Brief Addendum...

...To the previous post: I want to emphasize that my year-long diet experiment didn't require much "willpower." It's not a calorie- or portion-restricted diet. I eat all I want and then some. In fact sometimes I will look at the giant heap of food I've just fixed and think surely I can't eat all that. But then I do. So please don't think it required "willpower"—it really didn't.

As Arg wrote in his Featured Comment yesterday, "The weight kind of comes off by itself, with zero suffering."

The only self-discipline I actually needed was to shop and cook. I'm still lazy, and often I had to kick myself a little to procure or prepare food. It required self control, I guess, to stay away from sugar, which is my weakness. But I was never hungry.

In fact, it's even a little difficult at first to get out of that old dieting mindset where you naturally feel as if you should be limiting the amounts you eat. Don't. If you're eating healthy food, the more the better. It just leaves less room for meat, dairy, and junk. So fix lots and eat up.

What to eat? I like Dr. Michael Klaper's idea: "the Four S's: Soups, Salads, Smoothies, and Steamed vegetables."

Books and videos were helpful to me for inspiration. If my interest flagged, I'd just crack How Not to Die or Eating on the Wild Side and read a few pages. And I probably watched nutritionfacts.org videos over my morning meal  one day out of every three all year long.

Walking advertisements
One small convincer: Go to YouTube, search "plant based doctor," and when various people come up, look at their bodies. They're all trim or thin. Michael Klaper, Pam Popper, Neal Barnard, Joel Fuhrman, Gemma Newman, Anthony Lim, John McDougall, Kim A. Williams, and Caldwell Esselstyn just to name a few—the list is a long one. Shouldn't that tell you something?

Dr. Gemma Newman discussing keto
vs. plant-based in the linked video

Note that several of these people came to plant-based eating in the first place because of health problems. Kim Williams had sky-high cholesterol—and as a President of the American College of Cardiology he knew what that meant. Gemma Newman grew up as a "fat kid" and then even when she got very fit as a young adult her lipids were still poor, and she has a family history of relatives dying young from heart disease. People online sometimes gossip that John McDougall doesn't look very good for a man who's only in his early 70s, but he had a severe stroke at a shockingly young age, so he's had underlying health issues—who knows, were it not for his healthy diet he might not be alive at all. No one can say one way or the other. But one thing's for sure, he sure ain't obese.

And they tend to stay vigorous into older age:

Dr. Neal Barnard at age 65 with Stanley Cheung, whose diabetes was reversed with the help of Dr. Barnard's book

The advocates themselves are good advertisements for the lifestyle.

This is getting less than brief, so I'd better quiet down now! See you tomorrow.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

BOOK of the WEEK from yesterday’s post:

How Not to Diet by Michael Greger
(Links go to Amazon)

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
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Comments

[Richard Man]

I like this summary:
Eat food, (e.g. not junk)
Not too much,
Mostly plants
-- Michael Pollan

[Speed]

Remember when fresh fruits and vegetables were seasonal? Fresh, lightly cooked (steamed or the modern version -- microwaved) veggies are tasty, filling and satisfying.

"Who needs meat and sugar?" writes the guy with a Christmas roast in the fridge and cookies in the jar. Just for Christmas. I promise.

[Dennis]

I'll take keto any day. It works for me. Period.

[Zyni Moë]

If you are not limiting the amount of calories you are ingesting and if energy is conserved then are only four options: you are disposing of those calories through increased activity, you are disposing of them by being much hotter than your environment than you previously were, you are excreting them or you are storing them in fat, muscle, etc. (Well, is at least one other possibility: perhaps you have become strong source of very non-thermal radiation – small pulsar perhaps, or Dr Manhattan. Do you glow blue? Do you notice film near you becoming fogged? Are you surrounded by crowds of astronomers? Yes, probably this is not likely explanation I think.)

Energy conservation is very, very fundamental law of physics shown by great mathematician Emmy Noether to be equivalent to fact that laws of physics do not change over time. You are not violating this law.

So unless one of the other possibilities is true, you ertainly are either limiting the calories you ingest somehow, excreting more of them, or both. You may not know you are, and you may believe you are not, but you are. Physics is not wrong about this,

[You're missing one fundamental calculation: compare 100 calories of brownie vs. 100 calories of broccoli at the link below, and consider the satiety of hunger you would get from each:

https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/nutrition/weight/what-does-100-calories-look-like

I don't limit the amount of food I eat. But the amount of *calories* I eat is naturally limited by the kinds of foods I'm eating and the form in which I'm eating them. There are 140 calories in a can of Coke, for instance, which will satiate hunger not at all. But to get the same amount of calories from oranges you'd have to eat SEVEN of them, or, from bell peppers, EIGHT of them. Who's going to eat seven oranges or eight bell peppers?? --Mike]

[c.d.embrey]

Gluttony was never a problem for me. I don't have diabetes or a cholesterol problem. I'm not lactose intolerant and have few allergies. None of this has anything to do with my diet—my parents just passed along good genes.

I'm omnivorous and eat both plant and animal protein. I'm a lifelong spinach eater, plus I eat a lot of mushrooms, lima beans and hominy. I also eat beef, buffalo and lamb. All things in moderation.

Check out Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto by Aaron Bastani https://www.amazon.com/s?k=luxury+communism&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 You'll like their position on food.

[Dave_lumb]

"Blessed are the cheesemakers."

[terence morrissey]

I have a wife to shop and cook 👩‍🍳

[c.d.embrey]

I just got back from visiting my internist, who works out of Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, CA. He warned me not to eat any carbs. So who should I believe?

The can of Coke® analogy seems like sorta a reach. This works better for me—three ounces of ribeye steak has 207 calories, 24 grams of protein, 12 grams of fat and 0 grams of carbs. The fat in a rib eye triggers your body to produce CCK, a satiety hormone that helps you feel full for longer. This is the kind of food my Medical Doctors approve of. YMMV because you are not me.

Happy Holidays from sunny SoCal (78 degrees at 3:00pm today).

[Well, I believe in evidence-based science, and the somewhat awkward truth is that doctors tend to be rather poor or let's say unreliable advisors regarding nutrition unless they specialize in it, no offense to any doctors within the sound of my typing. Or, at least, being a doctor does not *necessarily* confer on them any particular authority in the subject. Roughly three-quarters of American medical schools do not even teach nutrition, and most doctors have never taken a single course in nutrition. If they have, it tends to be very rudimentary and often outdated. Many of them have what any of us have, namely, an opinion; but they dispense it under the presumption of authority. So ask your internist how many nutrition courses he took in medical school.

Of course some doctors are very good when it comes to diet. The point is that you can't automatically assume.

In any event, you should beware of two things: there are large, rich, powerful industries working assiduously to spread misinformation and/or bury research unfavorable to their products (and promote questionable findings that promote their products), and much of the most relevant research is recent, so it's a good idea to listen to people who keep up with it. The people I listen to are almost all doctors, but they are doctors who have studied, researched, and written about nutrition for most or all of their careers.

Read "How Not to Die" and get back to me. He's a fluent writer and reading him is pretty smooth sailing. And by the way, Greger is so concerned with avoiding even the appearance of conflict of interest that he donates all the profits from his books to charity, accepts no sponsorship deals, and sells no ancillary for-profit products. --Mike]

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Well I’ve no interest in diet regimens or fads. But I’d gladly watch Dr. Newman boil a pot of turnips while reading a phone directory. Beats watching some kid in a farmer’s cap telling me all about what a great “landscape photographer” he is...any day. Go Dr. Newman!

[Malinda Tamlyn]

Michael Gregor while on first look seems to look good, I beg you to dig further. There's rarely presentation of credible opposing arguments, and often his interpretation of studies are simply wrong - which he largely gets away with because the vast majority of people won't check the actual references. Greger articles I have come across Grege and actually scrutinized the references in comparison to his interpretations, it's often exaggerated or even blatantly false/misleading. Please do more research.
A good book to check out is “Why We Get Sick” by Ben Bikman. This has some of the most current research going on right now.
Another person to learn about and read is Professor Tim Noakes, best known is the 70’s for his book “The Lore of Running”, follow his progression on how his beliefs have changed over the years and the history of how we have gotten in the food pyramid mess we are in now. Read his new book, “The Lore Of Nutrition”.