Postby Harriet » Wed Nov 10, 2010 12:05 am
Have a great time with new activity, Emptynester.
Nancy, an extra video workout to choose in winter will be lots of help.
Lynlee, then my breakfasts lately would be 6-es. Assuming a favorite big salad midday sometimes, that would add 5 or 6. At that point, as I consider variety, my success breaks down. For instance, yesterday my supper would have added 2. I imagine I would stagnate at 16 or so most days, even when I was trying to pull as much produce variety as possible into my days.
The weight-loss versus nutrition debate really does interest me (and I guess it irritates me that someone reinvents the wheel and makes headlines). Is it worth it to do anything we can to get that scale down first and think about what's "good" for us later?
Johnson discussed in his book his worries over how he could help his patients gain "healthspan" (the length of time a person is actively mobile with good hearing, eyesight and cognitive abilities) when all the while he was agonizingly watching them get fatter and less healthy instead. Although he was impressed with 2 major studies that showed heart disease risk was 25 % less in people who ate 5 servings of frts/veggies a day (cancer reduction unimpressive, sorry), he realized that even that benefit paled in comparison to risk reductions with weight loss. Other studies in exercise, dietary composition, serum cholesterol were interesting, but none of them could compare with the huge benefit of weight loss specifically.
The bottom line was consistent: the lower the BMI (body mass index) the longer the healthspan, period. So Johnson began to theorize that it would be better to eat "bad" food if it helped you lose weight, than it would be to stay overweight eating "good" food. Ultimately, he expanded that to advocate that his patients eat what they wanted 4 days per week, within a pre-determined personal calorie count, and diet within a percentage of that count 3 days per week, so that they always had their "treats" on the horizon, to help them mentally.
Anyway, this was all back in the mid-2000s and his book came out in 08. So the Twinkie Diet may take it further, but it is not a new idea, not even new within this decade.