Diet advice do jour. Usual grains of salt apply.

[elfs]

In an article entitled Unhappy Meals, author Michael Pollan documents the rise of food science and "nutritionalism," the belief that one can control one's nutrition completely by understanding nutrients. Pollan's advice is simple and direct: all of the diet advice in the world comes down to seven words:

"Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants."

Pollan's main point is that it is the second word in all that advice that is difficult for people to grasp. Power bars and soda pop are not "food"; anything that tries to sell itself to you as "nutritionalized" is probably not "food". His advice: if someone from 1900 wouldn't recognize it as food, it's not. Avoid ingredients that are unfamiliar and unpronouncable. I especially like his "You're an omnivore: eat like one!" line.

And the bad news came in yesterday: A calorie is a calorie. I can't make my gut go away by doing abdominal crunches. The distribution of fat is wholly genetic: the only way to make it go away is to eat less. That may not be entirely true: some of the middle-age abdominal distension is due to a loss of muscle tone in those areas, so exercise will help that. But not the love handles.

Comments

[woggie.livejournal.com]

My brother's advice was simple, which made it great for me.

1) Walk to Greenlake and then walk around it once, and then walk back home. Go fast or slow, but go the distance. Do that at least three times per week.

2) If hungry, walk around the block. If still hungry, drink some water. If still hungry, eat just a little.

3) Either before or after the Greenlake laps, do at least 20 push-ups.

Funny, I started dropping weight and keeping it off. It helped I lived in the University District, but even the walk to and from was good exercise by itself. Plus the scenery was pretty, not including the plant life and buildings. :)