My virtual book tour for my new book Gluten Free Throughout the Year continues. This month I did an author interview at About.com and had a nice conversation with Teri Gruss, the writer of the Gluten-Free Cooking section of that site. She asked very insightful questions I’m not often asked and we covered information that people who eat gluten free rarely hear about. You can check out the interview at these links:

About.com interview – Part 1

About.com Interview – Part 2

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I am very pleased to announce the release of my new book, Gluten Free Throughout the Year: A Two-Year, Month-to-Month Guide for Healthy Eating. I wrote the book as a companion guide to Going Against the Grain for the many people who asked for it. The primary focus is to help people on a gluten-free diet, but it’s also useful for people who want to lose weight or who follow a reduced-carbohydrate diet. Below is a summary of the information in the book followed by quick answers to several questions I am asked most often about the book by my clients and readers.

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Eating gluten free at picnics, while traveling, when you’re sick, and during holidays. All this and more is covered in the first ever gluten-free book of its kind, Gluten Free Throughout the Year. The book has:

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The podcast interview that Jimmy Moore of The Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Show did with me is now available! Jimmy is doing a great job spreading the word about the health benefits of low-carb diets, I love his enthusiastic personality, and I really enjoyed being on his show. He and I had a wonderful chat and we covered a lot of territory about the many unadvertised troubles with grains. If you have not yet read my Going Against the Grain book (or if you just need a little refresher on the information), the interview is a good overview of many of the topics I cover in that book. The interview runs less than an hour, and the many subjects we discussed in that time include:

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by Melissa Diane Smith

Do you eat gluten free, but gain weight or end up feeling not well during the holiday season? If so, consider this: There’s a little-known secret to enjoying the holidays with health, energy and no weight gain: Eating against the grain. Preparing low-grain foods and even no-grain foods may be unknown to most people (even many people who eat gluten-free). But it is an overlooked strategy for making delicious holiday meals quicker, easier and with far less fuss.

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A reminder: My Coaching Program Special continues through October 31, 2009. When you purchase any nutrition coaching program on or before that date, you will get an extra 45-minute coaching session over the phone (a $100 value) absolutely free. That is in addition to a free online Going Against the Grain Group membership (a $24.99 value) and a free Healthier Holidays Going Against the Grain E-book (a $15.95 value). The E-book is perfect for getting you prepared for the upcoming holiday season.

Still wondering about nutrition coaching? Here is a testimonial from one of my new coaching clients who has recently taken advantage of the Coaching Program Special:

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by Melissa Diane Smith

In the first study to compare the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer diet and the conventionally recommended diabetes diet in people who have type 2 diabetes, the Paleolithic diet improved glycemic control and HDL-cholesterol and lowered blood pressure, weight, and waist circumference better than the diabetes diet over a three-month study period.

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Last week Natural Products Expo West, the country’s largest natural, organic, and healthy products trade show, was marked by gluten-free products at virtually every turn and an astounding array of new products sweetened with agave nectar. The trends toward more gluten-free and agave-sweetened products both sound like positive developments, but consumers need to beware of the unadvertised pitfalls of these foods.

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A follow-up to my previous post: Improvement in a wide range of health indicators was documented in nine sedentary, non-obese people with no known health problems who ate a grain-free, dairy-free, hunter-gatherer-type diet for ten days. These people were supposedly healthy to begin with, but they still, on average, saw these large improvements in health:

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BREAKING NEWS: Eating a hunter-gatherer-type diet improves a wide range of cardiovascular risk factors – blood pressure, glucose tolerance, insulin secretion, insulin sensitivity, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglyceride levels – in people who do not exercise in less than two weeks, according to a just-published study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

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On his second full day in office, President Barack Obama surprised members of the White House press corps by unexpectedly visiting their work area in the West Wing, saying hi and commenting on the lack of healthy snacks in the vending machines in that area.

After passing by vending machines that had soda, candy bars and chips, Obama suggested that we “might want to have healthier snacks,” according to TIME magazine.

So, what does the svelte president snack on? Mostly against-the-grain snacks, such as fruits and nuts. According to USA Today, Obama likes Planters Trail Mix: Nuts, Seeds and Raisins. He also drinks a lot of bottled water.

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