My husband listens to a podcast called “The Art of Manliness,” but it should really be called “The Art of Living Well.” They’re up to well over 500 episodes, with different guests and topics. A recent one featured Dr. Dr. John Berardi, who earned a PhD in exercise physiology and nutrient biochemistry, and is a writer, athlete, coach, and professor, as well as the co-founder of Precision Nutrition and the founder of the Change Maker Academy. So this is a guy who actually has scientific chops. He’s not peddling some nutty theory and trying to make money off of it. I found this podcast episode to be so packed with good information that I had to listen to it in chunks, then stop and absorb what I’d heard before going on to the next section.
Here’s his idea that I want to emphasize today: any fad diet that lays down some sort of rigid framework for your eating is going to result in weight loss at least in the short term for one reason: you are being forced to pay attention to what you eat. Bright lines are drawn for you, and until you get sick of the whole thing and go back to the Doritos you will probably lose a few pounds. For some people, rigid rules are comforting in a strange way. I’ve talked many, many times about Gretchen Rubin’s categories of Moderator and Abstainer and said that I’m an Abstainer. In other words, it’s easier for me to have no desserts and sweets than to have some. So there was a stretch there when I said, “I can have one dessert on the weekend.” This was back when we were in our old house and having people over for dinner fairly frequently, and I just thought that it would be silly for me to make a dessert that I couldn’t eat. Hey, I didn’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable! But I would then make exceptions, or borrow against the upcoming weekend. ‘Oh,’ I’d think, ‘we aren’t having company for dinner this Sunday, and here it is Thursday, and I’d like some ice cream, so I’ll have a bowlful now and count it as my weekend dessert.’ Stuff like that. You can see how this sort of thing would snowball to the point where I would be indulging fairly frequently.
When you’re on a fad diet you’re being given someone else’s rigid eating plan and not choosing for yourself. One of the great lessons of history is that human beings find it very difficult to exercise their right to choose; given half a chance we’ll bow down to authoritarianism. We want someone to tell us what to do, a desire that’s balanced only by our desire to go our own way. Human beings are weird, contradictory creatures! To reference Gretchen Rubin again, the biggest category in her Four Tendencies framework is that of Obliger, those of us who respond well to outside obligations. We will kill ourselves to impress others but won’t dust the living room just for ourselves. If we feel obligated, we oblige. It’s that simple.
So, to pick a diet at random, let me go with my bête noire, the keto diet. You are told that you need to force your body into an unnatural state, ketosis, by eating very few carbs, in order to encourage the burning of fat stores. Here’s the thing, though: your body won’t dip into its reserves until and unless your calorie intake is below your energy needs. In other words, the keto diet (and all fad diets) is just a way of tricking you into eating less. This particular diet is often paired with another faddish type of eating, “intermittent fasting.” You’re supposed to get almost all of your calories from one meal a day and then abstain the rest of the time, with some exceptions such as a wheatgrass drink. (It’s pretty telling that the articles pushing this item give you helpful hints on how to disguise the taste. With all the delicious, healthful food out there it seems a shame to force yourself to drink something disgusting!) One blogger who posted about her keto diet added up her calories for a day and came up with a total of around 1,400. Guess what? That’s a very typical total for any kind of fairly-reasonable low-calorie diet. She’s lost a fair amount of weight eating this way because she’s eating less, and she’s not eating junky carbs. Because . . . she can’t eat much if any carbs at all. So every mouthful of food has to be analyzed. You can’t just plunge your hand into the chips or the pretzels or the M&Ms. They all have carbs. (And they’re all junk, of course.)
I know I keep beating this drum about fad dieting, but when I find a good source that’s also beating it I feel justified in reminding my readers of it. There’s nothing to be gained by deceiving yourself. All deceptions end, and end badly. So choose what you eat wisely, with your eyes wide open, even more so as we head into Thanksgiving week. Thus begins the holiday season!
And to that point, I would (once again) encourage you to listen to the Happier podcast from this week with Gretchen Rubin and Liz Craft as they discuss the mindset of people who urge others to eat or drink items that those others don’t want and have tried to refuse. Why do the urgers urge, and why do the urged cave? It’s a fascinating discussion, and I found some real insights about myself and others. In the end, as Liz says, let people choose for themselves and leave them alone. I had already decided for myself that I just wouldn’t react in any way when people say, “I’m gluten free” when I know they don’t have celiac disease or “I’m paleo” when I know that diet is complete nonsense. It’s not my job in the moment to try to change their minds. Just give the people what they want, be gracious, and get on with life. (The link is to the podcast on Gretchen’s website; I would encourage you to subscribe on whatever podcast platform you use.)
Well, I’ve hit my word limit. I want to squeeze in a recipe for lovely, healthful apple-whole-wheat-walnut muffins by the end of the week. In the meantime, I’d encourage you to follow at least a few links in the above material, especially the metabolism podcast. So much disinformation out there! You can at least shore up your own mind by stocking it with the good stuff.