Earlier this month, TLC started a new reality show about a family that is trying to lose weight together. Not only does the show highlight living a healthy lifestyle, but it also shows how difficult it can be to be overweight.
For example, the Coles decided to have a yard sale to get rid of the junk in their lives and maybe make a little money. Whenever you open yourself up to the public, however, you’ll encounter one of those jerks who hate fat people.
Then, when they went to an amusement park, they encountered embarrassing weight restrictions on the rides.
For the first time since we canceled our cable, I’m wishing that I had forked out the monthly dollars to Comcast. I can’t find a way to watch this show except on TLC. I’m interested to see how the Coles progress and see if they have anywhere near the success that the contestants on The Biggest Loser have.
Just when the dieting world seemed to calm down and the mantra of “Eat Less, Move More” seemed to be the prevailing wisdom, Japan goes crazy for bananas.
The Morning Banana Diet regime is simple: A banana (or as many as you want) and room temperature water for breakfast; eat anything you like for lunch and dinner (by 8 p.m.). A three o’clock snack is okay, but no desserts after meals, and you have to go to bed before midnight. Sumiko Watanabe, a pharmacist in Osaka designed this stress-free diet to help increase the metabolism of her husband Hitoshi Watanabe, who had been rather overweight. In due course, Mr. Watanabe lost 37 pounds.
Here is a video explaining it:
If you notice, the most important part of the diet is number four:
Eat until you’re full, but not stuffed.
This simple concept is THE reason that people might lose weight on this diet. It’s an idea that Weight Watchers and many other diet programs have promoted for the last decade. Being able to eat until you’re satisfied, but not full is the biggest predictor of whether you’ll be able to lose the weight and keep it off.
This diet has caused runs on bananas in Japan and it looks like Dole is trying to create the same fervor in the United States. They are calling it the Dole Banana Diet. Look at this advertisement I pulled out of People Magazine last month.
According to Dole,
Bananas contain resistant starch which research shows blocks conversion of some carbohydrates into fuel, boosting fat burning by forcing your body to rely on fat stores instead – a sure aid to sustainable weight loss. Dole has created a delicious banana diet to help you stick to your New Year’s resolution.
Will the Morning Banana Diet make you thin?
Maybe… I think we need a lot more research on the “magical” powers of resistant starch. Replacing your usual breakfast with one banana could save you anywhere from 400 to 700 calories, depending on what you usually eat for breakfast. That amount of caloric reduction could result in a loss of a pound a week as long as you don’t over compensate at lunch and dinner.
Is the Morning Banana Diet hazardous?
Probably not. There is a risk of feeling REALLY hungry before lunch, especially if you deal with low blood sugar on a regular basis. I prefer to have protein with every meal because it makes me feel full. More importantly, eating a banana for breakfast every morning is a really good way to get sick of bananas and never want to eat them again. They are a GREAT addition to your diet but do you really want to make yourself sick of them?
Are you going to try it?
Sorry, Dole, I’m not buying it any more than I bought the Three Apple a Day Diet or the Dairy Diet. Sure, I’m going to eat bananas when they sound like a good breakfast, but the Morning Banana Diet just sounds like a way to make Dole very rich.
Watch out. Even the seemingly healthy ideas are backed by people trying to take your money. Choose a diet that is balanced and that you can live with. Adding more fruits and vegetables to your diet is a good option, but any plan that tries to convince you that one certain food is THE answer is just trying to take your money.
When John realized that he couldn’t compete with the big grocery stores, he decided that Pepsi and Coca-Cola aren’t the only soda pops in town. Instead of running the grocery store like his father did, John decided to specialize in soda pop. His store now sells five HUNDRED different kinds of pop, ranging from Red Ribbon Rootbeer to Rose Soda and even Cucumber Soda.
You can see his interview from Chow here:
The most interesting part of the video happens at the 4:53 mark when he talks about diet sodas.
Are There Any Good Diet Sodas?
Most diet sodas are really pretty bad. I mean they just don’t taste good. There have been a few that have come out, Stewart’s Black Cherry Diet is probably the finest Black Cherry diet I’ve ever tasted. Jones has a Diet Green Apple that’s very good. And then there’s Sprecher’s, which has a low-cal rootbeer, which has 11 calories, which is not a true diet, but it’s low enough that if you’re watching calories. But other than those three or four, most sodas… [he shakes his head]
His advice?
Drink less. How’s that? Drink six ounces rather than twelve and you get 60 calories versus 120 calories, and then you’re satisfied and you’re happy.
If you’d like to try those diet sodas that he recommended, you can purchase them online and they will ship them to you.
This week, on PostSecret, there were tons of postcards that I found interesting. Here is one of them.
It reads:
I compare my groceries with those of others at the store and always find my choices superior.
Sometimes I think that humans have an innate need to feel better than other people. I believe it’s the whole reason clubs and religions exist. Food elitism is just another way for people to feel superior.
Sure, eating healthy is important, but that has little to do with the sort of preachy attitude that I’ve seen.
Honestly, it doesn’t matter WHAT you eat. You can lose weight eating nothing but gummy bears. You can get fat eating nothing but organic whole foods. And what I put in my grocery cart is NONE of your business, so keep your snobby nose out of it.
PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.
Today, Mike and I drove to Las Vegas to cover the Consumer Electronics Show for The Gadgets Page. As appealing as a road trip sounds right now, I am faced with eating healthy while we’re on the road. I’ve been making this trip every year for nearly a decade and it’s hard to break old habits. I’m used to getting a treat in Fillmore and another one in St. George.
I can tell you what doesn’t work. When I bring my own healthy treats, I feel totally left out when Mike comes out of the gas station with his selections. In the past, I have brought apples, veggies and even Weight Watchers bars for my own treats, but no matter how good they were, I felt cheated.
I realized that part of the fun of being on the road is stopping at the truck stops. Even if I buy some veggies at the foodmart, they are better than veggies from home somehow. I have to go in the truck stop to use the bathroom and I feel left out if I don’t buy a treat.
This time, I bought veggies in Fillmore and a sparkly lip gloss in St. George. Both of them felt like a treat, especially the lip gloss.
When you’re out on the road, you don’t have to suffer to stay healthy. What you need is a chance to stretch your legs, take a potty break and get yourself a treat. The treat doesn’t have to be food related. It could be a funny bumper sticker or a novelty lighter. As long as you feel like you are getting something fun, it’s good.
Long before Healthy Choice and Jenny Craig, Mott’s provided these three course, 300 calorie meals. You can see the ad here:
It reads:
Eat 3-course, 300-calorie meals of “forbidden food” and lose up to 5 pounds a week.
Be sleek and slinky. Buckle into a beautiful new beltline. Eat Mott’s Figure Control Meals. They make every other diet seem strictly from hunger.
You eat meals of “forbidden food” like beef stew. Casseroles. Chicken a la king. Appetizer and dessert, as well. Three wickedly wonderful courses. Yet each meal is less than 300 calories!
Why feel starved when you can eat meals that are a pound and a half of deliciousness? Why be bored when you can choose from seven different meals?
Mott’s lowers the calories in 48 other Figure Control Foods, too. Foods you can buy separately, like breakfast drinks. Salad dressings. Pancake syrup. Fruits. Mott’s famous no-calorie sweetener. All are high in satisfying flavor – low in fattening calories.
Take off weight this wicked new way. Lose up to 5 pounds a week. Just fix a delicious, convenient Mott’s Figure Control Meal for lunch and dinner. Slim breakfast down to 300 calories with Mott’s Figure Control Foods. It’s great to be a loser with Mott’s!
I’ve found in the world of processed food, you can only have two out of these three options: low in calories, large serving size or tastes good. If something is low in calories and tastes good, then it MUST be a small serving. If something is a large serving and tastes good, then it MUST be high in calories. If something is low in calories and a large serving, then it MUST taste like cardboard.
Mott’s brags about their Figure Control Foods being low in calories and “a pound and a half of deliciousness.” I know that all three are impossible, so what was it? Were they really delicious? Were they really low in calories? Were they really a large serving? I never got to try them, so I’ll never know, but I suspect that they might have been exaggerating the “deliciousness” of their three course meals.
Here is the commercial they have talking about the dangers of sugary sodas. Warning, it’s kind of gross.
It says:
Drinking one can of soda a day can make you 10 pounds fatter a year.
Don’t drink yourself fat. Cut out soda and other sugary beverages. Go with water, seltzer or low fat milk instead.
It’s true that sugary sodas can pack on the pounds, but quitting them isn’t just as simple as switching to water. Many sodas have caffeine, which is a powerful drug that will kick you in the gut if you go off it cold turkey. Sensitivity to caffeine withdrawal is different for each person, but there are tried and true ways to stop drinking soda and minimize the symptoms. I wrote an article about it here:
If you are ready to stop drinking yourself fat, give yourself a few days to muscle past the caffeine withdrawal. Once you’re past them, you’ll be free to substitute water or seltzer for your soda.
Unsticky. Unstuffy. Uninhibited. The Now Taste of Tab. Not so sweet. With 1 crazy calorie in 6 ounces. It’s what’s helping so many people keep slim and trim. Tab. That’s what happening. To the nicest shapes around.
There isn’t actually any medical proof that diet sodas keep people “slim and trim.” In fact, there is some evidence that says that overuse of artificial sweeteners actually makes things worse.
I am conflicted when it comes to diet soda. For me, it’s a great way to get a little caffeine and satisfy my sweet tooth. There is all that research saying diet sodas are bad for me, though, so I feel like I SHOULDN’T drink it. I enjoy them, but I feel guilty about them. I’m sure a lot of us are dealing with food guilt for any number of things.
I’m sick of feeling guilty about food that I eat. No matter how healthy I eat, there is always some vegan raw food puritan out there telling me ANOTHER thing that I shouldn’t eat. I keep thinking that if I were thin that they would shut up about what I eat, but I have a feeling that even that wouldn’t stop them.
If you are tempted to eat some McDonald’s food, here are a couple of videos that might put you off your Big Mac.
This first video is of Morgan Spurlock, testing what McDonald’s food looks like when you just leave it to rot. ALL food looks disgusting when it is rotting, but if you’re tempted by a Quarter Pounder, this might change your mind.
I wouldn’t put it past Spurlock to have switched out those fries to make us believe that they lasted that long without decay. Other people have tried this experiment as well and have gotten VERY different results.
Still gross, though. McDonald’s food isn’t any worse than other food. The fact that they are a little slower to grow mold and decay actually points to a cleanlier cooking environment and lack of moisture in the food.
However, if you’re tempted to eat a Big Mac when it isn’t part of your program, watching these videos might give you the strength to abstain.
After nearly four years, it has finally been proven in a medical study that the Zig Zag diet is effective. They took 16 people and had them eat 25% of daily caloric needs on the every other day and whatever food they wanted to eat on the other days.
Here is a link to the abstract from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Dietary adherence remained high throughout the controlled food intake phase (days adherent: 86%) and the self-selected food intake phase (days adherent: 89%). The rate of weight loss remained constant during controlled food intake (0.67 ± 0.1 kg/wk) and self-selected food intake phases (0.68 ± 0.1 kg/wk). Body weight decreased (P < 0.001) by 5.6 ± 1.0 kg (5.8 ± 1.1%) after 8 wk of diet. Percentage body fat decreased (P < 0.01) from 45 ± 2% to 42 ± 2%. Total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triacylglycerol concentrations decreased (P < 0.01) by 21 ± 4%, 25 ± 10%, and 32 ± 6%, respectively, after 8 wk of ADF, whereas HDL cholesterol remained unchanged. Systolic blood pressure decreased (P < 0.05) from 124 ± 5 to 116 ± 3 mm Hg.
All of the results are in metric, so here are the facts:
People were able to stick to the diet 86% of the time on the calorie restricted days and 89% of the time on unrestricted days. This is REALLY important because a diet that is hard to stay on isn’t worth it.
They lost weight EVERY week at a rate of 1.5 pounds a week.
After eight weeks, they lost a total of 12.3 pounds and their percentage of body fat went from 45% to 42%.
After eight weeks, their cholesterol levels decreased by 21 points.
After eight weeks, their systolic blood pressure decreased from 124 to 116.
When I followed the Zig Zag Diet, it wasn’t as restrictive and I lost weight, but I did heavy exercise for an hour on the non-restrictive days. This plan severely limits the calories on the fasting day, but doesn’t put limits on the other days, so it sounds like it would be a plan I could follow. I’m glad to know that there is some medical proof that Zig Zagging works.
Buy Walking Videos
Earlier this month, TLC started a new reality show about a family that is trying to lose weight together. Not only does the show highlight living a healthy lifestyle, but it also shows how difficult it can be to be overweight.
Today, Mike and I drove to Las Vegas to cover the Consumer Electronics Show for 
I realized that part of the fun of being on the road is stopping at the truck stops. Even if I buy some veggies at the foodmart, they are better than veggies from home somehow. I have to go in the truck stop to use the bathroom and I feel left out if I don’t buy a treat. 
Back in 2005, I stumbled upon a method of eating that really helped me lose weight. It was called the Zig Zag Diet.