by Marisa Iacobucci
Once in a while, a book comes out that really shakes things up and gets people thinking differently. One such book was The Hormone Diet, written by one of Canada’s leading naturopathic doctors, Natasha Turner. The Hormone Diet is a groundbreaking dietary approach that factors in hormonal balance with sustained weight loss and overall better health. It quickly became a national bestseller which led Turner to release the follow-up, The Super-Charged Hormone Diet, another instant bestseller, which explains how to get your hormones back on track in 30 days flat.
Now, I don’t normally get excited about diet books. Actually, I tune out really fast when I see or hear anything with the word diet in it, believing strongly that diets don’t work for the long run. However, the premise of Dr. Turner’s book, achieving hormonal balance through a straightforward detox, nutrition, and exercise plan, resonated with me and with so many others because most of us are at risk of hormonal imbalance and don’t even know it. And, although the book was written with a slant towards weight loss, it’s more importantly a book about restoring total health so that everything you eat and do at the gym will set a stronger foundation for hormonal balance. The book is for both genders and for people of all ages.
I was fortunate enough to catch up with the lively Dr. Turner who, today, is the picture of perfect health. But this wasn’t always the case for her. She suffered from conditions associated with hormonal balance, which led her to embark upon years of research and practice on hormonal conditions before she actually sat down to write her first book.
As I read about Dr. Turner’s personal experiences with hormonal imbalance I started wondering whether some of the conditions I’d shrugged off as being fatigue, lack of sleep, or foggy memory, are really symptoms of hormonal imbalance.
Dr. Turner explains, “Most of us experience the very subtle symptoms of a hormonal imbalance every day. They are things like feeling tired after eating, having difficulty falling asleep or waking up each night between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., or maybe you notice you don’t wake up as fresh and bright as you used to or you’re having cravings every day at 3 p.m. Changes in libido, mood, memory, focus, food cravings, sleep habits, all of these are signs of hormonal imbalance. However the biggest symptom of a hormonal imbalance is a failure to lose weight even with regular and strict dieting and exercise.”
With so many diet and exercise books out there, I asked Dr. Turner why her book is relevant in the health/weight loss world.
“This is my formula for weight loss – hormonal balance plus the difference in calories (calories in through diet – and out through exercise) equals lasting weight loss and the ability to lose weight,” she says. “So many of us believe we can get healthy by losing weight and many books out there focus on how to shed the pounds – whether they promote low carb, low fat, more cardio, less cardio, and so forth. However the truth is we must be healthy in order to lose weight. Since hormones are the key to controlling our appetite and stimulating metabolism, achieving and maintaining hormonal balance plays an essential role in achieving lasting fat loss. Yes, diet and exercise are important, but so are sleeping well, reducing toxin exposure, maintaining healthy liver function, optimizing digestion, limiting stress, and conquering inflammation. All of these factors can influence our hormonal activity — and weight-loss success — in truly dramatic ways.”
Look for Dr. Turner’s next book, The Carb Sensitivity Program: Discover which Carbs will Curb your Cravings, Control your Appetite, and Banish Belly Fat which will hit shelves in March of 2012.
Dr. Natasha Turner. The Hormone Diet. Random House Canada, 499 pgs. $22.00
