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The Ornish Diet

What It Is

Unlike other diet books that make big promises, Eat More, Weigh Less, by Dean Ornish, MD, soft-pedals the health claims for this diet for the masses, adapted from his regimen to reverse heart disease. Ornish is well known in the medical community because of his success in reversing blockages to the heart, once thought impossible without surgery or drugs. Ornish also runs his own health and diet site here at WebMD which can give you additional details about his plan.

Unlike other books that are full of scientific-sounding theories and explanations without clinical studies to back them up, Ornish's explanations are simple and well supported. His main point is that eating a high-fiber, low-fat vegetarian diet will not only help you stay healthy, or get you there, but also will help you lose weight.

This is accomplished, according to Ornish, by a combination of diet and exercise that allows the body's fat-burning mechanism to work most effectively.

Reviewed By Charlotte E. Grayson, MD February 2004.

SOURCES: Ornish, D. Eat More, Weigh Less, 2000, Perennial Currents. Frank Hu, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, Harvard School of Public Health. Neal Barnard, MD, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Robert H. Eckel, MD, professor, the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver.

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