Gary Taubes is a scientist and a journalist who has spent much of his career writing about “bad science.”  In 2002, he gained national prominence by publishing an article in the New York Times, “What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” This article challenged the validity of low-fat diets and defended the Atkins diet against the medical establishment.  The article put Gary on the map.  It also made him the recipient of a lot of hate mail.  If you have time click on the link and read it.

In 2007, Taubes published his book Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease. This book discusses the history of dieting and the bad science that led our government and our medical community to believe dietary fat causes heart disease and obesity.  In Good Calories, Bad Calories, Taubes very eloquently makes the case that refined carbohydrates – sugar and flour – are responsible for heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, and many other of the diseases of civilization.

Good Calories, Bad Calories changed the way I think about nutrition, and as most of you can tell, it changed the way we do things at Exercise Inc.  We used to recommend our clients eat 5 servings of “healthy whole grains a day.” In fact, I have a very good hand-out I wrote about why I thought eating whole grains was so important.  If you still have that article anywhere, just throw it away – I was only following conventional wisdom – the-world-is-flat kind of thinking.  Gary’s book, along with Primal Blueprint, byMark Sisson, and the DVD Fathead, by Tom Naughton, totally changed the way we think about carbohydrates and fat at Exercise Inc.

As good as Good Calories, Bad Calories is, I have only recommended this book to a few people. So what’s wrong with it you might ask; well, it’s 640 pages long and it’s not an easy read.  There were parts that I had to read 3 times to fully understand.  A book this big will eat into your Dancing with the Stars time.

For a while, medical and fitness professionals who follow Gary’s work have asked him to write ashorter, more consumer friendly version of Good Calories, Bad Calories. That’s exactly what he did with his new book Why We Get Fat: and What to Do About It.

This book is only 200 pages long, and it’s an easy read.  This book is what I’ve been waiting for as a Fitness Professional.  We now have a great, easy to read book that will help you (our clients) understand why we make the recommendations we do.  Some of Gary’s basic theses in this book are:

•   The calories-in/calories out model is wrong.

•   Carbohydrates are the cause of obesity.

•   A low-fat diet is not healthy.

•   A low-carb diet is essential for good health.

•   Carbohydrates are important causes of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and most of the diseases of civilization.

When you read this book understand that it’s not a “how-to” book, it’s a “why” book.  Our Healthy Habits, which have helped hundreds of clients lose fat and keep it off long term, is the “how-to.”  This is the best book I can recommend to help you understand why our nutrition program works.  It’s also very motivational.