After the release of my last column, which was on the book I’ve been reading, “Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat” by Naomi Moriyama, I received a nice e-mail from Michael Newburg of Lyme, who used a book to get himself into healthy mode and lost weight in the process.

“I never really had a great weight problem,” says Newburg, who stands six feet tall. “I was never obese, but I’m tall and pretty thin in terms of the way I’m built. I did carry around 20 or 25 pounds more than I do now. I actually wasn’t trying to lose weight.”

Newburg currently weighs a bit under 180 pounds and hopes to get back into farming at some point, something he did back in 2009. These days, he’s quite busy operating his business, Amelie Michel, which specializes in French tablecloths and textiles.

The book that got Newburg on track is called “It Starts with Food” by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig. He soon began utilizing the basic Paleo and low-carb principles.

“They encourage people to basically follow their guideline for [a] whole 30 days, without exception,” he said, noting that he started feeling better shortly after integrating this diet. “You take out of the diet anything that might possibly be problematic (such as dairy), and then add things back in.”

According to Newburg, there has been quite a bit of literature available that suggests the relief of several health ailments — everything from diseases to high blood pressure, and more — just by changing the way we eat.

One book he mentions is “Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health” by cardiologist Dr. William Davis.

“If you go and look at some of these books, it turns out that a lot of the chronic diseases that we suffer from more and more as we get older are considered to be autoimmune, where the body is attacking itself, and you can sort of reverse that with diet,” he said. “What I take as my guide is how I feel and how my body feels, and if my body feels well, then I’m doing something right!”

Newburg’s “long back story” is that he used to have an organic farm in Lyme. His wife, Amelia, had been diagnosed with cancer, which led them to “delve into various nutritional approaches.” Doing so may have contributed to her surviving 10 years beyond her original prognosis.

“That got me really into thinking about nutrition,” Newburg said. “I’ve never had a problem changing my diet and, actually, 20 years ago, someone mentioned gluten and Celiac disease to me. All my life, I had stomach problems, gas and bloat, and I talked to doctors about it and bought the book called ‘Dangerous Grains’ (by James Braly).”

Newburg immediately cut gluten out of his diet, mainly bread and pasta, and within two weeks, all his symptoms disappeared.

He’ll sometimes eat only two meals per day. Breakfast usually consists of sautéing grass-fed organic ground beef or bits of chicken or turkey sausage, a couple eggs, and a ton of veggies – onion, raw beet, carrots, kale or swiss chard. This is cooked in either butter or coconut oil — Newburg says that “the more fat I eat, the more energetic I am and the thinner I get,” and he’ll even put a chunk of butter into his coffee instead of milk — and then he places a lid on top to simmer it down.

Ideally, he aims for around nine cups of vegetables a day. He will cook his second meal in a similar fashion, but will include a green salad with a variety of items in it, such as red onion and whatever veggies he has around, a bit of feta, and a can of sardines.

“If I’m hungry during the day, I’ll eat a can of sardines and a chunk of cheese,” Newburg said. “I love making salads and I’ll roast one chicken a week. We’ve raised our own chickens and we put away enough chickens to take us through the year.”

If he does run out of chickens, Newburg will just take a quick visit to his friends at White Gate Farm in East Lyme. He will occasionally help with a chicken slaughter and end up with different parts of the chicken, the likes of which you wouldn’t typically find at your local grocers – heads, livers, feet, etc.

“The other thing I do is make bone broth,” Newburg said. “Chicken feet are a really great thing to put into broth. I also make beef broth that I’ve actually started to prefer – grass-fed beef bones, but also lamb and pork as well. I try to drink a cup of broth a day and that is really good for the joints and really cuts back on aches and pains.”

An alternative to breakfast cereal that Newburg has been enjoying lately and that has given him a lot more energy than traditional oatmeal is ground-up walnuts & almonds, raisins, and seeds, mixed with either warmed milk or almond milk.

In addition to eating, Newburg finds that this diet reduces his desire for alcohol, which contains a significant amount of carbohydrates;a can of beer can contain an average 13 grams of carbs and a Bacardi breezer about 39 grams.

“Nutrition is just not spoken of, I think, in seriousness with the connection to health,” Newburg said. “We don’t really think about food as our environment. The medical professionals are really largely untrained in this and the food industry doesn’t care.”

“I find it very frustrating that people have all kinds of health problems and most run to the doctor and they take a pill, and that’s all a part of the way the system wants it to work, the food system and the pharmaceutical systems,” he said. “I am convinced that the way to health is through food and that really anybody who really pays attention to it can dramatically improve their health.”

And, with that note, I open it up to you, readers. What kinds of weight loss methods have you tried? Have you been successful? I’d love to hear your story!

Erika Y. Gradecki operates Food For Your Soul. She can be reached at foodfys@gmail.com.