07/04/2007 Dieting

07/04/2007 Dieting

I have read about 100 books on dieting and nutrition. A few observations:

• never try to clear things up with “facts”, we are ignorant about what happens in the body when we eat and exercise. There are no facts, everyone with a conclusion has a different set of facts supporting it.

• Never trust anyone who says dieting doesn't have to be painful. It is a tremendous act of will power, and only by respecting that will you be successful in dieting.

• Number of people who have a workout routine and followed it consistently for the last six months: 8%.

• Everyone is always on a diet, but people normally follow a diet for a few weeks or months and then gain back everything they lost and then some. When you see people walk down the street, there's about a 90% chance that whatever way they are is the way they are because of genetics. Few of us have the will to deny our hunger and contradict our genetics.

• The obesity epidemic is not going away until there is some form of government intervention. I'm not just talking about supermarket checkout shelves or McDonald's, I'm talking about the government requiring workout breaks instead of coffee breaks, and requiring employers to provide gym memberships instead of insurance. George W. Bush's plan to separate health insurance from employment was a step in the right direction and should not be ignored.

• Diet Soda has outsold regular sodas for two years running. Despite this, 80% of the options I see are regular sodas. There are sugar free chocolate bars out there, but they are never on the shelves at the checkout line and they are consistently sold in a different section from the rest of the candy. Diet foods that replace regular foods are in demand, but the supply is lagging. If anyone out there believes that the food companies passively provide that which people want to buy, they are terribly naive.

• The transfat bans are proving to be a tremendous success. I hope someone somewhere preserves these articles I have been reading in conservative publications that indicate that not only will the price of food go up because of the transfat ban, but the food will taste so much worse that people might even leave the town, city or state to get the transfatty food. That, of course, is ridiculous and someone needs to hold these people, who are obviously writing on behalf of food companies, responsible.