The Galveston Diet: The Doctor-Developed, Patient-Proven Plan to Burn Fat and Tame Your Hormonal Symptoms
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars | 2,193 ratings
Price: 13.78
Last update: 10-19-2024
About this item
A patient-proven eating and lifestyle program to balance nutrition and sustain weight loss—including more than 40 delicious recipes and 6 weeks of meal plans—tailored to women in midlife.
“I haven’t changed my diet or exercise habits and yet the scale keeps moving in the wrong direction. What’s going on?!”
Time and again, this is the question Dr. Mary Claire Haver’s patients asked. At first, a practicing OB/GYN, she’d dutifully advise what she’d been taught in medical school: eat less and work out more. But that standard advice didn’t solve the problem because back then she—and so many other doctors—hadn’t taken into account the physiological factors affecting women. They tend to store fat, they can have a hard time accessing that stored fat as active fuel, and their hormonal fluctuations in midlife exacerbate the situation.
Then, Dr. Haver found herself in this exact predicament with the added issues of low energy, hot flashes, and brain fog. So she set out to develop a nutrition programthat would meet her own and her patients’ needs once and for all. Now, nearly 100,000 women have found success in Dr. Haver's unique plan for permanent weight loss and reduced menopausal symptoms by following her three interconnected strategies:
- Fuel Refocus: Starting in their thirties, women need a specific ratio of healthy fats, lean protein, and quality carbohydrates to efficiently burn fat as fuel.
- Intermittent Fasting: 16 hours of fasting with a flexible 8-hour eating window coaxes the body to draw energy from stored fat and decreases inflammation.
- Anti-inflammatory Nutrition: Limit added sugars, processed carbs, chemical additives and preservatives and layer in anti-inflammatory foods like leafy greens, olive oil, berries, nuts, and tomatoes.
With these three principles working together, women can finally lose stubborn weight as well as enjoy newfound energy, better sleep, less brain fog, and fewer hot flashes. Featuring forty delicious recipes, six weeks of easy-to-follow meal plans, shopping lists, and success stories of women who have changed their lives on this plan, The Galveston Diet—named for Dr. Haver's hometown—will revolutionize the conversation around weight loss for women, with health benefits that last a lifetime.
This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF of recipes, meal plans, and other resources from the book.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Top reviews from the United States
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2024
I don't think that I've ever purchased a book that I'm reviewing for my own personal copy. Most of these books are in a digitally-protected format that causes them to disappear from my e-book library after a certain period of time. But, I purchased this one before I had finished the first chapter because I feel like I've finally found something that offers solutions to the issues that I've been dealing with.
Doctors worldwide continue to feed women a lie: calories in - calories out. This is not a valid, nor a scientifically-backed statement. Science proves that it's imbalances in our hormones that cause women to be unable to lose weight and to suffer from a long list of complaints that were previously blamed on menopause and with no solutions because "that's just the life of a menopausal woman".
The Galveston Diet is not just a fly-by-night diet book. Mary Claire used her three step approach of intermittent fasting, anti-inflammatory nutrition, and fuel refocus on herself and many other women with a great deal of success before she decided to share her knowledge with the rest of us. She uses scholarly evidence to support her use of intermittent fasting, which is something that I didn't really understand before I read this book. I found it shocking at how the food industry has been using manufactured foods and chemical additives that increase the inflammation in our bodies and how that inflammation has been causing generations of fat, diabetic, unhealthy and sick people. Even more shocking is that the government allows this!
I found The Galveston Diet to be a very easy book to read and to understand. Mary Claire lays out everything the reader needs to know, step-by-step, leaving very few questions on how to begin and how to succeed with this new eating pattern. She specifically explains each type of food or nutritional item, like vitamins and minerals, and how they are important or not helpful to a women's body. She gives list of foods that help women overcome inflammation and will support their healing.
There are four weeks of menus (with included recipes) and shopping lists and two weeks of vegetarian menus and shopping lists as well as a maintenance plan and seven maintenance recipes that focus on anti-inflammatory nutrition with the right balance of macronutrients and micronutrients along with intermittent fasting to help reduce inflammation, increase weight loss, and ultimately improve health.
Mary Claire included an extensive bibliography listing where she got her research as well as numerous resources for further information on how to help the reader move forward toward self-improvement.
As a postmenopausal women with over 13 years post-hysterectomy, reading the first chapter of this book grabbed me and made me eager to get started in this lifestyle change and for the first time feel as if I can actually succeed in that change. So, yes, I highly recommend reading The Galveston Diet and I suggest you get a hard copy of the book instead of an e-book so you have it at hand to write in and highlight.
I didn’t think the recipes were too involved and most of the time, I just kept the ingredients the same, but winged the preparation. I don’t own a grill, so hello air fryer! Basically, I opted to make the recipes and “riff” how they were prepared, and from the get-go, I shuffled the recipes around anyway, making sure I log everything into MyFitnessPal (which I already use) and keep checking the macros to keep the ratio on track. It’s a bit of a pain, but I figure if it’s a lifestyle change, I’ll get used to it. I might struggle with this more if I didn’t have quite a bit of experience with working out and tracking macros (previously to increase my protein, not reduce it), but it’s not that hard for me—just more work that it needs to be/should be. Also, I think she needs more on how to adapt this to a regular life. Just this week, I’m going to have to figure out how to navigate two invites for drinks with friends, etc. I’ll figure it out, but this lifestyle can be radical and I’m assuming I’m not the only one trying to decide where a glass of wine fits into this, lol.
On the plus side, it seems well-researched. The intermittent fasting can be tough because I can’t have milk in my morning coffee, but if it lessens my hot flashes, it’s a win! And so far, I feel amazing. I feel full and energized with the extra fat, which helps me not give in to my carb cravings.
I’ll report back if I lose any weight and how it helps with other symptoms in a future update. Over all, it’s a solid diet.
Oh, I forgot to add something important. She also doesn’t mention what to do about the amount of food to eat. She states that the diet is not about counting calories, but in order to keep the macros in ratio, I was logging my food. When I logged my food, I had a huge calorie deficit at the end of the day (I work out a lot) and then I’d need to eat something else, but it messed up the ratios. I have yet to eat that much fat, either. So while I appreciate the emphasis being on macros, the menu had a significant calorie deficit if you went by the serving sizes.