A couple of days ago, I read Why Diet and Exercise Fail, an e-book by Daniel Matthew Korn. It’s offered for free, and I really appreciate that. Since I read the whole thing, and I feel that I got something out of it, I made a donation. I have no use for more diet books on my bookshelves, but he does sell a paperback on Amazon.
What I particularly liked about the book is that he did not blame any one thing, at least not directly. Instead, he goes over all the likely culprits, the things other diet books complain about (sugar, Omega-6 fats, grains, etc) and comes up with what I think is a compelling case.
What I got out of it, and it may not be what the author actually intended, was that food additives (flavorings, artificial sweeteners, MSG, vegetable gums) and prescription drugs are causing our gut bacteria to be completely out of whack ultimately resulting in weight gain and chronic disease. He’s arguing for an all natural foods diet; if it didn’t exist 100 years ago, don’t eat it. If your great-grandmother wouldn’t have recognized it as food, don’t eat it. This is *not* a new idea, but most of the arguments that I’ve seen for this kind of a diet are strongly associated with political ideologies that I consider to be pointless hair-shirtery. This makes them easy to dismiss. That the same people are all about ablutions like colon cleansing makes it even more annoying.
If you don’t know anything about the important role that all the wee beasties living inside you have on your health, it’s worth knowing about. There are literally *pounds* of them in there, and you will have the best results if it’s the friendly kind.
Accepting that my Very Low Calorie Diet with a very short list of allowed foods significantly reduced gut flora and diversity really explains a lot of things. Now that I have a better understanding of that, I’m not having water retention, gas and bloating from eating lots of green vegetables. Seeing the scale creep up eating *salads* is an incredible annoyance, and I’m pleased to think I’ve got a handle on it.
The other problem with diet books and eating plans is that most of them seem to believe in eating five times a day. That’s a huge contrast with most of the other stuff I read that talks about the value of intermittent fasting. These are two extremes, and neither one works for me. What *does* work is a traditional plan of three meals a day.
Up next – a post about the dangers of snacking.
Recent Comments