The Science Diet
Forests have been felled and fortunes spent on diets and dieting. The money has been wasted and almost all the words are worthless drivel. Find the secrets to the only diet that really works. And its free!
There was an Entertainment Tonight story a few months ago about the trials of a 400 pound 11 year old girl. I commented that her parents should be charged with criminal negligence. When my wife wondered why, I said that the girl had to be getting her food from somewhere -- and her parents are her pushers. "But she has a glandular problem!", was the response. That may be true but it is entirely irrelevant. Let me explain.
Energy and You
The human body is a bag of water and chemicals whose primary purpose is self-replication. All that replicating uses energy; in fact anything you do, including just sitting there, uses energy. This is where the science part of the science diet comes in. A law of physics says that energy can be converted from one form to another, but it can never be created or destroyed. For example, the energy of motion in your SUV is obtained by burning gas, whose energy is in turn obtained from 100 million year old fossilized algae, which got its energy by photosynthesizing sunlight, which is created in the sun when protons fuse together and release a bit of their energy in the form of positrons, neutrinos, and light.People are no exception to the rule; in our case the energy we expend comes from the food we eat (and ultimately from the sun). We measure the energy content of food in terms of calories. Conservation of energy tells us that if you expend more calories than you consume, you will eventually starve to death. On the other hand, if you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. The calories have to go somewhere (energy does not disappear), in our case it is stored in fat cells. If you eat 100 calories (8 ounces of pop or one big apple) more per day than you burn, you will gain about 1/100 of a pound a day. That doesn't sound like much but it adds up to 3.6 pounds per year. A decade of this lifestyle and you will be 36 pounds heavier than you were (sound familiar?). This calculus is based on laws of physics -- there is no way around it. All that talk about glandular problems, metabolic rates, hormones, carbohydrates, ketosis, and leptin is irrelevant. It is relevant (sometimes) in determing what your break-even calorie consumption is, but the exact value does not matter, what matters is how much you go over this limit.
Think about all those diet plans: Rachel Ray, Jenny Craig, Anne Collins, Suzanne Somers, Jillian Michaels, Karl Lagerfeld, Atkins, Bernstein, Feingold, Oprah, Rosedale, Dr. Phil, Dr. Seigai, Dr. Amandas, WeightWatchers, Nutri-System, Slim-fast, South Beach, Sonoma, Mediterranean, Japanese, St. Tropez, Hollywood, Scarsdale, New York, Martha's Vineyard, Jerusalem, French, Hilton Head, low-fat, low-carb, low-protein, low-starch, low-glycemic, no-flour, no-sugar, no-grain, apple cider vinegar, acid alkaline, banana, cabbage soup, chocolate, coconut, rice, raw. To be sure they are all making somebody money, but do you really need them? In the end it doesn't matter what you cut out (assuming you are only interested in weight loss), as long as you cut something. If you cut out enough calories you will, slowly and surely, lose weight.
Physicians Confirm a Law of Physics
This simple law of physics has recently been verified in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (you can also find a report in a NY Times article). The authors of the study followed 811 (presumably fat) people for two years. Given our discussion, their conclusions are not surprising:Reduced-calorie diets result in clinically meaningful weight loss regardless of which macronutrients they emphasize.More amusing is the introduction to their paper:
There is intense debate about what types of diet are most effective for treating overweight — those that emphasize protein, those that emphasize carbohydrates, or those that emphasize fat. Several trials showed that low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets resulted in more weight loss over the course of 3 to 6 months than conventional high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets, but other studies did not show this effect. A smaller group of studies that extended the follow-up to 1 year did not show that low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets were superior to high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets. In contrast, other researchers found that a very-high-carbohydrate, very-low-fat vegetarian diet was superior to a conventional high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet. Among the few studies that extended beyond 1 year, one showed that a very-low-fat vegetarian diet was superior to a conventional low-fat diet, one showed that a low-fat diet was superior to a moderate-fat diet, two showed that a moderate-fat, Mediterranean-style diet was superior to a low-fat diet, one showed that a low-carbohydrate diet was superior to a low-fat diet, and another showed no difference between high-protein and low-protein diets.Yup, there are a lot of diets, and a lot of fads, and a lot of studies. And all of it means nothing. What matters is that you shovel in as much energy, or less, than you burn. But we are not so good at balancing the food energy budget. It is estimated that the average weight of Americans is increasing at about a pound a year. The repercussions on our collective health are profound. You've heard about the rise in diabetes, hypertension, and heart problems that are all linked to obesity. And all of this affects our economy: the Surgeon General estimated that obesity costs had reached $117 billion a year in 2000. Half of this was for health care, the other half was for indirect expenses like higher health insurance premiums. Over their lifetimes, obese people spend $10,000 more on medical bills than everyone else. All of this adds up to a serious strain on the economy -- one we don't need in the current meltdown.
The Science Diet
So here's the dieteat less!
Its a simple plan, but has benefits. You can eat your favorite food as long as you eat less of it. I know (believe me) that this can be hard. If you are having trouble, try some tricks like having a cup of tea, a glass of ice water, some fruit, a stick of gum, etc. And don't bother with diet pop or artificial sweeteners, these have minimal effect compared to stuffing four slices of pizza into your face.
Just in case you are wondering, here is a link to the Center for Disease Control BMI calculator. By the way, 40% of overweight people do not consider themselves overweight.
