8 Weeks to Optimum Health: A Proven Program for Taking Full Advantage of Your Body’s Natural Healing Power

Comments

1. Anonymous says:

   November 22, 2009 at 1:36 pm

   It is impossible to reach optimum health in 8 weeks.
   Rating: 1 / 5
2. Albert F. Millheiser says:

   November 22, 2009 at 3:49 pm

   My daughter purchased this book for me about 6 months ago. I know Dr. Weil is an educated man, but I’m sorry. I just cannot take seriously a man this overweight lecturing on optimum health. Look at the size of this guy. Either he is slipping in triple cheeseburgers and double malteds when no one is looking, or salmon and seaweed are VERY fattening. I would say its probably the former. I kept looking for “after” photos but, alas, there are none. This is how he looks.
   Rating: 2 / 5
3. Anonymous says:

   November 22, 2009 at 6:14 pm

   Because your big Santa-Clause booty is blocking the light. So Mr. Weil has sold out to the lucrative health industry, and has a great marketing thing going with the happy go lucky grandaddy image with the big beard and rotund face and all. But please be informed, genral public, that you have firstly bought into image marketing, and then to the authors money-making recommendations. If Mr. Weil told you what you really needed to do to get healthy and stay healthy, 99% of you would be turned off. After all, who likes wheatgrass juice, fasting, and rejuvelac? Do you? Surely we’d rather go on our jolly ole ways down to Safeway and stock up on Weil favorites, such as nutrasweet and soyburgers.

   You will see how many negative ‘did this review help you’ counts I get, because the type of people (maybe you, unfortunately) who have been suckered into Mr. Weils diet (and pocket-book) are staunchly afraid of anything that threatens their easy ‘health’ plan. Please read Ann Wigmore’s ‘Hippocrates Diet’ if you are truly concerned about your health.
   Rating: 1 / 5
4. Anonymous says:

   November 22, 2009 at 8:37 pm

   The longer I have this book, the less I think of it. Didn’t like soyburgers enough to go on eathing them. He’s just wrong about the value of artificial sweetners since they have practially no calories and every level teaspoon of sugar has 15 calories (over time this adds up to whatever it adds up depending on how many teaspoons of sugar you consume on the average per day–one pound of bodyfat is 3500 calories)–and each and every one of them is a calorie I don’t need (I usually need sweetnener in coffee, green tea and cereal). I drink soymilk (lowfat) and it tastes fine but I’ve read credibly elsewhere that it has developed that less calcium is asorbed by the human body from having drunk a cup of calcium fortified soymilk than from an eaual amount of cow’s milk containing the same amouint of calcium. I drink more (fat free) cows milk and less soymilk than I did when I first started drinking it. His advice that is worth taking take can be had elsewhere for free on the internet or in better form and in better books (The Omega Diet, and Judith Wills’ The Food Bible, both avaiable at this website) which I recommend over this one. Furthermore, while it’s not a bad idea at all to take two baby aspirin a day (162 mg. a day ) to lower one’s risk for heart attacks and colon cancer, it is also true that the website of The Harvard School of Public Health has a free cancer quiz ( risk assessment) for various types of cancer including colon cancer and what they recommend to reduce one’s risk ( only after you talk to your doctor) is one full strength aspirin (325 mg.) 4-6 times a week. Also, in his discussion of the raw foods diet which he doesn’t recommend (and he’s right) although he does say that people shouldn’t eat raw sprouts (I THINK because they contain natural toxins), he doesn’t say that that since 1999 (starting before that in 1998) the FDA has had an advisory in effect that people should not eat ANY raw sprouts because of the food borne illnesses they cause because they’re contaminated. Where the bacteria are most present when they are present is in the seeds and in the beans–and what is present, if present, is the most harmful strain of E Coli that exists which cannot be removed by washing but causes no harm in thoroughly cooked sprouts. Also, this book is chock full of testmonials which seriously detract from it. Other reviewers have commented about the fact that at the end there’s something about the possiblity of surviving without food. I don’t think this belongs in a book of this type at all and of course it’s absurd. As to pesticides: they wash off even strawberries. He says organic strawberries taste better: after trying his recipe for marinara sauce (see my comment below), I doubt that he has any taste buds. Some of his recipes, you could not pay me to try ( such as mayonnaise and tartar sauce made with silken tofu). Also, I do eat meat and poultry (not oganic– I think people should save their money and not take this advice). As to his his marinara sauce, had I followed his recipe to the letter, I don’t see how I could have eaten it. He’s got a large can (28 oz) of crushed tomatoes (I used a 15 oz can of crushed tomatoes and a 15 oz can of diced tomatoes and I’m glad I did), and, if anyone can believe it, a 15 oz (!) can of tomato paste and no water (and also red pepper flakes which I dislike which I therefore omitted). The diced tomatoes saved the sauce. (It would have been dreary without them). I did have to add a can (28 oz) of water. As to all that tomato paste, I don’t know how anyone could stand to put that in the sauce, let alone eat it. That is way too much. I used a 3 oz can of it and that is, I think the most anyone should use because its so strong (If I make it again it will be with two tablespoons of it because that’s enough). I’ve decided that I’m not going to try any more of his recipes. As I said earlier, his lentil salad was dismal. I recommed both of the books mentioned above over this one. I’d pass on this one if I were you.
   Rating: 2 / 5
5. Benner says:

   November 22, 2009 at 9:08 pm

   Dr. Weil seems nice enough but his recommendations are generally pretty bad for true health. Eating salmon and getting rid of transfat foods are a good idea but his recommendations for soy products which are full of antinutrients (not just phytates) and his recommendations against animal products or a lowering of their use and lowering fat intake and his recommendations for increase grain consumption will make you fat and give you type 2 diabetes in the long run if not something much worse. His spiel about complex carbohydrates over simple or refined carbohydrates is nonsense. Too much carbohydrates is the problem. While simple carbs are pretty bad, complex carbs the way he recommends them are just as bad if not worse because of the quantity he recommends.

   The guy basically pushes vitamins and herbal supplements. There are many studies happening now that will soon put his message (and many others) to a long deserved rest. High carbohydrate diets are very bad for health. Animal products are necessary for good health. Saturated fat is very important in the diet. All studies done in this area show that meat and fat protect against heart disease. High carbohydrate diets play havoc with hormones causing every disease in the book.

   This will soon be common knowledge as studies begin bearing this out, ending untold suffering for so many people.

   If you want a good book based on science (not guru worship), read Life Without bread.

   The whole low fat/high carbohydrate diet is a fraud and any honest look at the studies already done will bear this out. New studies are being done now but this time it will be in the context of “is fat bad?” instead of “fat is bad – lets prove it”.
   And I don’t know if I’m ready to accept [the], “but that’s what we were taught” excuse when the studies come back condeming the nonsense they spew.

   Back to Weil, the guy is overweight, bald and pushes vitamins. He shrugs off studies showing vitamin c toxicity or soy toxicity. Eventually, even he probably won’t be able to shrug off the evidence that his diet is worse than bad for health.

   Avoid.
   Rating: 1 / 5