Review
Patrick Holford's low-GL Diet is a diet that, he says, will seriously undamage your health. The only side effects of the low glycaemic load diet are extra energy, better mood and memory, and clearer skin! Not only that, but by eating low-GL you can reduce your risk of some of the most prevalent diseases of the 21st century - diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. The Low-GL Diet Bible goes into detail and provides scientific research about why this is the case, along with testimonials from people who have tried it for themselves and have the results to prove their health turnaround. Weight loss and the ability to maintain your optimal weight is simply a side effect of giving your body optimum nutrition such as a low-GL diet. The results will leave you in optimum health, slim, mentally fit and glowing with vitality. And what's more ? it's easy to follow, with menus and wonderful recipes that are delicious as well as straightforward to prepare.
464pp, 153mm x 234mm, Paperback, 2009

Extract
Why the Holford Diet Works
Imagine this...
You've just woken up. You feel full of energy. Your mind is clear. You get up, have a healthy breakfast and, throughout the day, your energy is good, your mood is stable, you're mentally sharp and your concentration is good. You haven't once experienced a single craving. You haven't had dips or got cranky and irritable.

But that's just the inside story. You also look great. Your weight is more or less where you want it to be. You're well toned. Your skin has a healthy glow. People often comment on how slim and well you look and how young you look for your age. You feel young, both physically and mentally. And this is how you feel every day!

Welcome to the new you. Not only is this how you could be but it is also how you should be. More importantly, it's how you will be when you follow the Holford Diet. And all it takes to see a dramatic difference is 30 days.

I realise that you may have spent the last decade trudging through a succession of diets with nothing to show for it but a slimmed-down bank balance and more fat than you started with. Every bookshop bristles with 'miracle' weight-loss techniques, and 'guaranteed' recipes for everything from longevity to cellulite control. So I know you may be feeling cheated by claims and promises that have never panned out. Why, then, should you believe what I'm saying?

You can be thin and healthy
This is why. The Holford Diet works because it is much more than just a way to lose weight. It is a holistic system for attaining optimum health - and a healthy, self-regulating body is naturally slim. Unlike most diets it works with your body's natural design, not against it.

The fact is that many of the people who discovered my diet, followed it and wrote to me reporting substantial weight loss, didn't actually set out to lose weight in the first place. They wanted to be healthy and thought the optimum-nutrition approach made sense. And, as their health improved, the weight dropped off. Optimum health, they found, also means optimum weight.

The body will naturally reach its ideal weight when given the chance. You'll eat less if your blood sugar is stable, and your metabolism will be better able to burn off excess weight.

I have yet to see any diet work better in the long run than this approach. I teach doctors, healthcare practitioners and nutritionists all over the world, but none are as slim, energetic and healthy as the thousand nutritionists we have trained at ION - the Institute for Optimum Nutrition.

At ION, decades of work with more than 100,000 volunteers first revealed how overall health determines weight by showing that overweight is a symptom of a much wider condition. We sometimes call it 'twenty-first-centuryitis'.

Exhaustion, moodiness, depression, bloating - twenty-first centuryitis is a response to our polluted, urbanised, speeded-up world, and overweight is a common symptom of it.

A diet for life
The point is that we already know how to cure twenty-first-centuryitis, and that is my goal for you. I want you to lose weight fast, keep losing weight until you reach your goal, and maintain your weight once you get there - but always within the context of optimum energy and well-being. This is what you can look forward to:

• Within 7 days you will start to lose weight as quickly as you'll gain energy.
• Within 20 days you'll notice your skin has dramatically improved.
• Within 30 days you'll be starting to feel like a new you.
• And within three months? You'll have seriously undamaged your health.

From The Low-GL Diet Bible, ?2009 by Patrick Holford, published by Piatkus.