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I was reading about raspberry ketones earlier today. If you are unaware, it is the latest diet craze coming from the Oprah Winfrey media machine. Learning about this has started to make me think about why so many people are willing to believe rubbish when it comes to diets.
From my understanding, the raspberry ketone idea was presented with a sciency demonstration by an individual who puts Doctor in front of his name. This, for a lot of people, legitimizes the whole thing. I understand this. What I am really thinking about is what happens after the buzz dies down and it continues it's niche popularity. For instance, I still can easily find information regarding the "Grapefruit Diet" online for instance.
When undertaking a diet, one needs to decide on a few well known things. How much food, what kind of food, when to eat the food. There is also the exercise angle. How much exercise, what kind of exercise, when to exercise. This is genuinely what one needs to focus on. When you look at the evidence (and laws of physics), the "first order" is how much food to eat and how much exercise to do. This is measured in calories. Since our digestion undergoes the same chemical process as burning the food, an estimate on how much energy can be attained from the food by putting it in a calorimeter and burning it. Then there are second order concerns, such as what kind of food. There is some evidence that puffed food may be more readily digestible and therefore effectively providing us with more calories. These effects, however, are small.
The dieting experience for me has focused on how much to eat. By knowing how much food to eat, one can control weight effectively. Anyone who reads my food entries will see that there is a pattern to my eating. This is the "what to eat" portion of a diet.
There are tons of diets that focus purely on the "what to eat portion" of a diet. I find this interesting because the diets make extraordinary claims about how the body knows what to do with the food and therefore can't make you fat. This explanation is bogus. What these diets really do is change your eating habits in such a way as to make food more scarce. When you allow yourself to only eat grapefruits until dinner time, you will loose weight because you cannot eat enough grapefruit to sustain yourself. Thus, you loose weight. Other diets attack breads, others attack meat, and others attack oils. All have success stories because it reduces the availability of the foods.
I have found through my dieting experience that if one focuses on the "How much to eat", you will naturally fall into the "What to eat". When you allow yourself only so much food, you want to eat what makes you feel most comfortable with the lack of food.
In another universe, I am the founder of the morning yoghurt diet. There are second order effects with weight loss and yoghurt when controlling calories. I would be touting the food as a miracle and pointing to the "massive" body of scientific evidence in favor of MY diet. Truth's would be stretched and my wallet would benefit.
In this universe, I say that yoghurt works for me and probably does not work for everyone. I choose yoghurt because I tried it and it made me feel not hungry until lunch. I eat vegetables for lunch (I don't list them, another personal choice) with a sandwich, nuts, and fruit. I do this because I can prepare this food a week in advance and don't have to worry about getting caught in the "all you can eat pizza lunch" trap.
I also believe that some people should eat 6 meals a day while others should stick to 3 with no snacking in between. Some people should eat one gigantic meal through the course of a day. Some people should only eat bacon, while others should have a diet high in grains.
Once I figure out what works for me, dieting becomes relatively easy. Because I counted calories, I have created a diet that tells me what to eat, when to eat it, and how much of it to eat that is customized to me. Diets which force you to eat a certain way are fine, but if you break the diet because you can't go without a peanut butter sandwich once a week, then why be on the diet? Take what you know works for you, and fit it into your calorie needs and you won't fail.
I don't mean to say that it's a good idea to eat all of your favorites foods and constantly face temptation in the eye. If there is a food which causes you to break a diet, then that should go on an exclusion list. In an interview I listened to recently with Alton Brown, he states that his temptation is milk. When he drinks milk, he wants to eat baked goods. At the same time, milk seems to be one of the most effective post workout foods and is probably a necessary component to some people's diets.
There is a miracle cure for being overweight, but it's individual and takes some effort to find it. Start off by using a science based approach (calorie counting) and develop a system that works for you. It is going to take experimentation and a few failures, but once you find out what works for you, a dieting life an easy one.
I don't want to sound like I am absolutely right on this, after all, I've been yo-yo dieting for about 5 years. But when I am dieting, it's not hard with some exception of peer pressure and stressful work environments. At the end of the day, one does need to search what works on an individual level. It's too bad that those needs can change over time and if it's not met with the right attitude (as I have faced in the past) or goes unrecognized (again, I have experienced this) then a diet can fail very quickly.
Diet Calendar Entry for 08 September 2012:
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1498 kcal
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Fat: 47.43g | Prot: 68.65g | Carb: 209.46g.
Breakfast: Lowfat All Natural Plain Yoghurt. Lunch: Gardenburger, cheddar cheese, Ezekiel 4:9 Sesame Sprouted Whole Grain Bread, Grapes. Dinner: Chipotle Mexican Grill Lettuce, Guacamole, Chipotle Rice, Chipotle Red Tomatillo Salsa, Chipotle Green Tomatillo Salsa, Chipotle Tomato Salsa, Chipotle Corn Salsa, Chipotle Fajita Vegetables, Chipotle Black Beans, Chipotle Burrito Tortilla. more...
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