The Core Balance Diet: 4 Weeks to Boost Your Metabolism and Lose Weight for Good » (Reprint)

Marcelle Pick, MSN, OB/GYN NP, co-founded Women to Women with a vision to change women’s health care. The clinic pioneered the combination of alternative and conventional medicine, using a holistic approach that not only treats illness but also helps women make life choices to prevent disease. Women to Women continues seeing thousands of women from around the world each year. Pick earned a B.S. in nursing and a B.A. in psychology from the University of New Hampshire and an M.S. in nursing from Boston College–Harvard Medical School.

From the co-founder of Women to Women, one of the first clinics in the country devoted to providing health care for women by women, comes a whole new way to look at weight loss: The Core Balance Diet. Marcelle Pick draws upon decades of patient and personal experience to solve the mystery of stubborn, frustrating weight gain in women, whether you’ve just gained it or have been struggling with it for years.  This breakthrough program, which has benefited many of the thousands of women who visit the clinic each year, is rooted in cutting-edge nutritional science that explores the weblike relationship between women’s hormones, metabolism, and weight gain. In clear terms, Pick connects the dots between self-knowledge, self-care, and the ability to lose weight, extending the concept of body-mind-spirit to demonstrate why and how a woman’s biography becomes her biology.

At its most basic level, The Core Balance Diet shows you how to self-diagnose one of six major biochemical imbalances that may be preventing you from losing weight. These include digestive, hormonal, adrenal, neurotransmitter, inflammatory, and detoxification imbalances. From there, Pick guides you through easy lifestyle and diet changes customized to heal your specific imbalance. Throughout, you will learn how to begin living in a manner that encourages optimal health—without a lot of deprivation and stringent dieting rules— by achieving core balance from the inside out, and, of course, weight loss for life.

Preface ix

Introduction 1

Stage I Tuning In 13

Chapter 1 Your Balancing Act 15

Chapter 2 Your Core Physiology 27

Chapter 3 You Are What You Eat 39

Stage II The First 14 Days: The Core Balance Essential Plan 47

Chapter 4 Getting Started 49

Chapter 5 The Core Balance Essential Eating Plan 59

Chapter 6 The Core Balance Essential Action Plan 81

Stage III The Next 14 Days: The Core Balance Custom Plan 91

Chapter 7 The Core Balance Quiz 93

Chapter 8 The Digestive Imbalance Custom Plan 103

Chapter 9 The Hormonal Imbalance Custom Plan 123

Chapter 10 The Adrenal Imbalance Custom Plan 143

Chapter 11 The Neurotransmitter Imbalance Custom Plan 163

Chapter 12 The Inflammatory Imbalance Custom Plan 181

Chapter 13 The Detoxification Imbalance Custom Plan 199

Now What? 217

Stage IV Core Balance for Life: Transformation Inside and Out 225

Chapter 14 Your Issues Are in Your Tissues 227

Chapter 15 Revising Your Negativity Script 237

Chapter 16 Wrapping It Up 251

The Recipes 259

Referrals and Resources 323

Appendices 347

References & Further Reading 381

Acknowledgments 399

Index 401

About the Authors 417