Master Your Metabolism : the all-natural (all-herbal) way to lose weight. / Lewis Harrison. 2003. Published by Sourcebooks, Inc., Naperville, Illinois. 302 p., includes Index, Bibliography, and Glossary.
Author Harrison’s weight loss manifesto is aligned more with the Zone Diet* than with any other creative approach by well-known doctors or nutritionists. However his concept in Master Your Metabolism goes beyond “proper food combining”. Herbs, spices, essential oils, flower remedies, and supplements contribute to whole plant foods and are a major component of his program to help you lose weight. He calls it “turning on your metabolism herbally.”
If you’ve tasted freshly grated ginger (added to a recipe), freshly mashed garlic (perhaps in olive oil), chopped chilis, or perhaps you love the taste of sliced onions on a submarine sandwich, you are aware of the heat generated by these herbal foods, a digestive heat that promotes metabolic energy. Experience tells you how much these foods are savored as condiments, for likely without them your main dishes would be bland and forgettable. Ginger, garlic, chilis and onions are just a few of the powerful foods we consume for taste, and perhaps for cultural reasons.
Harrison encourages the reader to intensify flavors in the weight loss diet with herbs and spices rather than rely on additives of manufactured food products. However, a number of people might not be able to eat ginger, garlic, chilis and onions on a regular basis. Never fear—other herbs and spices can also stop or slow down fat storage. These are kelp, mustard seed and cayenne, according to Harrison.
Harrison advocates looking more deeply into spices and herbs for ways to add them to your cooked and raw dishes because of the metabolic energy “thermogenesis”. Thermogenesis occurs or is more robust after ingesting certain foods with high enzymatic activity. It causes a temperature rise in brown adipose tissue (i.e. burns bodily fat). Without this process it is not possible to burn fat, let alone eat a tasty meal.
Bodily organs—liver, kidney, intestines—part of whose job it is to detoxify or separate good substances from waste, function best when not impeded by gorging on comfort food to satisfy cravings. That forces them to work harder and harder, a feat which they might be incapable of, at times.
A liver-protective whole plant food diet is one with vegetables, grains, legumes, fruits, nuts and seeds. High anti-oxidant drinks, like green tea, are beneficial. In addition to high fiber foods as roughage, the whole plant food diet focuses on getting clean energy, unimpeded by additives, processing and manufacturing which devalue the food we choose to eat. Herbs and vegetables such as dandelion root, Oregon grape, barberry, milk thistle and wall germander are “herbal lipotropics”, substances that break down fat or stimulate the liver to produce bile.
How can real weight loss be achieved? “Know thyself”—could apply to the process, but it’s complicated, isn’t it? We aren’t able to simply intuit every possible herb or combination of herbs and vegetables that might be needed to master our metabolism. That’s why a consultant like Harrison can start you on this journey of mastery. He says what’s needed for our bodies to loose weight might be a little assistance from our limbic brains, the part of our senses controlling emotions.
So his Master Your Metabolism includes chapters on essential oils, flower remedies, and herbal supplements, as well as the proper diet recommendations. He proposes a plan whereby you place a little bit of confidence in these herbal remedies: by taking them at certain times of your day you maximize the benefits of matching an essential oil (sometimes in an inhaler) and a Bach flower remedy with your personal need for confidence. He posits, for example, that the scents of green apple, peppermint and banana can control appetite.
Beware that simply taking one of these substances doesn’t do the trick. When we are overweight, emotional- and stress-eating happen more often than we can easily control. So you could entrust yourself to the idea of herbally enhancing your diet, by utilizing all three parts of Harrison’s herbal weight management schema. These include creating the conditions for thermogenesis, taking antioxidants, and taking herbal appetite-suppressing supplements.
Harrison also advocates movement, not intense exercise, but 30 minute-per-day walks, etc.
In so many ways, weight loss is an objective in mastering two halves of the whole person, your body and mind together. Because you are the product of foods and drinks you take in, your unique combination of physical and mental energies comes from your food choices. In choosing whole plant foods, you wake up your metabolism by re-orienting your mental attitude towards food.
Losing weight is actually the result of a certain precision in choice-making. To gain that confidence, read Master Your Metabolism, a great place to start learning about what makes your body lose weight. Choices made, from herbal foods to essential oils and supplements, are added to a whole plant foods diet; these pieces are part of the process. In this unusual book are found all three aspects to help you master control over your weight.
* The Zone: a Dietary Road Map, by Barry Sears can be found online. Dr. Barry Sears created the concept in 1995 and it subsequently grew to encompass a variety of approaches to eating for weight control and health.
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