The 28-Day DASH Diet Weight Loss Program – by Julie Andrews RDN & Andy De Santis RD

“Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension”, or DASH, is a Mediterranean-adjacent way of eating that, as the name suggests, is focussed on cardiovascular health.

By “Mediterranean-adjacent”, we don’t mean Anatolian or such, we mean: it’s basically the Mediterranean diet with a few tweaks, such as eliminating red meat (of which the Mediterranean allows for a small amount) and moving fish up the list in terms of worthy protein sources.

In this book, we get an overview of what makes up the DASH diet and why, what proportions of various food groups we want to aim for, and for those who want to still include red meat, there’s advice on how to make it less bad (e.g. portion size capped at 1oz and fat trimmed off, etc).

You may be wondering about sodium; they use the 2.3g daily limit to start, working toward a 1.5mg daily limit. Which, considering the various international bodies’ recommended limits on sodium, are quite generous while still representing a reduction for most people, and especially for most Americans.

The recipes themselves are varied, easy without being uninteresting, and plants-forward while still including many recipes that have animal products. We will mention though, that most of them don’t have pictures, which will be a downside for people who prefer such.

The subtitle mentioning “recipes and workouts” makes it sound like equal amounts of both; in reality there are a few pages devoted to exercise (within a chapter devoted to exercise, stress management, and sleep) and aside from that one chapter, we get 10 chapters about diet.

Bottom line: if you’d like to take up the DASH diet and aren’t sure where to start, this guide will get you up-and-running with its 28-day program.

Click here to check out The 28-Day DASH Diet Weight Loss Program, and take care of your heart!