Interesting Diet Information

I try to follow the "Well" blog on the New York Times website which generally covers many interesting topics dealing with health and well being.  The author, Tara Parker-Pope, doesn't focus solely on food or exercise but rather every aspect of a person's life that might cause them not to be "well".  My opinion is that you'll find something there that will help or benefit you.

I wrote about about my experiences with diet and weight loss at the beginning of the year (hard to believe it is March already) and over the last week, Ms. Parker-Pope has written two interesting posts that I think are worth mentioning.

The first interesting post was the release of The New England Journal of Medicine's findings that it doesn't matter what type of diet you subscribe to, so long as you subscribe to something.  Apparently they took a group of people and assigned them one of four diet plans that had some similarities to popular plans out there like The Atkins Diet et al.  All of the groups lost similar amounts of weight and gained similar amounts of weight back during the two year study.  This means that no one diet plan is better than another.  As long as you watch what you eat in some manner, you can lose weight successfully.  The key to not gaining it back is to maintain that vigilance and not slip back into old habits (I learned that the hard way).

The second interesting post was about a colleague of hers that writes a food column at The Times.  His doctor suggested that he switch to a vegan diet to help with his health problems but given his profession and his enjoyment of food, he didn't feel like that was an option.  He decided to compromise and came up with the idea that he would be "vegan till 6".  His plans was to eat fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes all day and then have whatever he wants for his dinner.  He says he had dramatic results from this compromise and sticks with this plan today.

The point is that there is no magic pill, silver bullet or fad diet that will get you the results of simply choosing to eat healthier foods and fewer calories more often than eating bad food and lots of calories.  Simply looking at the amount of calories you take in can help.  Many people don't realize that a bag of chips, a bottle of soda or a packet of cookies is more than one serving but often times the label only tells you the calories in one serving.  You maybe consuming 2, 3 or 4 servings every time.  Many people probably don't realize that one fast food meal may contain 50-75% of their recommended calorie intake for an entire day!  Between burgers, fries, sodas, snacks and dessert, I was consuming 2 or 3 days worth of calories in just three meals and a snack without realizing it.

Changing your diet doesn't have to be as painful as we all make it out to be.  Change is always uncomfortable and you need to change your diet in order to lose weight but it doesn't need to be demoralizing.  The post about "vegan till 6" is a great example.  He made the sacrifice of eating differently during the day but maintains the comfort and familiarity of eating what he wants at night.  Change something and stick with it and you will get results, the first post showed that.  Getting the results will help you stick with the plan you choose, the second post showed that.

Go pick a plan and get those results!