A reminder if you’re just coming across this series of posts: I am taking some material from the website Addicted2Decorating which I follow faithfully and enjoy tremendously. Ordinarily it’s a DIY home improvement site, but the author sometimes includes a personal post—what music she’s listening to, how the new dog is doing, and, for my purposes, what new diet plan she and her husband are following. I want to emphasize again that I am in no way trying to badmouth Kristi, the website author. I am simply using what she says herself as a means of examining the mistakes people make when they adopt some type of extreme fad diet, in this case the so-called “ketogenic” diet. I’m putting the name of the diet in quotation marks because it’s actually very difficult to get your body into the state of ketosis, a condition in which your body has switched from burning glucose, its preferred fuel, to “ketone bodies,” which is fuel made from fat. This switch in fuels is supposed to “trick” your body into dipping into its fat stores, thus helping you lose weight. I’d encourage you to go back and read parts one and two of this series if you haven’t already done so. You’ll note below that I’m still mining the ideas contained in the original quotations I used, as there’s so much to say about just this short section.
diet
A Keto Case Study, Part Two
I left off the last post with a description of how habits work. As we keep repeating an action we wear a neurological groove, making the action easier and more automatic every time we perform it. If you read Charles Duhigg’s book that I referenced yesterday you’ll learn about one way to disrupt a habit: basically, you have to figure out what the reward is and then substitute a new routine that will give you the same result without the negative consequences. For instance, and this is quite relevant here because it’s about eating, Duhigg analyzes the habit he’d formed of going down to the cafeteria every workday afternoon and getting a cookie. He gained five pounds, his wife let him know that she disapproved, and he set himself the task of changing the habit. What did he really want as his reward? he asked himself. Was it satisfaction of true hunger? Then he could eat an apple. Was it a shot of energy? Then he could get a cup of coffee. Or, perhaps less intuitively, did he just need a break, a chance to interact with people after sitting in front of his computer for several hours? He decided that last one was it. So he started getting up from his desk and looking for a chance to chat with people when the mid-afternoon munchies hit. (I haven’t gone back and re-read the relevant section, but I don’t believe he just started interrupting his co-workers as they were trying to concentrate.) He successfully changed his cookie habit. You can also simply remove the cue, if that’s possible. So that bag of cookies in your pantry that tempts you every time you open the door should just go. If the cookies aren’t there, you can’t eat them.
A Keto Case Study, Part One
What I’m going to do in this post and at least a second one is what is called a “case study.” I’ll divide up the material because I want my readers to be willing to consume all of it. Sometimes I read others’ posts that are pages long, and if it’s a subject in which I’m interested I’ll probably at least skim it all. But I think it’s far better to write material that can be read in 5-10 minutes and then follow up with later posts. You don’t read blog posts the way you read a book, coming back to the place you left off. Instead, you usually just go on to the next post when it comes up. I want you to get the whole enchilada here and so always try to limit my individual posts to 1,000 words or less.
Keto Diet Conniptions
This is the first in a series of posts in which I present some common-sense rebuttals to the various fad diets out there; I picked the “keto” diet to begin with because it’s pretty hot right now. Something else is probably coming or has come down the pike already and I just haven’t gotten clued in yet. In reality, though, it doesn’t matter too much what the diet of the moment is, because all of these fad diets fall into some basic, broad categories: you can restrict fat, or carbs, or a specific food category (such as meat or gluten). Or you can just restrict calories in general. (Note that people with specific medical issues such as celiac disease or allergies, or people who eat a certain way as a matter of conscience, such as those who abhor the killing of animals, are not included in the fad diet category.)
Two High-Sugar Days–and My Low-Sugar Lunch Today
Three Human Drives that Feed (!) into Fad Diets.
I’ve already talked about the human taste for drama, a characteristic that draws us into all sorts of extravagant and unsustainable announcements and commitments. The inherent weakness of drama as a long-term tool for change is this:
We think that the dramatic and public announcement (“I’m going keto!” “I’m joining a gym!”) will do the work for us. Now, to be clear, we don’t necessarily believe this consciously. If someone asked us, “Do you honestly think that saying you’re going to lose 50 pounds will somehow make you lose 50 pounds?” you’d say, “Of course not! What kind of nitwit do you take me for?” But we’ve all done it, haven’t we? We say, or think, “I have to do something about this! I’m going to . . . “ And the momentum carries us along, for a little while. Once that initial excitement wears off, though, so does our motivation. And what is motivation, anyway? Gretchen Rubin has a great article on her blog about this whole question. Sometimes when people use that word they really mean “desire”–”I want to do so-and-so.” Sometimes it means “reasons why”–”I know why I need to quit staying up late to play video games.” Sometimes it’s a statement of some kind of vague moral impulse–”I should spend less money on impulse buys.” As she puts it, people aren’t really motivated by motivation. That’s a tautology, in which you just go around in circles: “I’m going to do something because I’m motivated to do it and so I will do it because I’m motivated.” As I’ve said myself before, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” That’s what a lot of so-called “motivation” is—a wish. As the estimable Gretchen points out, you need a clear aim and and plan of action, not some vague motivation.
Where are you on the food-choice pyramid?
I plan to do a series of posts on some of the fad diets floating around out there, many of them on celebrity websites, but today I want to write in more general terms about what guides the food choices that many people make. Let me say a couple of things first:
1. Making choices is better than not making choices. If you just eat what’s in front of you without thinking, snacking on the candy bowl at the office, always getting the soft drink/chips/cookie combo with your sandwich for lunch, cleaning out the popcorn bowl as you sit in front of the TV, that’s just mindless eating. At least if you’ve decided to follow some strict regimen you’re paying attention.
I Cheer For (but also Fear For) Someone Who Lost a Lot of Weight in 2018
First, some catch-up info: For some reason, several of my recent posts did not get sent out by MailChimp, my e-mail service. So you probably missed out on my review of Michelle Obama’s memoir, my fascinating story about my own weight history, and two posts (parts one and two) in which I take issue with an article in the New York Times. So take a look if you’re interested.
Now for today’s post:
I follow someone named Tom Nichols on Twitter, mainly for his political opinions, but last night as I was doing a quick scroll-through before bedtime I saw this article in his feed:
“I am proof that you CAN reach your New Year’s weight loss resolution — here’s how I did it.”
In Which I Disagree with the New York Times and the Medical Establishment—Part One
Oh my goodness! I don’t know that I’ve ever seen as much nonsense packed into two sentences as with these:
Only bariatric surgery reliably leads to long-term weight loss. Now scientists hope to duplicate the effects with a pill.
I mean to say, have you ever in your life read something so silly? I’m sure I haven’t, and that’s taking in a lot of territory. I have a New York Times subscription, mainly so I can watch Melissa Clark’s food videos, but I do take a look at their front page fairly regularly, and this little gem was lurking there:
My Boring Principles for Eating Well
I could distill my boring principles for eating well into the following short statements:
1. Eat a decent breakfast.
2. Do not eat anything else until lunch.
3. Eat a decent lunch.
4. Do not eat anything else until dinner.
5. Eat a decent dinner.
6. Do not eat anything else until breakfast.
7. Don’t drink sugared beverages and drink lots of water.