Top 25 ‘Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb’ Amazon Bestsellers In 2013

It’s been yet another banner year for the low-carb, high-fat message and I’m excited to be a part of it with the work I do! One of my favorite things to take a look at every year as we approach the new year is to see what books and products resonated the most with the “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb” blog readers and podcast listeners as evidenced by my Amazon affiliate statistics. I’ve done this previously in 2012, 2011 and 2009 if you want to see what has done well in the past. In the top-selling items of 2013, we definitely see a clear a sign of the times of the increased interest in low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diets (“Ketogenic” was the #5 most Googled diet search term of 2013). Since I’m working on a book about this topic called Keto Clarity: Unleash The Health Benefits Of A Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet set to release in hardback, Kindle and audiobook on August 5, 2014, it’s gratifying to see this taking hold in the lives of so many people who are experiencing many of the amazing benefits of it that I have (if you missed my lecture about the results from my one-year n=1 experiment of nutritional ketosis that I gave on the 2013 Low-Carb Cruise, check it out in Episode 748 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show”).

What I found most fascinating about this list in 2013 compared to the past few years was the lack of the popular Paleo books, including top sellers such as Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo, Well Fed by Melissa Joulwan, It Starts With Food by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig, The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf, The Paleo Diet by Dr. Loren Cordain, Everyday Paleo by Sarah Fragoso and MANY MORE! Instead, we see an emphasis on books and authors that are dedicated to low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diets, products for adding in more healthy fats to your diet, supplements for lowering blood sugar levels, and products for testing blood sugar and blood ketones. I don’t see this as a sign that the Paleo message is waning, but rather an indication that the people who follow my stuff are more interested in low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic a bit more. That’s good to know in preparing for the content I’ll be sharing in 2014.

Look at the Top 25 “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb” Amazon affiliate bestsellers in 2013:

1. Cholesterol Clarity: What The HDL Is Wrong With My Numbers? by Jimmy Moore and Dr. Eric Westman

This is probably the least surprising item on the entire list considering it was a brand new book that I wrote with Duke low-carb researcher and practitioner Dr. Eric Westman as the first release with my new publisher Victory Belt Publishing. Needless to say, this one far outsold everything else on the list (it sold more than all the rest of the items in the top 25 COMBINED!). THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU so much for all of your incredible support of my new book this year and I can’t wait to share more with you in my new Victory Belt book on ketogenic diets coming in 2014. If you missed the great multitude of interviews that I did promoting Cholesterol Clarity in the past few months, then you can check it out on the Media page at CholesterolClarity.com.

2. The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance by Dr. Stephen Phinney and Dr. Jeff Volek

Can somebody please tell me why two of the most prominent researchers of low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diets have to SELF-PUBLISH their books? Dr. Phinney and Dr. Volek hit the top of this list in 2012 with this book since I was pointing people to it as the key resource that inspired me to begin my N=1 experiment of the concept of “nutritional ketosis” in May 2012. This is the book where they shared about measuring blood ketones, why that is important, what level of blood ketones is beneficial and so much more. This is arguably the best book under $10 you’ll ever get if you care about your health. And if a major publisher doesn’t pick them up and give them the marketing they deserve to penetrate their message into the mainstream, that’d be a crying shame! It makes the fact that they’ve done so well purely by word of mouth that much more amazing.

3. Precision Xtra Advanced Diabetes Management System

Are you testing YOUR blood ketones yet? It seems like a lot of my followers are doing just that and they’ve grabbed their own blood ketone monitor to do it. There are two major blood ketone meters–Precision Xtra and NovaMax–and I did a comparison blog post to show you the differences between the two. The Precision Xtra brand from Abbott is hands-down the best one I’ve personally used if you’re gonna test blood. But if you’re skittish about pricking your finger for a blood sample, get ready in 2014 for new technology that requires ZERO blood and is a whole lot more accurate than urine ketone testing. Wait for it…

4. Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar–Your Brain’s Silent Killers by Dr. David Perlmutter

This was easily the breakthrough health book of 2013 by a noted neurologist who is a HUGE supporter of low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diets on brain health. I gave this book a raving review and interviewed Dr. Perlmutter on both “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show” in Episode 725 and “Ask The Low-Carb Experts” in Episode 51. Even before he appeared as a guest on “The Dr. Oz Show” last month, Grain Brain had already become a wildly successful, runaway New York Times bestseller. We have my great cardiologist friend Dr. William Davis of Wheat Belly fame for breaking ground on this concept and people like Dr. Perlmutter and taking up the mantle and running with it in their field of expertise. I see this continuing in 2014 and beyond.

5. The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living by Dr. Stephen Phinney and Dr. Jeff Volek

This book deservedly landed at #1 on this list in 2011 and #2 in 2012 and it’s a fabulous addition to any low-carb library. In fact, I’d call it an essential book for anyone interested in low-carb, high-fat diets with direct wisdom and knowledge from two of the foremost authorities on this way of eating in the world. Phinney and Volek have the scientific mojo to know from whence they speak and they do it so beautifully in this book. I was honored and privileged to be asked by them to write the final chapter in this book as a “letter to doctors” explaining from a patient’s perspective why they need to be paying attention to low-carb living. If you don’t own this book, you owe it to yourself to get it.

6. Precision Xtra Blood Ketone Test Strips – 10 ea

You can’t test your blood ketones without getting the testing strips, right? While that’s definitely true, the price tag on a box of 10 Precision Xtra blood ketones strips is pretty outrageous. I’ve been working with the company that makes these strips (Abbott Laboratories) about providing easier access and more reasonable pricing to those of us who want to test our blood ketones using their product. But so far they have shown no interest in that telling me that their market is Type 1 diabetics to keep them from dying of ketoacidosis. While I think that’s one market they definitely need to be servicing, from a marketing standpoint it makes no sense to completely ignore this huge group of people who are not Type 1 diabetics willing to pay for a means for testing for the presence of beta-hydroxybutyrate (the ketone body measured in the blood). I’ll keep working on them, but it’s a shame something so many people obviously want has to be THIS hard to get.

7. A Low Carbohydrate, Ketogenic Diet Manual: No Sugar, No Starch Diet by Dr. Eric Westman

My Cholesterol Clarity coauthor has been sharing his basic low-carb nutritional principles with patients in the Duke Lifestyle Medicine Clinic in Durham, North Carolina for well over a decade. In early 2013, he decided to release it as a self-published pamphlet to help other people get started on their healthy low-carb lifestyle. It’s nothing fancy (the front of the book couldn’t be more plain than it is!), but it’s a great primer for anyone interested in learning more about the bare bones basics of what low-carb diets are about. It includes a list of foods you should try to avoid and those foods you want to be eating more of as part of embracing carbohydrate-restriction. Anyone with people in their life who don’t have a clue about why you eat the way you do would benefit from reading this very quick and easy-to-read booklet.

8. Fat Fast Cookbook: 50 Easy Recipes to Jump Start Your Low Carb Weight Loss by Dana Carpender, Amy Dungan and Rebecca Latham

Our friends at CarbSmart.com decided to get in on the book publishing in 2013 with the release of this awesome collection of recipes designed for people desiring to kickstart their low-carb diet with a fat fast. The Queen of Low-Carb Cooking Dana Carpender is joined by two other low-carb bloggers in Amy and Rebecca to provide recipes that are high in fat, moderate in protein and low in carbohydrates. Since there aren’t very many recipe books (YET!) for those of us who are seeking to be in nutritional ketosis, this one fit the bill for a whole lot of people desiring ideas about what they can eat while still maintaining adequate blood ketones for optimal fat-burning. I have a feeling we’re gonna be seeing a LOT of keto-friendly recipe books coming in 2014. I plan on including a few in Keto Clarity and I’m pitching the idea for a full book of ketogenic recipes to my publisher.

9. 21 Life Lessons From Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb: How The Healthy Low-Carb Lifestyle Changed Everything I Thought I Knew by Jimmy Moore

My second self-published book came out in 2009 and clocks in at nearly 500 pages! Yep, if you drop this bad boy on your foot, you’ll find yourself in the emergency room. But I was anxious to start sharing so many of the great lessons I have learned in this journey to better health. Here’s an interesting story about this book: When I was conceptualizing it in my head, I originally wanted to make it 50 Life Lessons From Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb but quickly nixed that idea when I had over 300 pages written after just a dozen chapters. EEEEK! Now that I have a publisher with a full slate of professional editors ready to slice and dice my original manuscript to make it the best it can be, my days of writing a book THIS big are long gone. But there’s a boatload of information in here to help anyone avoid the pitfalls that I did on my low-carb plan.

10. The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won’t Prevent Heart Disease-and the Statin-Free Plan That Will by Dr. Jonny Bowden and Dr. Stephen Sinatra

About a year before I released Cholesterol Clarity, this was the hottest book in the alternative health community on the subject of cholesterol and deservedly so. Dr. Bowden (a nutritionist) and Dr. Sinatra (a cardiologist) came at this critically important subject from the perspective that you shouldn’t be worrying about your cholesterol (while I agree with that in my heart of hearts, Dr. Westman and I realize in the real world that people DO worry about their cholesterol levels–so why not give them the things to pay attention to the most?). Anyone who has concerns about whether they need to be taking a statin drug or not need to read this book (listen to my interview with Dr. Bowden about this book in Episode 632 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show”).

Here’s the rest of my Top 25 Amazon affiliate bestsellers in 2013:

11. Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution: Turn Off the Genes That Are Killing You and Your Waistline by Dr. Steven Gundry

12. Nova Max Plus Ketone Test Strips – 10 Ct

13. Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease by Dr. Robert Lustig

14. Precision Xtra NFR Blood Glucose Monitoring System

15. How I Grew Younger…And Why You Should Too: In just 2 weeks, you can reduce belly fat, cholesterol, inflammation, and the age of your arteries with the BalancePoint diet by Binx Selby and Linda Jade Fong

16. New Atkins for a New You: The Ultimate Diet for Shedding Weight and Feeling Great by Dr. Eric Westman, Dr. Stephen Phinney and Dr. Jeff Volek

17. The Art of Healthy Eating: Grain Free Low Carb Reinvented: Slow Cooker by Maria Emmerich

18. Precision Xtra Blood Glucose Test Strips 100 Ea

19. Rich Food Poor Food: The Ultimate Grocery Purchasing System (GPS) by Dr. Jayson and Mira Calton

20. Living Low Carb: Controlled-Carbohydrate Eating for Long-Term Weight Loss by Dr. Jonny Bowden

21. NOW Foods Mct 100% Oil, 32-Fluid Ounces