With the Thanksgiving leftovers nearly gone and lots of tempting food still ahead at other celebrations, it won’t be long before many will be looking to shed those extra pounds picked up over the holidays and get healthier with optimistic New Years resolutions.
Two Michigan-born authors have penned books to address those issues that would make ideal stocking stuffers.
Dr. James Surrell, director of the digestive health clinic at Marquette General Regional Medical Center wrote “SOS (Stop Only Sugar) Diet,” a book about America’s love affair with sugar and its toll on our health, while John Durant, who hails from Detroit, wrote “The Paleo Manifesto” about the paleo diet and lifestyle.
For Surrell, whose book is sold on Amazon.com, he began to really look at diets after he gained weight 12 years ago.
“As I looked at all the diets out there, I felt they were too complicated with too much counting, measuring and rules,” said Surrell, who is also a colorectal surgeon. “With research telling us many serious health issues come from all the sugar we were consuming, I decided to really decrease my intake of refined sugar.”
By watching his own sugar intake and adding high-fiber foods, he lost 9 pounds in six weeks and his cholesterol dropped 40 points. The weight came off and stayed off.
“People who want to lose weight and get healthier must become what I call a “label-reading detective.” They need to read labels for the amount of sugar and the amount of dietary fiber, and go for low sugar and high fiber. It is not any more complicated that this!”
Surrell began putting some of his patients on the diet and they had similar results.
“They kept telling me I needed to write a book about it, so I finally did,” Surrell said.
Given that each American consumes about 140 pounds of sugar each year, Surrell is convinced it is a major cause of obesity, diabetes and other maladies.
With one third of young Americans also overweight, Surrell is working on “SOS Diet — The Student Edition” aimed at children which is scheduled for release in March.
Office job was downfall
After finishing his studies at Harvard, Durant got an office job in New York City and noticed he began having energy spikes. He also gained 20 pounds.
Rather than go on a crash diet, Durant started researching diet and lifestyle choices.
He discovered the Paleolithic lifestyle, which includes avoiding processed foods, grains and dairy products and consuming a higher-fat, lower-carbohydrate diet of vegetables.
“I felt like I had stumbled onto a secret: That our life in the Paleolithic still has a profound influence on our lives today,” Durant said. “There is so much mass confusion about what to eat, so many people struggle to lose weight or exercise — and looking to our Paleolithic ancestors was a way to find a simple approach that worked.”
He became a devotee, which includes running. Today, he runs barefoot in New York’ City’s Central Park — a fact that has gained attention as he has recently appeared on “The Colbert Report,” NPR and has been written about in the New York Times and the New Yorker.
“From signing my book deal to turning in the final manuscript, it took a little over two years,” he said. “That included time to do research on everything from Biblical hygiene laws to skin cancer, plus time to go on some adventures, such as visiting the gorillas at the Cleveland Zoo or fasting at a Trappist monastery. I wrote most of the book during an intense four-month period in 2012”.
His book also has led to some unusual conversations.
“Not only do people at parties ask me for diet advice, but it’s also a great way to meet single ladies with strange digestive problems,” Durant said.
Contact Carol Cain: 313-222-6732 or clcain@cbs.com[1] . She is senior producer/host of “Michigan Matters,” which airs 11:30 a.m. Sundays on CBS 62. You can see L. Brooks Patterson, Dr. James Surrell, Jeff Mason and Alex Rosaen on today’s show.
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