The Simple Plan to Flatten Your Belly Fast! - The 6-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle

After finishing the Eades program I didn't lose much weight (<5 lbs) but I did lose almost 2 inches off my 51 year old middle, so I have to pronounce the experiment a success. And, if followed strictly, I would be very surprised if most people didn't have the same result. I wasn't after weight loss, I viewed this as a liver detox program. And a very intriguing one at that. The medical rationale portion of the book is very interesting and readable. Since other reviewers have gone into the three part structure I won't elaborate on it, other than the first two weeks are tough (just keep telling yourself you can do anything for two weeks), the following 2 weeks were fun (the Meat weeks) and the next 2 weeks felt almost normal.

Four caveats:

1. I have been low carbing for 18 months (and lost 30+ pounds!). That means, I've been well under 100 grams of carbs/ day, usually running around 60 - 70 grams. NO grains, NO sugar. Even so, the first 2 weeks of this program were VERY difficult. It is low calorie, you have to give up caffeine and solid food (except 1 meal / day) AND you can't even have a glass of wine or an ibuprofen to soften the blow! If you are a normal eater and consuming 100+ grams of carbohydrate per day, you will feel like you have been hit by a truck. I would recommend easing into it by transitioning to 70 grams of carbs for a couple of weeks, then doing the first 2 weeks of this Eades program, which I suspect has fewer carbs than even Atkins induction. I would recommend an older book, Life Without Bread, as a straightforward guide. Carb withdrawal symptoms can take a month to clear, depending on how dependent you are. Caffeine is a tough animal to live without as well, I had a headache for the first week and I only have 1 - 2 cups/day.

2. The structure of the menus is difficult. Yes, Eades recipes are GREAT, don't mistake me. But since I'm a cook I wish they had given cooking guidelines, i.e. a list of approved protein sources, recommended vegetables and fats. Yes, I figured it out from the menus, but it would have been nice to have a page of suggested foods and maybe even some numbers i.e. suggested grams of protein, carbs and fats.

3. The Eades write great low carb books, and their website is very helpful. BUT, they have a weird affection for Frankenfoods like protein powders and sugar alcohols like Splenda. Protein shakes are an appalling food that can be very hard on the digestion. The sugar alcohols ... wow. Don't get me started. (And yes, "Living la Vida Low Carb " the store Stalker-Man, I tried 3 different protein powders and finally settled on whey protein as the most easily digestible. And the word "easily" is relative.) The Eades don't have much support for this book on their web site, otherwise I would have asked if I could substitute 2 eggs for the shakes.

4. Oops on recommendation to consume Enova oil. Off the market for months. What was up with that?

Next time I do it I'll probably tweak it -- lose the protein shakes, and not have any caffeine or NSAIDS or alcohol for 4 weeks instead of two. (I mean, it's a lot of trouble to get off caffeine... why waste the effort?) I think this is best approached as a liver detox with weight loss benefits, rather than the other way around. And I have recommended it to lots of people, despite my concerns.

Good luck!

If you enjoyed and got healthier from earlier books by the Eadeses, as so many people have, then don't buy this one. You'll be bitterly disappointed.

Somehow, all their earlier principles have been repudiated. Instead of natural foods, they are now recommending blender-shakes of protein powder. Instead of scientific explanations, they now suggest a laundry list of supplements without providing much explanation at all. Instead of a lifetime program of healthy balanced eating, they have now swung to pitching "overnight" miracles--drink protein shakes for two weeks, then eat nothing but meat for two weeks, and by week five you're on "maintenance". It's like several fad diets stitched together. The exercise advice in this book is a few pages of generalities, and the only specific exercise recommended can be done sitting at a desk (tightening the abdominal muscles).

Half the book is recipes, and these are not all very good recipes. If you want inspiring low-carb recipes, look at Fran McCullough's books The Low-Carb Cookbook and Living Low-Carb: The Complete Guide to Long Term Low-Carb Dieting, or Dana Carpender's 500 Low-Carb Recipes: 500 Recipes from Snacks to Dessert, That the Whole Family Will Love.

Even the title shows the Eadeses's downward spiral: from "Protein Power Lifeplan" to "The 6-Week Cure ...". It's true that a low-carb diet (as in the Eadeses's earlier books) can cause fat loss, and often abdominal fat is lost relatively early in the process. But honestly, if there were a six-week "cure" for fat bellies, is it likely that we would see fat bellies all around us? Or that the Eadeses would have just figured out that the secret is protein powder drinks and then nothing but meat? You'll do better to go back to their "Lifeplan" idea, and figure out a better way of eating and living that you can adopt for the long haul. This latest book appears to be just a quick-buck effort to get back on the best-seller lists by promising magic.

I tapered out caffinated coffee in week zero, for the first time ever in my life. I also used that week to get fully prepared: supplements, protien powder, pastuized eggs, flavorings, etc. because this is such a huge switch for me. The last night before I started week one, I had a carb party- anything I thought I might miss! I am on Day 5 of week one, following everything, except I need a little more salt because I get dehydrated easy. I have NOT BEEN HUNGRY. at all. nada. zip. I can't believe it. I have been a little tired during the day, I can handle that, but being hungry zaps my will power and makes me irritable. I can REALLY DO this! Thanks.

The Eads provide a compelling case for eating the way we all wish we could eat: bacon, butter, cream, meat, more meat, more more meat. Unfortunately, while the diet works to help lose weight, the problem is what comes next? Losing weight and keeping it off usually means exercise and moderation. If one does not commit to a true life-style change, when one completes the six weeks, the return to where you were (weight-wise) will just slap you in the face. Now it seems to me if the scientific community is opposed to eating red meat and taking in unusual amounts of saturated fat, there might be a reason. Further, what about colon cancer, breast cancer or any of the other types of problems that arise out of eating too much fat.

IMO, if you have a plan for "what next" then by all means follow the Eads approach. Don't try to figure certain things out either. The protein shake is pretty opaque with respect to the risk of exceeding your upper limit on protein. Read and then research yourself to decide what is safe for you.

A warning to anyone considering this book. The diet will probably work for you, but the first two weeks are harsh and I don't think the authors provide adequate warning. The intro stretch (weeks 1 and 2) consist of a daily routine of a liquid protein shake 3x daily along with one low-carb meal with normal food. If you are coming from a "regular" eating routine, your body is likely in for a nasty shock, and even more so if you're a caffeine drinker and follow the authors' advice to abstain from caffeine during this period. When I attempted this diet, I did not know what was coming, and I thought I was getting really sick. The book did not provide a warning. What I later found out is that a rapid switch to an extremely low-carb diet can induce keto-adaptation, a.k.a. "low-carb flu" involving headaches (doubly bad if you gave up caffeine), weird flu-like symptoms, nausea, constipation, and a host of other very unpleasant symptoms. As I later found out, your body will get over it and adapt (a good thing), but if you don't know it's coming, it's very unpleasant. Moreover, I used the powdered form of leucine in the shakes. This is an essential element of the program because it helps the body with protein absorption. It has one of the nastiest tastes you can imagine--an incredibly strong, bitter taste. The authors "suggest" using an artificial sweetener if the taste bothers you, which I can guarantee that it will. My problem is that I have an aversion to artificial sweeteners. I cannot stand the chemical aftertaste. Another alternative is using frozen fruit for a sweetener, but it seems like this defeats the goal of eliminating carbs from the shake. For me, the combo was so repulsive that I gave up after a couple of days, and now associate those shakes with getting sick, even though in my head I have a rational explanation for what was going on.

So, be aware that you'll be gulping down protein shakes that could bring a bad experience. If you really want to try this diet, go for it, but a couple of recommendations. First, ease into it by gradually cutting back on carbs and caffeine at least 2-3 weeks prior to this diet. That should make the low-carb transition easier. For the shakes, I'd recommend buying the leucine in capsule form, which you can find on the store. If you can tolerate artificial sweeteners like Splenda, fine. They will help sweeten the overall drink, even if you're taking the leucine in capsules. An alternative is the frozen fruit route, but keep in mind that it's adding carbs to the drink (in small amounts).

On a related note: I bought Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (Vintage) at the same time. I should have read it first. This is an amazing book. It is not a diet book, but an in-depth look at the trends, misinformation, and bad science that surrounds our understanding of "good nutrition." Equally important, he explains the how and why of what happens when we eat certain things (especially carbohydrates), including insulin production, and how it all comes together to build fat in the body. Anyone considering the purchase of any diet book should read this first. In fact, it can probably be serve very nicely as your first and last diet book. Taubes mentions, but does not explicitly endorse, a couple of the more popular diet books that more or less reflect the conclusions he discusses in the book (he mentions the Eades' prior book Protein Power: The High-Protein/Low-Carbohydrate Way to Lose Weight, Feel Fit, and Boost Your Health--in Just Weeks!).

Equally valuable: Taubes ends his book with some general dietary "guidance" that was created at Duke University Medical Center's nutritional clinic. This appendix takes up about 5 pages of a 235-page book. You could write the entire thing on a sheet of 8.5x11" paper and tape it to the fridge. There are no special powders or shakes or calorie counting, none of the "Key To Weight Loss Success! Act Today To Save On A Year's Supply!" nonsense. Not even recipes. And every food item is available on your favorite supermarket.

After my experience with the 6 Week Cure, I tried these guidelines, with a slight modification: In the first few weeks, I REALLY cut back on the carbs, restricting them solely to small amounts of the leafy greens, veggies, and nuts cited in the appendix. Basically a modified version of the major carb-restriction idea in the 6 Week Cure. Maybe it takes a bit longer to achieve the same effect, but I know that it's way more palatable. I'm never hungry except when I get really busy and forget to eat. I'm eating delicious meals, I have plenty of energy, and I'm still drinking my morning caffeine. So far I'm steadily losing between 1-2 pounds a week. A little further down the road I'll get my "metabolic" markers like cholesterol checked. I'm quite confident that they'll all be improved.

Regrettably, Mary and Michael Eades have descended to the depths of fad dieting with this book. The idea that you can fix years of accumulated fat with a 6 week crash diet program is absurd. And the introduction begs the question: why did the authors of "Protein Power" need to lose weight anyway? Are they unable to follow their own prescription in that best selling book? Hmmm....makes you wonder.

This diet method is absolutely ridiculous. It says you should stop all caffeine and medicines in order to purge your body of toxins. Not realistic at all. I would not recommend this product to anyone.

I thought the Protein Power book by the Eades was a good read, but I can't say the same for this one. I'm a science writer myself, and take great care to proof read my material for possible errors. As such, I was surprised by a passage in the book that stated that insulin increases sex-hormone binding globulin (SHBG). In fact, just the opposite is true, and this has been known for a long time. It's an egregious error, and after reading it, I lost interest in the book. This isn't nitpicking, because if you read the book, you'll find that the Eades base an entire negative sequence of events on this insulin/SHBG relationship that just doesn't happen in actuality. There is no excuse for such poor research or lack of editing on the part of the authors, who as medical doctors should know better.

I'm a nationally syndicated, science-based advice columnist and blogger. I frequently recommend Dr. Michael Eades' blog and the books he writes with his wife, Dr. Mary Dan Eades.

The Eades, like investigative science journalist Gary Taubes, USC's Dr. Robert Lustig, and too few others, give evidence-based dietary advice -- educating people that it's carbohydrate consumption that causes the insulin secretion that puts on fat.

In my own blog comments, I get frequent thank yous from people who've dropped pounds with ease after I turned them on to the evidence-based science on diet in Taubes' book, and on the Eades' site and in their books. Here, for example, are two comments from my site from February:

Posted by "Elle": Amy, thank you for blogging about Taubes and Eades and all of them. This is going to be long, but I want you to appreciate the positive impact you've had on my health. I always thought my weight was a lost cause. I knew I could never cut down to a low-fat all grain diet like my sister. Point counting left me irritated and hungry. My fiance started Nutrisystem and the food was gross and I was always hungry. Nutrisystem is really, really icky. I resigned myself to being a fat bride for our wedding at the end of this year. But after reading Taubes and Eades about the low-carb thing I knew I could do that. All the real food I could eat. It was a little difficult to give up my 2liter a day Mtn Dew habit and harder to give up bread (I still love bread. It's the perfect carrier for butter). But in four weeks I've dropped a pant size and 5% of my body fat. I've never felt better in my life. No winter itchies, no winter doldrums, no sleeping problems. I'm completely sated at every meal (and sometimes skip one or two without noticing). I'm losing weight faster than my low-fat grain eating sister. My fiance eyes my plateful of steak and peppers longingly while he makes his nutrisystem crap-in-a-cup. And I'm amazed out how easy this whole "diet" thing is. I really will be able to do this for the rest of my life. There's still a ways to go. I still have at least another 15% body fat to lose to get down to my ideal range. But I won't be a 200lb bride. And I won't be adding to that weight for the rest of my life. So thanks Amy. You make a difference (as if you had any doubts).

Posted by "Steamer": My wife and I are doing Eades' 6 week cure and we have both dropped about 5 lbs in the first two weeks. A real bonus is that some of the dinner recipes in the book are really tasty and we'll be using them after the six weeks. I have never tried a short term diet before. Any changes I have made were with the idea that they would be permanent, but reading the book convinced me that the "6 week cure" was a good idea. In a nutshell you are retraining your body to draw on your stored fat for energy rather than using sugar and carbs.

There are lots of negative reviews on this book - those are from morons that didn't understand the point of this book. If you want a long-term eating plan to lose weight and be healthy, then stick with Protein Power or Atkins. However if you've got a special event coming up that you want to lose weight FAST, then this is for you - that was the whole purpose of this book. I lost 8 pounds and one inch off the waist in the first week, can't wait to see what the next 5 weeks brings!

I've previously read the Protein Power Life Plan (PPLP) by the same authors and would recommend this book (CURE) as a follow up to that one. The first part of this book is chock full of useful information for people already familiar with the principles of restricted-carbohydrate dieting. That being said, there were a few times where I thought "If I didn't already know a lot about this topic, I wouldn't know what that scientific term meant."

By the time the book reached Part 2, it felt like I was being rushed to the end. There's a page that lists supplements to take, but the book barely touches on why they are important. I know the first time I saw the price of CoQ10, I winced. I wouldn't have purchased it if I hadn't been armed with the crucial information that the Eades presented in PPLP. Sadly, none of that explanation is in this book.

Also in Part 2, we learn that the plan involves two weeks of drinking three shakes a day with one sensible meal. Apparently, this is the Eades answer to wanting to suggest an all meat diet in a culture that won't accept such a thing. Last time I checked, most people spout off about meal replacements as much as they do low carb diets. If the right answer to the middle-aged middle is indeed all meat, I wish the book would have just stuck to that philosophy.

The last third of the book is dedicated to recipes. I personally dislike diet books that do this, but if you want recipes, then you're in luck. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who has previously read PPLP or Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. The new scientific information in Part 1 will supplement your existing knowledge and is worth the price.

I couldn't understand why I was gaining weight; I was eating clean, burning more calories than I was taking in (weight training, doing HIIT, walking, etc) and yet I was steadily gaining. At first I told myself it was muscle, and some of it was. But my expanding waist was definitely not muscle! I went to the bookstore hoping to just be able to scan it to get the gist of it. I ended up buying it and skipping right to the action plan. It's been a week for me and I am back to my happy weight but more importantly I lost the 2" I had gained around my middle.
AS far as the negative reviews go, I'm just happy I didn't read them before I bought the book!!

All you have to do is follow the simple instructions, have a little descipline and it's amazing how fast things happen.I lost 19 lbs. in 4 weeks, without working out. I decided to keep going following the alternating weeks 1/2 3/4 routine for two more weeks and lost another 10 lbs. It's so simple.

Thank you.

This book describes a diet which is basically a combination of meal replacement, low carb, and liver-friendly anti-inflammation advice.

The diet starts our as a meal replacement diet, where for the first few weeks you replace meals with protein shakes (rather than slimfast). This requires you to buy all kinds of protein powder and supplements. Then, you have to do 2 more weeks with very high meat consumption. Then, you have a few weeks to get into a maintenance diet. All of this, so you can give your liver a rest and start a low carb diet?

Many other books have highlighted the benefits of giving your liver a rest, and advocate reducing or eliminating caffeine & alcohol and reducing inflammation (Andrew Weil and others have been saying this for more than a decade).

Other books like the Eades' own "Protein Power" advocate low carb.

Other diets use meal replacement to control caloric & nutrient intake.

Maybe I am missing something, but what is revolutionary?

Besides the fact there is nothing revolutionary here, the book itself seems to require you to take it on faith that the diet works. There is some basic grounding in science, but not what you would expect from previous Eades' books or other reputable low-carb advocates with a MD.

The book also mentions important aspects of metabolic health, like resistance training, thyroid health, etc... but it is not clear from the book what you should to about it. It is inexcusably missing important information & confusing for readers.

If a book is going to be a called a "cure", it better be truly revolutionary, backed up by clinical trials, explain all of the scientific aspects thoroughly, and be well authored & edited. Unfortunately, that is far from the case in its current state.

I have some of Eades' other books. I particularly like The Protein Power Lifeplan, which has some great nutrition information. So I had hopes that this book would be interesting. But it's not.

It's just another fad diet - a bunch of complicated instructions legislating your every bite for 6 weeks. There are special shakes, special supplements, and special recipes. It all looks very scientific, but it's nonsense - just a money-making scheme to sell books and supplements.

The book says people gain fat around their middle in middle-age from a lifetime of overeating carbs, and to get rid of it you should eat a very low-carb diet for 6 weeks and do some isometric abdominal exercises. There - now you don't need to buy the book.

Don't waste your time or your money.

Sheryl Canter
Author, Normal Eating for Normal Weight

First of all, anybody who recommends DAG oil are recommending a dangerous toxic mess of two of the most harmful oils that should never been allowed to exist let alone be recommended for human consumption. Surely these two so called experts didn't study nutrition in Med School, where only an hour out of thousands of hours is spent even suggesting something about the N word (Nutrition) and that's usually voluntary with many yawns and tapping fingers hoping the farce is soon over. It's taught, usually, by a dietician who knows nothing about nutrition but a lot about the USDA food pyramid. Insofar as the Eades and their Protein Power book reviewed by Sally Fallon Morel, who wrote Nourishing Traditions, said this about that book: Protein Power is a step in the right direction, but a very small step. The Eades's argue that we need good quality protein in the way of meat in our diets, and that we should cut back on sugar and hydrogenated fats--but beyond that good beginning, the book is a tissue of mixed messages. The authors recognize the fallacies of the notion that foods containing cholesterol cause heart disease, but buy into the shaky HDL-LDL hypothesis. They say that butter is a good fat and red meat and eggs are fine, but then go on to warn against foods containing arachidonic acid (like butter, eggs and red meat), which they wrongly assert contribute to heart disease. Most puzzling is their stand against flax and other oils rich in the omega-3 essential fatty acids, which they accuse of contributing to heart disease--hard to believe since the great increase in heart disease in this country has occurred during a period when the omega-3s have largely disappeared from the American diet. Equally strange is their endorsement of soy foods, after pages on the virtues of meat. The Eades's offer an array of desserts sweetened with NutraSweet, suggest lining baking sheets with aluminum foil and think the microwave oven is fine. They lack basic understanding of the importance of whole foods and proper preparation techniques. The point being, the Eades are kind of on the right track but mostly on the wrong one. Essentially, more opportunistic than beneficial, and that's an issue to be wary of. Nobody does well on DAG oil, nobody, nobody does well on tiny amounts of mainstream saturated fat or large amounts, but do wonderfully on fat from pastured animals, like raw butter, beef tallow, leaf lard, and of the vegetable variety, coconut and red palm oil, from raw and not deodorized or any other ridiculous process, what, we can't stand food in a natural form any longer. The high, high protein idea of the low fat variety is plain wrong. In Louis L'Amour's book, "Last of The Breed, Joe Mack, caught in the Siberian Winter needs fat, saturated fat, to survive. Without the fat he'd die of starvation. The Pilgrims leaving Europe sold their most nourishing food, raw butter, to pay for their transportation and by the time they arrived the Indians who saw them thought them the ugliest, most unhealthy people they'd ever observed. Brains, bodies, skin, heart, sexual organs, liver, eyes, all, need high quality fats not DAG, not soy, not Canola, not cottonseed oils, and of the oils only small amounts of olive oil, hemp, and flax oil. If one has been eating processed foods, from low fat pasteurized milk to package junk, fast food, and an array of manufactured madness, they should start slowly to introduce foods known as The Paleo Diet, and the best book to learn of that is Primal Body, Primal Mind by Nora Gedgaudas. Forget the Eades, they mean well but ultimately those following their recommendations won't do as well as they would on recommendations by Joe Mercola, Sally Fallon Morel, and Gary Taubes. Life takes on new horizons once one's body surges with strength and the mind is clear and getting the fat one needs. Add sunshine, exercise, clean pure water (not distilled), meditation and Paleo foods eaten by our ancestors and life is good, in fact every day is a celebration. Regarding the Eades and their books, they need to study nutrition and the best place to start is Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price. The doctor books on diet are usually limited in scope and often the information is contrary. Occasionally an MD might write a book that rings true but it's rare that such a thing happens. Voltaire said of doctors: "Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing." It is an exaggeration, true, but carries with it the fact that doctors have a great deal of trouble casting out stuff they learned in med school that has very little to do with healing and actually curing anyone of anything. They are done an injustice of course and drug companies corrupt the entire health system of our country. What do doctors or drugs actually cure outside of killing off bacteria, the strength or lack of it determines whether we live or die. A strong immune system is the best defense against illness and high quality fats are key to achieving that.