diet

The Daniel Diet, Part 2: Evolution of a Fad Diet

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Image by Martin Ludlam from Pixabay

Here’s what happened, as Monk used to say on the old TV show:

As I explained in the previous post, Rick Warren realized that he was fat and out of shape, as were many people in his congregation, in late 2010. According to the NYT article I linked to yesterday, he told his congregation the next Sunday that he needed to lose about 90 pounds (having gained weight at the rate of 2-3 pounds a year for the 30 years he’d been pastor of the church) and that others could join him if they wished. The article doesn’t say what the reaction was on that Sunday. Then we’re told that shortly after Warren’s announcement he was “in Lenox, Mass., for a personal medical visit with Dr. Mark Hyman, a prominent metabolism expert and author of several best-selling books on avoiding chronic disease through healthier living.” I’d like to get some clarification as to why Warren was seeing Hyman, traveling all the way across the country from his home in Lake Forest, California.

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Yet Another Fad Diet—This One with a Biblical Slant

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Image by engin akyurt from Pixabay

It’s been over a week since I’ve posted anything on this blog, but that lack of posting doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking and pondering about various food fads floating around in our modern society. As I said in my previous short post about the blood-type diet, I had thought that I’d pretty well covered at least the most egregious fads out there, but there’s always something more to be explored in this area.

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Eat a Small Serving of the Real Thing

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Image by ElodiV from Pixabay

I follow the cooking blog Smitten Kitchen (as you know if you follow this blog), and her latest post is about a recipe for  a super-rich chocolate Italian custard dessert called “chocolate budino.” She has some interesting details about how she tweaked the original recipe, but such is not my point here. Instead, I’d like to focus on this one idea:

A few spoonfuls is all you need, and I encourage you to do the same (rather than weakening its perfection with the goal of eating more).

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How Do I Balance the Day?

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Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay

Since I’ve been writing so much about various fad diets that you should just blithely ignore (with more to come), I thought it might be a good idea to write something about how a person should eat, and how well my own diet stacks up.

So first, for breakfast, Jim and I typically alternate between an egg-and-meat meal and a grain-based meal. If we had an omelet with veggies, cheese and perhaps some meat one morning then I might make whole-grain muffins the next day. Or we might have bagels bought

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How Do You Evaluate Health Claims?

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Image by Manfred Steger from Pixabay

I thought that I had covered the major fad diets out there but realized that there are a few more to aim at. Before I plunge into more of these scams, I figured it would be a good idea to write more generally about how to make informed decisions about your health or anything else. Ridiculous new ideas are coming down the pike every day. Here are some guidelines you can use:

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More Thoughts on Veganism

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Image by silviarita from Pixabay

I wrote last week about some of the complications that can arise from following a vegan diet, and I want to follow up with more, perhaps rather scattered, observations about this lifestyle. I’ll be including links to two articles written by young women who struggled while trying to follow veganism. One decided to start including some animal protein into her life and saw some dramatic improvements in her health; the other steadfastly refused to do that but was able to re-jigger things so that she was getting enough protein (understandable) and, you may be surprised to hear, cholesterol. Yes, that horrible substance that causes heart attacks. Too-low cholesterol levels are

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The Vegan Lifestyle and Its Complications

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Image by silviarita from Pixabay

So far I’ve discussed the keto, paleo, Whole30, food sensitivity, and Tom Brady diets, and there are many more out there. I’m going next to veganism as a lifestyle. As I’ve said before, there are two principles to keep in mind in looking at these various eating plans:

1) People are free to choose how they eat, and

2) Personal convictions/conscience should not be violated.

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A Lesson Learned from Lessened Activity Levels

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Image by Mabel Amber, still incognito… from Pixabay

I mentioned in a previous post that I was facing foot surgery, which took place on March 11. So it’s been about 2 ½ weeks since then, and I didn’t feel that I could stand on the scale without my surgical boot or shoe until the 2-week mark. Guess what? I was four pounds up. FOUR POUNDS.

Why did this happen? Well, my activity levels had gone way, way down. I went nowhere at all for about the first week except for my doctor’s appointment, and I spent a lot of time lying on the couch with my foot up on pillows. I

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Four Great Books by the Great Michael Pollan

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I first got acquainted with Michael Pollan back when I was trying to be a vegetable gardener as well as a flower gardener and was reading every gardening book I could get my hands on.

Second Nature: A Gardener

Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education was written in 1991; I probably read it 3-4 years later after we bought our first house and I was trying to get do something worthwhile in the yard. Pollan’s book uses his experiences in starting a vegetable garden of his own as a jumping-off point for all sorts of thoughts about how we provide food for ourselves and how a garden shapes the gardener as well as the other way around. I’d recommend it highly if you’re interested in growing anything in the dirt. I have officially taken myself out of the vegetable gardening business, but even so I’d probably enjoy re-reading this book. (How it can be possible that someone can grow flowers successfully but not vegetables is a puzzle, but I seem to fit into that category, so I’ve thrown in the towel. The farmer’s markets around here should be getting some business from me starting soon.)

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