View source for Eat. Nourish. Glow.: 10 easy steps for losing weight, looking younger and feeling healthier by Amelia Freer

{{infobox1
|title=Eat. Nourish. Glow.: 10 easy steps for losing weight, looking younger and feeling healthier
|author=Amelia Freer
|reviewer=Sue Magee
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=Not a recipe book but a plan to change the way that you eat to achieve the desired result.  Having made some of the changes quite independently some months ago I can confirm that they work.
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=272
|publisher=Harper Collins Thorsons
|date=January 2015
|isbn=978-0007579907
|website=http://www.freernutrition.com
|video=eNdOTEYBgsA
|cover=Freer_ENG
|aznuk=000757990X
|aznus=000757990X
}}

Amelia Freer had struggled with her own health for a while and it reached a stage where she was waking up feeling tired and groggy, relying on ten cups a day of sugary tea to perk her up and her food was mainly processed convenience foods.  At the time she was working as a PA to Prince Charles and loved the job but her busy life meant that she made automatic food choices without consideration of what they were doing to her health.  It wasn't until she went to see a nutritionist that she realised what she had been doing and made the decision not only to change her diet, but to train to be a nutritionist.  The result is a busy practice - and this book.

My route to this book was similar in many ways.  After problems with my blood pressure in the summer of 2014 I decided to see if changing my diet would stave off taking medication which I might well be on for life.  I made various changes - cutting out caffeine and processed sugars were two of the first - and my blood pressure came within normal ranges.  But then some things which I hadn't expected happened: I felt better, I had the energy levels of twenty years ago and despite eating more, the excess weight which I'd been harbouring was peeling off.  So far I'd been working on a little bit of knowledge and a lot of ''gut'' instinct - now I needed some professional advice.

''Eat. Nourish. Glow.'' gives ten easy steps for losing weight, looking younger and feeling healthier.  My primary concern was feeling healthier - or maintaining the healthier feeling which I'd achieved as a side effect - but the other two would be a bonus!  It's perhaps a little bit disingenuous to suggest that these steps are ''easy'' - they might appear so on paper, but you could well be looking at making some quite radical changes.  Freer is keen on being gluten free and I have to confess that if I had to give up foodstuffs one by one, our homemade wholemeal bread would be the last to go.

Detoxing your kitchen - clearing out all the stuff you shouldn't be eating - sounds quite simple but can be problematic if you're living with someone who doesn't want to change their ways, no matter how good for them it might be.  Giving up snacking might ''sound'' difficult, but is actually surprisingly easy once you start eating decent food.  I haven't eaten between meals for eight months and the only time I was even tempted was when I had cereal for breakfast because I was pushed for time.  There is some understanding of the pressures you'll be under though, as you're urged to ''be consistent, not perfect''.  The odd glass of wine, piece of chocolate or even one daily cup of (good, organic) coffee come under this heading.

You're encouraged to make fat your friend: butter (in moderation) is OK, so long as you can take dairy, as is red meat, but there's a preference for organic (in all things) as well as buying top quality foodstuff and avoiding cans and plastic bottles if at all possible.  I'm aware as I'm writing this that it's all sounding rather faddy, but that wasn't my impression as I was reading the book, perhaps because I made up my mind that I would take away the knowledge and make changes which I thought were justified: after all, we should be eating to live rather than worrying about what we are eating all the time.

I found the book interesting, but also annoying.  There are the pictures - and there are a lot of them - and sometimes the same picture is repeated within a few pages.  This happens several times and I had the feeling that the text had been 'bulked out' to make it seem like a bigger book.  It was also disgruntling to find grammatical and spelling errors and for there to be notes in the text which obviously shouldn't have been published. (There's a recipe for an anti-inflammatory dressing on page 76 which says ''A slug of olive oil - need to measure specific quantity!'' and ''Filtered water to correct consistency - need to check''.)

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.

If you're looking for a book of recipes then this isn't the one for you: there are eighteen at the back of the book (not sorted into any particular order, but then how long does it take to look through eighteen recipes?) and a few more within the body of the book.  If you're looking for recipes then you might enjoy [[Deliciously Ella: Awesome Ingredients, Incredible Food That You and Your Body Will Love by Ella Woodward]]. 

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[[Category:Cookery]]