin emphasizes that his eating plan won't take pounds off unless you exercise, so this is no magic formula. What I liked so much about this book was how Mirkin describes the science of how fats break down and are absorbed into the body and used, the chemical differences between saturated, mono-saturated and poly-unsaturated fat, and how curbing fat and calorie intake can not only elleviate many of the health problems that we already associate with obesity (such as heart disease), but can actually cure other problems such as adult-onset diabedes. If you're not into dieting or healthy eating, it's at least interesting as a scientific look (albeit at a layman's level) at food and how the body is affected by it.

The book was easy to read and informative. My wife and I have tried many of his recipes and they taste great. Even our kids like them. They are very easy to make. The ingredients are easy to find and amazingly economical. We filled a whole shopping cart with Mirkins ingredients for only $50 Cdn. The bonus is that we have lost weight. Best cook book I have read.