Marcelle Pick - The Core Balance Diet: A 4-Week Plan for Women to Boost their Metabolism and Lose Weight

Copyright 2011 by Marcelle Pick

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use other than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews without prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

A Word to the Wise:No book can take the place of a caring medical professionals advice. If you are currently under a practitioners/doctors care, taking a prescription medicine, or working with a chronic disease such as diabetes, please check with your healthcare practitioner before starting this programme. Most of my patients have easily incorporated The Core Balance Diet into their self-care routines, but it is always prudent to discuss any changes in diet and lifestyle with a caring medical professional, preferably one who understands both traditional and alternative methods of care an approach we call integrated medicine. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, I advise you to reconsider any weight loss programme now is not the time.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

PLEASE NOTE: This book is a revised edition of the title The Core Balance Diet: 4 Weeks to Boost Your Metabolism and Lose Weight for Good, originally published in 2009. Measurements in recipes and information on weight have been standardised for the United Kingdom.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-8485-0467-7 in Epub format

ISBN 978-1-8485-0466-0 in Mobipocket format

For my children, Joshua, Micah and Katya, and their future.

Stage IV: Core Balance for Life:
Transformation Inside and Out

At one point in my life, I was as much as 40 pounds overweight and up until relatively recently I carried 15 to 20 stubborn extra pounds. From my early teens until my fifties, I was in a constant battle with my weight fuelled by a lot of confusion and self-doubt. As a girl growing up in Australia, I never thought about my body. I ran and played and worked happily; I was healthy and strong and ate regular, home-cooked meals made from food my parents were able to grow, gather or purchase for our home in the Outback. When I was 10 years old, my family moved to the United States, and for the first time in my life I became body-conscious. Girls at school teased me for being bigger then they were (though I was hardly overweight), and I began to obsess over my size. Our diet changed as we began to integrate into American culture, though my mother still cooked for us every day. I was never overweight as a child, but I was never skinny. And boy, did I want to be skinny!

It was the 1960s and all of the cultural icons were sticks like Twiggy. Through high school, I engaged in all the typical skirmishes we women do to lose weight: I starved myself, I ate only grapefruit for a week, I yo-yoed back and forth between fad diets and I stayed active on the pep team; but I never got really skinny, no matter how hard I tried. During my twenties and thirties, as I started my family, extra pounds crept on and I spent huge amounts of energy trying to lose them. I went on Weight Watchers, measured every ounce of food I ate, and oh-so-slowly lost weight at the agonizing rate of about a half a pound a week. I was stupefied when others in my group who were doing the exact same program would lose two to five in the same time period! It took me a year to lose 15 pounds, and then it came right back on the moment I started eating normally again.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have immediately suspected some underlying issues that were getting in the way of my weight loss. But I didnt know so I simply ate less, went to the gym early in the mornings and blamed myself for not being disciplined enough to lose the weight. The silver lining to this experience was that I began to tune in to my diet and learn more about the importance of optimal nutrition and eating organically. I also began to explore holistic and then functional medicine. My weight was stable (even though I was heavier than I wanted to be) and I was healthy and full of energy. It was around then that three partners and I began Women to Women, one of the first medical clinics in the United States to practice holistic healing for women by women, with a mission to change womens health for the better.

Things percolated along for a decade. My family and the medical clinic were thriving; I had a group of supportive and loving friends; and I was living my dream albeit with 15 extra pounds. I was frustrated by my inability to lose this weight. I felt as if I was doing everything right, but nothing really worked for very long. And then, in my late 40s, things went haywire. My body began to rebel. My mother (with whom Id always had a complicated and unresolved relationship) fell ill and eventually passed away. At the same time, I began to undergo pre-menopausal hormonal shifts and packed on a mysterious additional 20 pounds even though I had not changed a thing in my diet or my exercise patterns. Shocking as it was, I look back now and realise that the sudden weight gain was a kind of gift, because it forced me to finally look beyond outdated diet thinking and pay real attention to what I, as a unique individual, needed to do. It was my wake-up call.

As a medical practitioner who has treated women for almost 30 years, I have seen up close the miraculous transformation that can occur when a woman finally begins to take care of herself on every level. Many of the diet and lifestyle guidelines I have set out for you here have been culled from decades of medical experience and a few aha moments with real patients. In these pages you will read some of their stories and share in their successes. During all those years, I strove to be a good example of my own teachings and I was able to design the physically supportive concepts set out in The Core Balance Diet. By practising them myself, I successfully kept myself well and eventually lost the weight I put on at the menopause but continued to struggle with those intractable 15 unwanted pounds that had bothered me since early adulthood.

The sea change finally came a couple of years ago when I began to delve into my past, specifically into my relationships with my mother and my father, as well as their legacy to me. When I engaged in this work, I truly began to feel on an emotional level the new direction I needed to take. For this, I must thank the Quadrinity Process and my teachers at The Hoffman Institute (which Ill tell you more about later on when we talk about your emotional work). There, I was finally able to integrate all the aspects of my true self. I finally became whole and balanced to my core and almost magically that stubborn, resistant weight that had plagued me all those years simply came off. It has never come back. This was the last piece of my own puzzle that fell into place, and this book just flowed from there. This has been my journey you are now about to set off on your own. And it is your very own. It wont look like anybody elses. I am happy to offer you my story as proof that the ideas behind this book are valid and effective if you are serious about putting the energy into following them. They worked for me, theyve worked for hundreds of women just like you, and they can work for you.