If you have listened to, watched, or read the transcript of the podcasts Leo Laporte and I produced to discuss and explore this topic, you'll know that I unwittingly stumbled into ketosis as a side effect of my interest in understanding and following a diet devoid of post-agriculture grain-based or starchy foods. I was hoping to be able to detect and measure the long-term effects, if any, of chronically reduced blood glucose swings and insulin hormone release. That meant that I needed to deliberately refuse to consume any “calorically dense” blood glucose raising carbohydrates.

Driven by my own need to fully understand the implications of removing dietary carbohydrate—which I have long understood to consist of very little more, nutritionally, than simple sugar—I have read a score of books cover-to-cover. (Okay, one or two were so useless that I didn't make it very far before regretting their purchase and preventing any further waste of time.) I know everyone has their own personal favorites, and that by posting this narrow, highly-select list, people will ask “hey, but did you read this one?” I certainly have not read everything, so if you DO have a favorite by all means let me know. You can get a note straight to me through the health feedback page (also linked at the bottom of all of these pages).

My goal here is NOT to list every book ever written about this topic (there are so many!) but to save YOU the time and trouble of wading through any that are not really great. So I have reduced the vast number of possibilities to just three, each of which I can recommend without reservation. Each one serves a different purpose as it fills-in different areas of the entire picture. Please see the details about each book below:

“Deadly Harvest” – The Intimate relationship between our health and our food.  by Geoff Bond  (Amazon: Softcover / Kindle) This was not the book that started it all for me (I had already read “Wheat Belly”, “Good Calories, Bad Calories”, and “Why We Get Fat”). But this book made me regret that I'd spent so much time getting around to this one. This is the book that Leo also loves and keeps talking about. And everyone, without exception, from college professor to restaurant manager, whom I have turned onto it has been riveted and fascinated by it. If you believe that you can only read one book about this fascinating topic, this should be this one! Geoff Bond is a “nutritional anthropologist”, with multiple science degrees from London University. As an anthropologist he has extensively studied the dietary habits of both early man and contemporary tribes of humans whose lifestyles have not been contaminated by civilization. And as a biologist and biochemist he has studied the details of the way man's modern food supply has changed over the past few thousand years—effectively an instant on an evolutionary time scale. The book has zero “fluff” and is packed with truly interesting facts. I recommend it without reservation.

“The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living” – An expert guide to making the life-saving benefits of carbohydrate restriction sustainable and enjoyable. by Jeff S. Volek, PhD, RD & Stephen D. Phinney, MD, PhD  (Amazon: Softcover / Kindle) When I first realized that something called "ketosis" was happening to me, I went searching for the ultimate guide to nutritional ketosis and found this book. Check out the “About the Authors” page on their Art and Science of Low Carb web site and you'll get some sense for why THIS was the book I needed (and you may want). Professors with multiple masters and doctorates in exercise physiology, nutrition and medicine (from Stanford), nutritional biochemistry (from MIT) and post doctoral work at Harvard. And published more than 220 peer-reviewed studies and papers in the last ten years. These guys ARE Low-Carb Science, and the fact that they know what they're talking about is clear from their book. • Here's a GREAT YouTUBE video of Dr. Phinney explaining the whole “Low Carb” mode. • From their book: Table of Contents, Introduction, Chapter One and Chapter Two all as PDFs!

“The Rosedale Diet” – Turn off your hunger switch. Live longer, Lose weight fast, And keep it off. by Ron Rosedale, MD & Carol Colman  (Amazon: Softcover / Kindle) During the first of our podcasts, I mentioned that I was utterly stunned when my appetite disappeared overnight, and my sense of satiety when eating completely changed. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I was essentially “unhungry” throughout the day. I even kept toying with skipping meals when I was too busy. That had never happened before—in my life. (But I dared NOT skip any meals since I appeared to be losing body fat rather rapidly and I figured that I probably needed to keep feeding myself. This was all new and unexplored territory.) And when I ate, I became full almost immediately, so that I had to quickly learn to order less in restaurants. Halfway through my meal, I was done! It's NO FAULT of this fabulous book that I didn't believe a word of what Dr. Rosedale wrote about how this sort of eating would dramatically suppress appetite and change one's relationship to food... because until it happened it was entirely beyond my life experience. Nothing and no one COULD have said or written anything to make me believe that it would actually happen to me. So not only do I recommend this book without reservation, but I intend to re-read this book from cover-to-cover now that I know it's true!

“The Paleo Solution” – Transform your life in 30 days. Lose weight, Get fit, Reverse disease by Robb Wolf (Amazon: Hardcover / Kindle) After assembling these pages as fast as I possible for the podcasts, and putting together the three book summaries and reviews above, I would have loved to be done. But since I really ENJOYED Robb Wolf's “The Paleo Solution” I needed to tell you about it too. Robb is a physical trainer with a gym out in “the sticks” of Northern California, yet he's also a trained biochemist. Robb deliberately interjects some humor that works in order to keep things from becoming too dry, and he assembles a great collection of interesting data and research into a book that's never dull. So if your eyes haven't yet uncrossed from reading “The Art and Science...” you might want to give this one a shot. Even though it's lighter and more fun, it's still 100% solid science and research.

More to come...