The information and advice presented in this book are not meant to substitute for the advice of medical professionals. You are advised to consult with your physicians regarding your family’s nutrition, health and well-being. Copyright © 2013 by Sarah Wilson Photographs copyright © 2013 by Marija Ivkovic Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Kat Chadwick All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. www.crownpublishing.com www.clarksonpotter.com CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with a colophon is a registered trademark of Random House LLC. Originally published in slightly different form by Macmillan Australia Pty Limited, Sydney, Australia, in 2013. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. ISBN 978-0-8041-8601-8 eBook ISBN 978-0-80418602-5 Book design by Trisha Garner Cover photographs by Marija Ivkovic Additional photographs by Sarah Wilson; image on this page supplied by Aquabumps Styling by Lee Blaylock and Sarah Wilson Food preparation by Rachel Lane, Rochelle Seator and Rachelle Davey First American Edition v3.1 A quick foreword Introduction My story: Why I had to quit Are you ready to quit? THE 8-WEEK PROGRAM Week 1: Start to cut back Week 2: Operation eat fat Week 3: Quit! Week 4: Face the demons Week 5: Get creative, experiment … and detox Week 6: Add some sweetness back in Week 7: Recovering from lapses Week 8: Refining and moving forward GETTING EQUIPPED RECIPES Breakfast Smoothies & drinks Healthy detox meals Savory snacks Sugar-free kids Sweet treats Desserts THE BITS AT THE BACK OF THE BOOK The Shopping List Resources Contributors Index Acknowledgments Dan Buettner and I chewing fat over sugar and longevity in Greece recently. by Dan Buettner National Geographic Fellow and New York Times best-selling author of The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest What should you eat? I just Googled “diet” and was presented with 656 million results. WebMD scientifically reviews 94 diets—everything from the “Atkins Diet” to the “Zone Diet”; from the “Gene Smart Diet” to the “Cookie Diet.” Here’s the bottom line: None of them work! Sure, any one of them will help you lose weight for a few weeks or a few months. But we humans are hardwired for variety and pretty soon, no matter how seemingly fantabulous a new diet may seem, we’re going to get bored with it and stray. I defy anyone to tell me about a diet that has worked for more than two years. I’ve spent over a decade studying what centenarians eat to be 100 and I can tell you a few things for sure. First is that evolution provides important cues for helping us decide what to eat. Think about what your grandparents ate, the quantity, the level of processing, the freshness, and you can get a pretty good idea of what humans have been eating for the past few centuries. Second, we all need to experiment and find out what works for our lifestyle and our particular body chemistry. I believe that vegetables are good for you, but if I eat eggplant—and I don’t know why eggplant—the roof of my mouth swells like a sea anemone. Third, if we eat what we like, we’re going to probably eat it for long enough to make a real difference in our health—for better or for worse. Which is why I like Sarah Wilson’s approach to eating, and