"One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating." ~Luciano Pavarotti, My Own Story


So my wife and I have taken a joint interest in living a healthier, better lifestyle and one central component of that is eating better.

Now, let me say at this point, that I am a fairly thin guy. I always have been. Since high school when I weighed about 165 and had a 32 inch waist, I’ve only put about 15 lbs. more on my frame and an inch and a half on my waist. But still, my wife and I both know we could and should be eating better -- especially since we’re raising three kids who will most likely take their lifelong relationship with food from the cues we are giving them by our own actions.

Food itself has always been a wonderful part of my life. I admit it. I love to eat. Just last week, I was reminding my brother of the year when we were both teenagers and our parents went on vacation. And finding ourselves home alone and able to eat whatever we wanted, we each ordered a Domino’s medium pizza loaded with just about everything available (one of those things that, now that we have kids, I’m rarely able to do -- order a pizza that actually has TOPPINGS.) Both of us EACH consumed his own entire medium pizza. In one sitting.

MMMMmmmm…

So I, at age 40, and my wife, 35, have decided to begin living with purpose, as the saying goes, and we’re actually thinking about what we should be eating instead of just what we want to eat.

So the first thing I did yesterday was to search the local library near my office for books on diet and nutrition.

The section was overwhelming.

Apparently, we Americans really do have some major issues with what we eat, and for a variety of reasons. On my desk next to me, I have the following selection, a VERY TINY portion of the hundreds of books at the library I was just at:

--The Calorie Counter, by Annette Natow and Jo-Ann Heslin
--The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet, by Rachael Hell and Richard Heller
--Dr. Atkins’ NEW Diet Revolution, by Robert Atkins
--The Sonoma Diet, by Connie Guttersen
--My BIG FAT Greek Diet, by Y. Phantides
--The Best Life Diet, by Bob Green
--The South Beach Diet, by Arthur Agatston
--Mastering THE ZONE, by Barry Sears

There are many others out there, too, that I remember being around when I was a kid: the Grapefruit diet, the Maker’s diet (eating from dieting principles supposedly listed in the Bible), low-carb diets, good-carb diets, the Sugar-Busters diet, low-fat diets, no-fat diets, weightlifter’s diets, Olympian diets, etc. With virtually any of them, you’d of course lose weight, but the trick becomes finding the one that you can actually stick to, and that’s where the diets become a little absurd (how could you possibly stay on a diet that involves eating so much grapefruit? What would you do on a vacation???)

What’s fascinating to me is if you gather information from each of them and pit them against each other, they often totally disagree, yet each author can site clinical examples of how and why the diet is supposed to work. The Atkins diet involved eating virtually no carbohydrates for a period of several weeks, during which your body is unable to process and store fat, forcing it instead to burn the excess fat that it has stored on-hand.

Great idea, right? Until you read Skinny Bitches, a book mostly targeted to a younger female audience that shoves Atkins’ love for steak right down his gullet for introducing the idea that a better way to lose weight involves eating LESS fruit and LESS vegetables – both of which are held as some of the best foods you can possibly eat in the Skinny Bitches book. Their beef with beef? Eating that much protein causes a massive increase of urea in the body, as well as a huge increase in toxins. Even though your body will begin burning fat stores, the authors argue that most of the weight lost is actually water weight, not fat, because pulling water from your fat cells is the only way your body can get rid of all that ingested protein.

So who do you believe?

Atkins is a doctor – it says so right on the cover – and the authors of Skinny Bitches are nutritionists with degrees as well. Oh, and they’re quick to point out that according to a clinical study, doctors in medical school receive on average three hours of nutritional training throughout their entire educations.

Ouch.

The Sonoma Diet isn’t any better. Check this out:
“There’s no ‘diet food’ on The Sonoma Diet. No specialty foods. Nothing out of the ordinary.” (pg 6) and then later: “Forget about eating different foods than everybody else around you. You’ll barely remember you’re on a diet.” (pg 7) and finally: “The Sonoma Diet is not a deprivation diet. Meat, fish, beans, eggs – they’re all there for you. Snacks? Of course. Wine? Sure, if you like. In moderation…” (pg 8)

Umm, this isn’t just stretching the truth, it’s an outright lie. What the authors don’t tell you in the beginning of the book is that the diet involves two phases. In the first, extremely restrictive phase, you get to choose from these “Wave One” foods (from pg 75): Bok Choy, Chayote, Jicama, Kohlrabi, Okra, Radish, Edamame, Tofu, Barley, Bulgur, and Quinoa.

Now don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t the entire list, only a sampling of what I’m talking about. There are also easy to find choices like whole grain breads and lean steak and so on. Oh, and also, you get to eat 'game meats' including deer, elk, and bison. There's apparently an abundance of this stuff in big city supermarkets waiting to be bought.

So come on. Don’t tell me that I’m going to be forgetting I’m dieting when I’m at the table eating jicama and everyone else is having Chinese takeout on fried rice.

What’s really interesting to me is how so many of these authors extrapolate such a major amount of information from such a tiny amount of research – or no research at all.

Take Atkins. Part of his reasoning for switching to a low-carb diet involved the death of his father at a very young age from heart disease. His father looked healthy, exercised often, and didn’t seem like a candidate for dying of a heart attack. And yet he did.

So with this amount of information, how do you extrapolate that eating less carbs and more protein is a better way to live? Aren’t our bodies designed to eat as omnivores? Isn’t that why our teeth are shaped the way they are? I’m greatly oversimplifying here, but only because this is how Atkins introduced his first book. He talks about clinical studies involving low-carb diets and has a host of anecdotal evidence from people he’s helped over the year lose weight – as many authors do. One last laugh: in the book I have next to me, he says this: “I’ve yet to see a single study that has shown that a high-protein diet causes kidney problems.” (pg. 21) Right – oh, wait, unless you consider kidney STONES to be included in ‘kidney problems’ – he neglected that tiny, little, jagged shard of information. Maybe this research wasn’t available to Atkins when he wrote the book, or maybe he just hadn’t seen it: high-protein diets carry an increased risk of kidney stones.

The Zone Diet was another bizarre one, if for no other reason than this: how could you possibly expect someone, over a lifetime, to adhere to these rules: 1) Never consume any more protein than your body needs to maintain a lean body mass, but never eat less. (How is this even THEORETICALLY possible? Do you FEEL different if you need more or less protein???) 2) Never consume more low-fat protein in one sitting than you can fit on the palm of your hand (I get it – but is this really best for everyone? And what do you do if you’re a vegetarian at, say, a wedding reception? Bring your own protein tofu bar because you don’t eat steak? Because NOT eating protein isn’t an option if you want to stay ‘in the zone’…)

So where does this leave us? Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve sifted through and thrown out a LOT of information. I’m convinced that most of what’s in these diet books is put there for these reasons, in this order:

First, to convince you that you REALLY need to buy this book because you’re obviously not healthy -- One of The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet authors relays stories of how unhealthy her childhood was, so clearly you must be like this to; The Zone author calls for you to find the hormonal balance that your grandmother had (um, I don’t want anything to do with ANY of my grandparents’ hormones, ESPECIALLY either of my grandmothers’); the author of My Big Fat Greek Diet spends the first 100 pages – count ‘em, 100! – in a series of personal anecdotes convincing you that HE REALLY WAS GROSSLY OBESE. This in a book that, through the epilogue and not including the “About the Author” section, is only 289 pages long – somewhat entertaining, but useless for dieting – we get it, you were fat. We got that after the first half dozen pictures you showed of yourself at varying stages of obesity. (This book really was the least helpful, in my opinion.)

Second, the authors are trying to convince you, with a limited amount of information, that you should believe them above everyone else. They cite anecdotal evidence; they cite clinical evidence; they cite other dieticians that believe what they’re saying.

Third, (in many cases) to get you on a system of buying their products: Atkins wants to sell you not only his book, but his Bake Mix (trademark of Atkins, Inc.), Heller and Heller want to sell you their Carbohydrate Addict’s Complementary French Toast (trademark of Heller and Heller Inc.) and their Carbohydrate Addict’s Complementary Light and Airy Muffins (trademark of Heller and Heller Inc.); and don’t get me started on Weight Watchers…
Which all means more sales and more money.
And one more thing to think about? One other reason I’m completely skeptical of diet books? Virtually EVERY ONE of these authors is a licensed medical doctor, and apparently making a low six figure salary as a doctor isn’t quiiiite good enough, so to truly serve humanity even further, the authors have written this plethora of twenty dollar, hardcover books for you to buy, to TRULY show how much they care about helping people…just make sure you also buy their specialty, brand-name items (in retail, called upselling – I know, because I used to do it…shame on me, too, right?)

So, to end this post that’s already too long, I’ll just finish by saying this is the first of a series of posts…

Much, much more to come in the future to update how our family is doing in changing its lifestyle habits…