Weeding Through the Print:How not to get lured into another diet or fitness fad book
Picture this: You’ve decided to start a weight management program, and are now at Border’s or Barnes and Noble to buy a book on the topic. You head to the diet/exercise section, only to be greeted by a tailspinning plethora of titles, each claiming to be “the answer.” Slowly, your good intentions to find sound, sensible advice are overtaken by rather tempting propositions. The Wonder Diet, Fitness in 30 Days!, The Chocolate Addict’s Diet, Flab Busters, Food Mixology=Pounds Off….these are beginning to sound far more exciting than their bland Eat Sensibly, Exercise A Lot counterparts. You scan the author bios, pore over tantalizing summaries, and leaf through chapters that ooze of slimming secrets revealed, looking for any signs of legitimacy from these alluring volumes. After a while, even the most avant-garde approaches begin to make sense. Maybe you were wrong in defaulting to the nondescript simplicity of eat less, exercise more. Energized by the possibility, you decide to be a bit adventuresome with your selection. After settling on one of the many
books that all but denounce conventional nutrition approaches, you emerge from this book shopping stupor feeling that rush of hopeful euphoria, the promise of a new program, an undertaking that feels different from any of your past efforts. Better yet, according to this book, you need not count calories or exercise, and you can expect to drop an entire clothing size by this Sunday. You’re psyched! Not so fast…..you’ve probably also been duped. Welcome to the “they tell you what you want to hear” club.
None of us is altogether immune from this experience. After all, there’s a reason that the diet and fitness industry is a billion-dollar one! The truth is, there are plenty of people who will do just that: tell you what you want to hear…all in the name of selling a book. Or gadget. Or pill. Or program. Of course, there are credible sources out there; you just have to weed out the duds in order to find them. To arm yourself against unscrupulous authors, however, you have to be willing to face the uncomfortable fact that there are no simple answers, no shortcuts, no easy ways, no quick fixes. Now, if you think you’re ready for the cold, hard truth, read on; here are some literary “red flags”—signs that the book you are holding is based more on fiction, not fact:
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Watch out for authors who are simply touting what “works for them,” which may or may not be particularly healthy or practical. The author should either have formal (read: a degree, certification, licensure, etc.) education on the book’s topic, or at least have collaborated with a professional in that area. The science of dietetics and nutrition, contrary to perceptions laid down by the media, is complex and technical; to behave otherwise is a loud demonstration of both ignorance and arrogance. Here’s an extreme example of why you should not accept the face-value program of someone with no formal training outside of his or her own experiences with dieting: I’ve actually known of anorexics who perpetuated their emaciated figure by eating nothing but chocolate bars! Sure, they kept their weight down—because they were ingesting far fewer calories than they burn. But this certainly didn’t make such a strategy valid or safe.
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Does the book claim you can lose weight quickly? That’s a glowing red flag if ever there was one. It’s a tough medicine to swallow, but nothing—no combination of foods, no choice of specific foods, no formulas--will ever change the fact that in order to lose a pound of fat, you must burn an excess of 3,500 calories. This translates, for most people, to about a pound of fat loss per week maximum. Any loss beyond this is likely to be a combination of muscle and water, which can be both counter productive and dangerous.
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Does the book claim you don’t need to exercise? Drop that baby as fast as you can! The greatest predictor of long-term weight loss success is whether or not you’re exercising consistently. Plus, exercise—particularly strength training--will help to keep your metabolism elevated by combating muscle loss.
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Beware of books that camouflage the word “diet”—which by now is practically a four-letter word—by calling their program a “way of life.” True, not all ways of life are fad diets, but this is one of latest strategies used to help gain readers’ trust.
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Does the book make claims that this diet or way of life is “painless,” “easy,” or “effortless”? This is a BIG sign that the author is using the tell-‘em-what-they-want-to-hear tactic in order to sell his or her book. Don’t believe it. While weight loss is attainable, it has never been, and never will be, simple or easy. But then again, aren’t all of life’s great rewards ones that require hard work?
- Ignore the books that perpetuate the fantasy that you can eat unlimited portions. There is no physiological way to lose fat without eating fewer calories than you are burning. Anyone who has managed to lose weight on diets claiming otherwise, did so by consuming fewer calories than their bodies need. They just didn’t realize it!
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Unless you are addressing a specific health condition such as diabetes or allergies, watch out for books that omit certain foods or food groups. No long-term weight management plan should ban certain foods completely; it’s unrealistic and potentially detrimental to one’s health. To omit, say, carbohydrates does a tremendous disservice to your body, as there are nutrients and fiber that only carbohydrates will provide. Plus, the omission of one food—let’s use the carbohydrate example, again, may in turn promote the consumption of foods that are high in fat or cholesterol, which can increase your risk for heart disease.
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Watch out for books that instruct you to eat foods only in a specific combination. Despite what these books will claim, our digestive tracts are quite sophisticated, and well-equipped to handle a wide variety of foods eaten at the same sitting. Plus, foods are rarely one-dimensional in composition. For example, lentils contain both protein and carbohydrates. For diets that tell you to eat proteins and carbohydrates separately, how does one eat lentils? Another common, flawed rationale is that undigested food gets stored as fat. Hello???? If food is not broken down to its smallest component parts, do I need to tell you where it goes? I’ll give you a one-word hint: porcelain.
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We’ve all encountered casual testimonial from a book, friends, family, or even the media about the “success” of a certain diet. Remember that anecdotal evidence should always be regarded with a healthy dose of skepticism. Here's why, using a hypothetical example: if you ask me what I do to stay fit and healthy, and I tell you I eat nothing but soup, you may be inclined to assume that there’s something about soup that helps me keep my weight down. This would especially be true if I went on to say that I tried every other diet out there, and nothing worked until I tried my own “soup diet.” Of course, in reality, the only reason I’ve kept my weight down isn’t because soup affects my body the way other foods don’t….it’s because I’m eating fewer calories than I’m burning. Oh, sure, it looks as though I eat a ton—do you know how much soup you must eat to consume 1800 calories? But the fact still remains that I can consume 1800 calories of soup, cookies, or fat-free yogurt; it all gets processed pretty much the same
way. Oh, and for the record, I don’t eat only soup!
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Finally, your suspicion radar should go up immediately if the book you are reading is making claims that are “revolutionary,” and that no other authority or book is describing. It’s highly unlikely that, if a concept has any sound science behind it, only one person would be writing about it. If anything, the ability to prove a certain diet or way of life approach as legitimate would be of great economic benefit to certain food industries, so you can bet that if there was any validity to this idea, you’d be hearing about it elsewhere. You should be able to find similar information to that which is described in your book in at least two other sources unrelated to this particular author. If not, save yourself the money, heartache, and possible health risk; don’t buy the book!
Now, it should be said that there are instances in which a person’s weight battles may stem from a medical problem. It should, however, be noted that most weight struggles arise from that same, glum, calories in vs. calories out rule. If you’re in doubt, however, it is always a good idea to double-check with your physician and a registered dietitian. An RD is trained to provide a plan tailored to your situation, so you won’t have to run the risk of self-medicating with the latest diet book.
It’s sad that there are so many opportunists who will go through such lengths to seduce us. At least by knowing they are out there, and understanding what to look for, we can equip ourselves with the super-sleuthing skills to narrow the many choices! -ep
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