Stop the Diet, I Want To Get Off!
Author: Lisa Tillinger Johansen
Publisher: J. Murray Press
Pages: 350
Genre: Nonfiction/Nutrition/Health
The Paleo.
The Zone. The Gluten-free. Another day, another diet. We’re caught in a never-ending merry-go-round
of weight loss plans, fueled by celebrity endorsers, TV doctors and companies
angling for a piece of a $60 billion industry.
But do these diets really work?
And how healthy are they?
Registered Dietitian Lisa Tillinger
Johansen examines dozens of the most wildly popular diets based on medical
facts, not hype. And along the way, she
reveals tried-and-true weight loss strategies, relying on her years of hospital
experience, weight-loss seminars and community outreach efforts. With insight and humor, Stop The Diet, I
Want To Get Off shows that the best answer is often not a trendy
celebrity-endorsed diet, but easy-to-follow guidelines that are best for our
health and our waistlines.
For More Information:
- Stop the Diet, I Want to
Get Off! is available at Amazon.
- Pick up your copy at Barnes
& Noble.
- Discuss this book at PUYB
Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.
FIRST CHAPER EXCERPT:
INTRODUCTION
“The food here is terrible…And
the portions are so small!”
—Writer/director Woody Allen
The idea for this book began at a wedding.
Who doesn’t love a good wedding? The clothes, the flowers, the
romance, the food…
Ah, the food. As we moved into the banquet hall for the reception,
the culinary feast was on everyone’s minds. It was all anyone seemed talk
about. But for some reason, guests weren’t conversing about the dishes being
served; they were swapping stories of diets they had heard about from friends,
magazine articles, even celebrities on talk shows.
I’m a registered dietitian with a master’s degree in nutritional
science and years of clinical and health education experience. I’ve counseled
thousands of patients and clients on all of these diets. But hearing the guests
only momentarily distracted me from my horrible faux pas of wearing white
(gasp!) to a friend’s wedding.
“I’m on the Blood Type Diet,” said a woman with an impossibly high
bouffant hairdo. “You’ve heard of that, haven’t you? It’s the one where you
choose your foods based on your blood type. I’m an AB, so I’ll be having the
fish.”
“Really?” her friend replied. “I swear by the gluten-free
diet. I’m on it, my daughter’s on it, and my granddaughter’s on it.”
I happened to know her granddaughter was six and didn’t have a
gluten sensitivity or celiac disease.
Then there was the stocky guy who was trying to impress one of the
bridesmaids. “I’m a paleo man myself,” he said, piling his plate high with beef
kebabs. “It gives me more stamina, know what I mean? It puts me in touch with
my inner caveman. There’s a restaurant near my apartment that’s paleo friendly.
Maybe we can grab a bite there sometime, or…Hey wait, where are you going?”
And there were three Weight Watchers sisters who typed furiously
on their phones and argued over their meals’ point values. Apparently there was
some discrepancy between their various apps, and the sisters’ discussion was
becoming more heated by the moment.
I’m past the point of being surprised by the wide range of weight-loss
strategies—some worthless, some crazy, some quite reasonable—being tossed
around. In the last few years, there has been a tidal wave of diets washing up
on the shores of our nutritional consciousness. Celebrities prance across our
screens, promoting a variety of weight-loss schemes on talk shows and
infomercials. Medical doctors star in their own syndicated television programs,
exposing millions to weight-management techniques, often unsupported by medical
research. Other diets get traction on the Internet, racing all over the globe
in social media posts, YouTube videos, and often unwanted spam e-mails. And
it’s hard to walk past a shopping center vitamin store without being approached
by salespeople trying to pitch the latest weight-loss supplements. It seems
that everyone wants a piece of the pie; the American diet industry tops $60
billion annually.
It’s classic information overload. You can’t blame people for
being confused by all the diets out there, even as crazy as some of them may
sound. I didn’t speak up to my fellow wedding guests that day, but it occurred
to me they would benefit from science-based facts about the diets they so
ardently follow.
So during the toasts, I thought to myself, I should write a
book.
I counsel clients on these matters each week, giving them
information they need to make the best choices for their health and waistlines.
I find that all too often there are issues with the diets presented to me in my
counseling sessions and classes. They just plain don’t work, particularly over
the long term. And some of them are harmful, even potentially lethal. But it’s
also unhealthy to carry extra weight on our frames. So how do we separate good
diets from the bad?
In the chapters to come, we’ll take a good, hard look at the various
weight-loss plans out there. I’ll pull no punches in my professional evaluation
of some of the most wildly popular diets, both bad and good, of the past few
years. And along the way, I’ll explore tried-and-true strategies for losing
weight, based on my years of hospital experience, weight-loss seminars, and
community outreach efforts. More often than not, the best answer is not a
trendy celebrity-endorsed diet, but instead a few easy-to-follow guidelines
that I’ve seen work in literally thousands of cases.
Enough is enough. It’s time for the
madness—and the diets—to stop.
ONE
Dieting…Who
Hasn’t?
“I feel like banging my head
against the wall when I am asked what I think about the HCG Diet, Grapefruit
Diet, or the Atkins Diet. Have we become so naïve as to believe that taking
some homeopathic HCG drops will fix 20 years of poor eating? The sales say we
have.”
—Josh Hodnik, staff writer for VPX sports
and Muscle Evolution
Holy cow, I’m fat! I’ve turned into a completely out-of-shape
blob. I’m standing here looking in the mirror, and some stranger is staring
back at me. Surely that’s not me. Maybe if I put my glasses on…No, I’m still
the same tub of lard. Bummer.
I don’t know how this happened, or maybe I do a little bit. But it
just doesn’t seem possible. I feel like just yesterday I was slim and trim, but
now I can’t button my pants. Aha, now I know why I’ve become so fond of stretch
pants, baggy shirts, and sweaters…and Spanx.
This weight crept up on me, and now no matter what I do I can’t
get rid of it. I don’t feel good about myself or like the way I look. And I
think my health may be suffering because of it. I’m so depressed. I think I’m
just going to go eat cake.
Sound familiar? Could that be you talking? If it is, join the
club. A club, by the way, with many members. It’s ever expanding. For some of
us, this may be a scary first experience. You’ve been at a healthy weight all
of your life…until now. Or you’ve had to watch what you eat, but still managed
to maintain a comfortable weight. For others, this isn’t your first go-round
with this type of self-talk. There are many of us who’ve been up and down this
path more than once. You might be in that vicious circle we like to call
“yo-yo” dieting (a dieter’s carousel, if you will)—repeated weight loss through
dieting followed by a regain of the pounds lost. A 2012 study found the
following:
• 26 percent of dieters in the
United States
• 36 percent followed theirs for a period of one to six months
• 11 percent stuck to their diets for seven months to a year
• Only 27 percent stayed the
course on their diet plans for over a year
And it’s not a surprise that almost 40 percent of Americans make
their New Year’s resolution about weight. And it’s not shocking that only 8
percent keep it.
Weighty
Matters
Dieting. It’s almost easier to count those who haven’t been on a
weight-loss regimen sometime in their life than those who have. Have you ever
gone on a diet? How about two, three, four, five, or more? I know that more
than a few of you are nodding your heads vigorously. Or perhaps you’re shaking
your head in frustration. Don’t worry, you’re not alone.
The word diet means more than just what we do to lose weight. It also
refers to what we eat and drink every day. It includes a prescribed diet, such
as what a doctor or dietitian recommends for someone with, for example,
diabetes or hypertension. We’ll talk about all of these definitions in this
book.
Just because I’m a dietitian doesn’t mean I’m not human. I come
from a family where many of us struggle to maintain a healthy weight. It
definitely takes work for me to do so. And as I’ve aged, it has become harder.
If I’m not diligent, I seem to expand almost overnight.
So, I’m in the weight management game with all of you. I know how
you feel and the questions, challenges, and concerns you face. And with a
master’s degree in nutritional science and my licensure and experience as a
registered dietitian, I know what works. I can help you.
Recently
I had quite the unpleasant shock. I have a doctor’s scale at home. The weights
weren’t set correctly, and I thought I weighed seven pounds less than I
actually did. Ouch! I knew my clothes were a bit snug, but I’d chalked it up to
a combination of temporary bloating and shrinking clothes. If only…
Weight-loss plans and diet products are a huge business in the United States
The desire to lose pounds and maintain a healthy weight isn’t a
bad idea. In fact, it’s a really good one. But we don’t always choose the best
route to achieve this often elusive goal. Consequently, many of us are
unsuccessful in our weight-loss attempts. Let’s look at some statistics:
·
Three in ten Americans (25 percent of males and 32 percent of
females) are currently trying to lose weight. About 55 percent of males have
attempted to lose weight an average of four times each, while 73 percent of
females have tried to shed pounds on average around seven separate times.
·
A 2011 Gallup US
·
In Britain
·
And while 62 percent of Canadians in one survey reported losing
five or more pounds over a five-year period, most didn’t maintain it; 70
percent of those who were overweight or obese gained back all, or sometimes
more, of the pounds they shed after their initial weight loss.
So many of us go round and round on the diet wheel. Do you
remember when you weren’t on a diet? Has it become a way of life for you? And
how many different diets have you tried? Are you already looking for the next
new thing? Perhaps you’re one of the 35 percent of “occasional dieters” who
move on to what’s been termed “pathological dieting,” or disordered eating. If
that’s you, aren’t you tired of it?
There are certainly good reasons to lose weight. Carrying too much
weight on our frames isn’t healthy, but that’s not stopping a lot of us from
packing on the pounds. Obesity is also a negative trend we’re seeing around the
globe. The highest rates are in Oceania and
the Middle East . Oh, and in the United States
#1 American Samoa
#2 Kiribati
#3 French
Polynesia (74 percent)
#4 Saudi Arabia
#5 Panama
#6 United States (66.9
percent)
#7 Germany
#8 Egypt
#9 Kuwait
#10 Bosnia and Herzegovina
Kudos
to the eight countries in Asia that have the
lowest worldwide obesity rates. They are Vietnam Laos Indonesia China Japan South Korea Philippines Singapore
The obesity epidemic is a problem that must be dealt with. In
2013, the American Medical Association (AMA) took a major step by labeling
obesity as a disease. While this brought on some controversy, it should result
in a change in how health care providers look at and treat obesity in
individuals. That’s a good thing.
Fad
or Fallacy
Carrying extra body weight can be quite bad for our health. It
puts us at risk for a variety of diseases such as prediabetes, diabetes,
hypertension, high cholesterol, joint problems, heart disease, sleep apnea,
certain cancers, and more. Who wants that?
So what do so many of us do to combat our expanding girths? We go
on a diet, often one that would be termed a “fad” diet. And we’ve been doing
this for a lot longer than you might think.
Fad diets go back to at least 1087 when William the Conqueror came
up with the alcohol-only diet. What was he thinking? Maybe he was too drunk to
construct a more balanced one. Not surprisingly, this diet didn’t work out for
William. He died a year later after actually gaining weight.
The fad diet as we know it today arrived on the scene in the
nineteenth century, when Sylvester Graham came up with the Graham diet. It
focused on caffeine-free beverages and vegetarian meals. Not a bad idea, but it
gets a bit weird. Part of the diet actually included eating graham crackers (go
figure), as not only a way to assist in weight loss, but also to inhibit
masturbation and the supposed blindness it caused. I’m not making this up.
In 1876, Englishman William Banting introduced the
low-carbohydrate diet. A lot of us are familiar with this one. He lost fifty
pounds with his plan and wrote the Letter on Corpulence discussing it.
His weight-loss plan became so popular that in Britain
Other early fad diets
included Horace Fletcher’s Great Masticator diet, which in 1903 suggested
people chew their food thirty-two times. After doing this, they weren’t to
swallow it, but had to spit it out. That was certainly a low-calorie diet. And
a lot of work for nothing.
The year 1928 gave us
the Inuit diet, where followers could choose between eating either meat or the
fat from it. Not both. There was also the bananas-and-skim-milk diet. And as
recently as the late 1960s, Herman Taller, MD, advanced the “Calories Don’t
Count” diet. Before you embrace this concept, read on. It involved eating
whatever you wanted and not worrying about quantity. The important aspect of
this diet was that after you ate, you drank vegetable oil as a kind of chaser.
Yuck. I’m sure that worked out well.
There are a lot of
diets out there. Some are good. Many aren’t. I’ll talk about a lot of them
throughout this book. I’ll be your guide to choosing a healthy eating path and
will give you the tools to navigate it. What I won’t do is steer you toward a
fad diet. In fact, I recommend you turn your back on them.
Fad diets are temporary and can be unhealthy. Very often they’re
restrictive. And many times they are, let’s face it, a bit crazy.
People are drawn to fad diets because of the allure of quick
results, which they sometimes deliver. But typically the weight loss can’t be
sustained long term. We’re then faced with the disappointment and adverse
health effects of reverting back to our prior weights. Or perhaps we may carry
a heavier burden…on our bodies.
Close
to 60 percent of adults in the United
States
It would be fantastic if we’d go to sleep one night and wake up
the next day twenty pounds lighter. That’s a good dream. But it’s not
realistic. So many of us want it to be true, and we try a lot of weight-loss
programs with the hope that we’ll be proven right. Optimism is high at the
beginning. Some do have success that’s maintained in the long term. Most don’t.
Fad diets can be very difficult to adhere to for life. Even following
them for months can be hard. We can also suffer ill effects from them such as
headaches, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, nutritional deficiencies, hair loss,
weakness, dizziness, fatigue, bad breath, loss of muscle, and more. Not fun.
Diets also affect the diseases we have. People with diabetes,
kidney disease, and other conditions need to take care that these diets don’t
aggravate their conditions. More about health risks will be discussed in
chapters to come.
Here’s a crucial question: What’s a fad diet? Some are easier than
others to spot. Let’s review some of their characteristics:
·
They promise a quick result.
·
Statements are made about them that seem too good to be true or
realistic.
·
Simple conclusions are taken from involved studies.
·
They take information from studies that haven’t been peer
reviewed. (Peer review and duplication of results is an important aspect of
drawing reliable conclusions.)
·
Statements of fact may be based on only one study. Again, results
need to be tested and replicated to determine their quality.
·
They rely on studies that don’t have a large research group, or
use those that look at only one segment of the population, such as African
American males between the ages of thirty and forty-five or Caucasian women
ages sixty-five to eighty.
·
Assertions are made that highly regarded medical- and
science-based organizations refute.
·
Their statements or recommendations are used to try to sell us
their products.
·
They promote “special elixir” type foods or specific food
combinations.
·
They suggest that food can affect body chemistry.
·
Foods are identified as either “bad” or “good.”
·
They eliminate foods or food groups.
Do any of these ring a bell?
Have you researched or tried a diet with one or more of the above
characteristics? Who’s nodding? Here are some of the fad diets you might’ve
explored:
3-Day diet
Apple-cider-vinegar diet
Atkins diet
Blood Type Diet
Cabbage-soup diet
Cleanses
Coconut-oil diet
Dukan diet
Grapefruit diet
hCG diet
Paleo Diet
Zone Diet
My
husband is on the brown diet. It’s a simple one. If it’s brown, he eats it.
This isn’t healthy, as it’s filled with items like fried chicken, french fries,
and pizza. He’s getting better, though. I got him to get rid of the fryer he
had in his bachelor days. But he’s still a work in progress.
The online pharmacy UKMedix.com found that 71 percent of women had
tried a fad diet. Here’s the breakdown of the diets they tried:
Laxatives: 47 percent
Fasting:
45 percent
Cabbage
soup diet: 39 percent
Liquid
diet: 35 percent
Body
wraps: 29 percent
Cereal
diet: 26 percent
Baby
food diet: 26 percent
Raw
food diet: 24 percent
Small
plates: 18 percent
Eating
foods known to make you sick: 14 percent
I question more than a few of
these diets. Do you? If not, you should.
It’s Not a Clique, It’s a Group
Restrictive, low-calorie, and other types of fad diets aren’t only
challenging to follow, they can also be nutritionally unbalanced. For example,
cutting out entire food groups or a significant portion of them may result in
not getting adequate calories, vitamins, minerals, and more. Or we may get an
overabundance of something. This can cause health issues for some, like
potential kidney problems from excessive protein. Too little or too much of
something isn’t a good thing. Our bodies like balance.
Protein, fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy, and healthy fats
should all have a place in our diets. Our bodies use all of these for a variety
of things. Making the more nutritious choices out of these groups is, of
course, important. And each of them does have healthy members. When we cut out
a food group or a significant part of it, we’re short-changing ourselves. We’ll
talk more about the food groups later on.
Knowledge
Is Power
Another key component of weight loss and maintenance is gaining
the tools we need to manage our eating for life. It requires knowledge and
behavior change. The former isn’t likely difficult for most of us, although
there are a lot of less credible sources out there. The latter can be a
seemingly impossible task. This book will help you tackle both.
We’re so lucky to live in a day and age in which books, magazines,
journals, newspapers, websites, blogs, and more are so readily available and
abundant. The Internet has expanded our horizons and our learning ability to
such an amazing degree. Practically any information we want or need is just a
keystroke away. But we must make sure that what we’re reading, even relying on,
is quality and expert.
When
I first went to college back in the day, personal computers didn’t exist. I
know, can you imagine? All research had to be done at the library. And we had
to use card catalogues to find our material. It was slow going.
I’ve
thought about this often while writing my books. It’s certainly quick to tap
into my own knowledge, which I do extensively. But when I want to look
something up, I’m happy that it’s easy and convenient to find.
When looking for nutrition information on the web, I recommend
perusing the sites that you know are science-based. Medical and government
websites such as mayoclinic.com
and cdc.gov are reputable. So are
sites like eatright.org and choosemyplate.gov. You can
also go to registered dietitian sites like mine at consultthedietitian.com.
You have a question? I’ll answer it. For other online sources, please review
the Appendix for more sites that I like and trust.
Experts in the field can be great sources. Registered dietitians
are a fantastic go-to for information about nutrition. But there are so many
other people out there, including celebrities, who have their own diet plans or
champion them. It’s important to note that these people often don’t have the training
necessary to assess and recommend an appropriate diet plan. Tread lightly
there. Designations like RD, RDN, RN, and MD signify experts in health care,
including diet and nutrition.
In Britain
I counsel many people each year regarding a variety of health
issues, including weight management, prediabetes, diabetes, high cholesterol,
hypertension, heart disease, kidney disease, malnutrition, and more. Many of
them are well-versed in self-care and have solid facts and plans to achieve and
maintain good health. Others could use some help.
Television shows, magazines, books, our families, friends,
neighbors, coworkers, personal trainers, vitamin store personnel, and others
often share advice. Many of us take that and run with it. Sometimes we
shouldn’t.
It’s essential that we use a filter and common sense when sorting
through the barrage of information that comes our way. If it sounds too good to
be true, it most likely is. The promise of five pounds of weight loss in
several days or ten pounds in one week, for example, isn’t healthy or
advisable. It’s tempting, I know. But in this case, slow and steady wins the
race.
What do you need to get started on a healthy eating plan for you?
A great beginning is to understand the pros and cons of all the major diet
plans out there. Having reliable facts and figures, determining your desire and
willingness to change, and setting some goals are important. Knowing
recommended portion sizes and the balance of the food groups is essential. The
contribution of physical activity and the effectiveness of using measuring and
benchmark tools help round out a powerful weight-management arsenal. I can help
you with all of these, and there’s no time like the present. It’s time to stop
the diet and get on with a long-term eating plan for life.
So let’s get off the dieting merry-go-round. Our healthy weight
lies ahead.
*********
About the Author:
LISA TILLINGER JOHANSEN, MS, RD is a
Registered Dietitian who counsels clients on a wide range of health issues. Her
debut nutrition book, Fast Food Vindication, received the Discovery
Award (sponsored by USA Today, Kirkus and The Huffington Post). She lives in Southern California.
Her latest book is the nonfiction/nutrition/health
book, Stop
the Diet, I Want To Get Off!
For
More Information:
- Visit Lisa Tillinger
Johansen’s websites – Stop the Diet,
Consult the Dietitian and Fast Food Vindication.
- Connect with Lisa on Facebook and Twitter.
*********
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