For someone with an iPhone like me, I don’t have to be disconnected for a single second. The thing is in my pocket most of the day, and nearly every moment of downtime can be efficient: what’s the temp to cook duck breast? Ask Google right in the grocery store. That waterproof iPhone case I’m looking at – is $30 a good price? Scan the bar code with Red Laser in the store and it tells me I can get it without sales tax and free shipping for $24. Just bored while waiting for my family to finish shopping? Play a game of Doodle Jump, or go to Digg and see what interesting articles I might find.

The iPhone is nothing short of miraculous - but is the filling of every possible moment a good miracle?

Never accuse me of an original thought. Here’s an article from the Harvard Business Review about a fellow who returned his iPad because it was too good.

Here’s a somewhat extended and slightly redacted excerpt:

It didn’t take long for me to encounter the dark side of this revolutionary device: it’s too good.

It’s too easy. Too accessible. Both too fast and too long-lasting. Certainly there are some kinks, but nothing monumental. For the most part, it does everything I could want. Which, as it turns out, is a problem.

Sure I might want to watch an episode of Weeds before going to sleep. But should I? It really is hard to stop after just one episode. And two hours later, I’m entertained and tired, but am I really better off? Or would it have been better to get seven hours of sleep instead of five?

The brilliance of the iPad is that it’s the anytime-anywhere computer. On the subway. In the hall waiting for the elevator. In a car on the way to the airport. Any free moment becomes a potential iPad moment.

So why is this a problem? It sounds like I was super-productive. Every extra minute, I was either producing or consuming.

But something — more than just sleep, though that’s critical too — is lost in the busyness. Something too valuable to lose.

Boredom.

Being bored is a precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that’s where creativity arises.

My best ideas come to me when I am unproductive. When I am running but not listening to my iPod. When I am sitting, doing nothing, waiting for someone. When I am lying in bed as my mind wanders before falling to sleep. These “wasted” moments, moments not filled with anything in particular, are vital.

They are the moments in which we, often unconsciously, organize our minds, make sense of our lives, and connect the dots. They’re the moments in which we talk to ourselves. And listen.

To lose those moments, to replace them with tasks and efficiency, is a mistake. What’s worse is that we don’t just lose them. We actively throw them away.

Our tools change who we are, for better and for worse. They can enhance some aspects of our nature while allowing others to go fallow.

These other aspects of our nature might be full of quiet wisdom that can’t be heard above the din.

I quieted my mind a bit and gave the quiet thoughts a chance to be heard, and it added a depth to this diet mind game that I had previously ignored.

I’m sure I lost a lot of you on this one…sorry.

Yesterday I shared with you my epiphany regarding what might be called ‘abusive dieting’. The realization that I had been ignoring this for so long was quite a shocker. It led me to the decision to try an experiment: eat what I want without a shred of guilt and see what happens.

Now – this isn’t what you might think. It doesn’t mean driving down to the supermarket, hitting the cookie aisle, and knocking myself out – I have been eating low carb for so long it’s not in my makeup to do so. What it means is that I’m seeing what it’s like to eat without every bite I take being a judgement on my character.

It had become so routine as to become invisible: I had become my diet and every bite I took or didn’t take – and whether the food in question was allowed or prohibited – became a moral judgement on myself.

I think I had gone from losing weight as a way to be more happy to losing weight as the exclusive way to be happy.

I even had my instruments of torture to remind me every second of the day of my success or failure: my clothes.

When I originally lost my weight and got down to about 185, I bought a new wardrobe and tossed the old stuff out.

Oh what fun!

But as happens to some, the weight began creeping up, and less and less of the clothes I owned fit. So what I did as I began to run out of clothes that fit was to shoehorn myself into tighter and tighter stuff – all the time saying that this is a temporary situation and I will return to my idealized self shortly.

As this happened gradually, over the course of months and years, the situation evolved to a place where I would look in my closet and see more than a dozen shirts and slacks – but could only choose from a tiny subset.

I came to the realization that every single day of my life had become as if I had to go into someone else’s closet and pick out something to wear. These clothes weren’t mine anymore – they were someone else’s.

So what had occurred was that the clothes that had brought me such joy when I originally got to my target weight now became daily reminders of my failure – and since they fit so poorly, made me look like (or at least feel like) a clown – as well as completely comfortable throughout the day.

So I took my entire wardrobe and went through each piece. If it didn’t fit – or I just didn’t like it – it got packed away.

I then went out and bought a simple wardrobe of stuff that fit me and was comfortable. I used to buy clothes by the size, even if it didn’t fit. Now I tried them on, the size be damned.

I spent a little over $200 and got myself a minimalist wardrobe that fits.

Boy, does it feel good. I no longer go to my closet with a feeling of dread. I enjoy wearing the clothes. They feel good and I feel good in them.

And I eat what I want – at least until I figure out my next steps. I’m not giving up on losing weight, or low carb – I’m just at a waypoint – a place where I’m taking a breather and reflecting on where I’ve come from before I decide what direction I go next.

I don’t eat all that different – just without guilt. I have put on 10 lbs., and it seems to have stabilized there. I’m not judging it – I’m watching it. I’m a lot more relaxed, though my professional life is so hectic as to be unbearable.

I’m trying to be careful and not draw any conclusions about all this just yet. What I am doing needs some time to unfold. It can’t be rushed, and it shouldn’t be labeled just yet – the ball is in the air and the ref cannot call the play.

To be continued…

The more I learn, the less it seems I know.

For those of you following at home: I wrote the above post, then began following it. I did all of these things and was  feeling quite good about myself – losing weight, feeling greater energy.

Then something happened.

A wave of utter despair overwhelmed me. It came out of nowhere and crippled me for days. Remember – this time I included two very different, seemingly non-diet related items on my list: meditation and a complete and total news diet.

You know how people say ‘It was so noisy that I couldn’t hear myself think?’ Well, if your mind is used to a constant stream of disconnected factoids on 100 subjects from various sources, it can drown out some of your quieter thoughts.

I think, for the first time in a long time, I heard from these thoughts because I simply had created some space by reducing the flood of trivialities coming in to my mind.

And these thoughts told me that I was treating myself like shit.

I thought about an incident where my wife found a Thai fusion restaurant and wanted me to join her there. It filled me with resentment and anger – I’m on a diet! I went nonetheless and ate, joyless, filled with anger at myself and at her.

In the quiet space to think I created, I began to look at this event differently. I want to lose weight to be happier, and yet here was life presenting me with a happy moment – a great new restaurant to share with my wife and family – and I let it pass.

Why do I want to lose weight again? What’s the point of it all?

I looked at the rules I wrote and found them lacking depth – I also read some of my old posts and found them lacking depth.

The reason being that they led to my treating myself like some mechanism rather than an unimaginably complex being. They left out the mind totally – even though I paid it lip service, I really wasn’t addressing it.

Weight loss was supposed to make me happy. No weight loss – no happiness.

I had gotten it all wrong.

To be continued…

New Jersey is the butt of many jokes, but it’s a misunderstood place, known mostly for Bruce Springsteen, the notorious show ‘The Jersey Shore’ which I have never seen, The show ‘The Sopranos’ which I have never seen, and the New Jersey Turnpike – the stretch of road so ugly that I can forgive people who’ve only seen that road as they drive through the state for thinking it is nothing but a hell hole.

It isn’t just these things, by any means.

New Jersey has some of the most fertile farmland in the United States. We don’t have big farms – we have small local farms. And we also have a very vibrant local organic farming community. When I go to my farmers market, there are no less than four farms within driving distance that raise organic vegetables and even meat and eggs selling their products there.

Two weeks ago, one of our local farmers, overflowing with the famous Jersey Tomatoes, had 25 pounds of locavore, organic plum tomatoes for $10.

We couldn’t pass it up.

While they have made their way into a lot of meals since then, I was amazed at what I produced when I threw some on the barbecue grill.

All I did was coat the outside in olive oil and place on a very hot grill.

Unless you leave them on for a very long time, they can’t burn – there’s just too much water in them. What happens is the outsides blacken and the insides reduce and carmalize – making them sweeter and more tasty. The blackened outsides add a complex smoky flavor.

I left them for about 40 minutes, then put them in a bowl and used an immersion blender on them. If you do NOT know how to prevent your immersion blender from spraying tomato all over your walls, use a blender or food processor.

This left me with the most awesome thick, and flavorful tomato puree I had ever had. I ate it like a soup with no additional seasonings.

If you only know tomatoes from what you’ve gotten in a grocery store, understand that those things you bought are nothing like the tomatoes I just described.

I am hoping that I will be so SICK of tomatoes by the end of the season that I can hold out until next summer when they are back in season before I buy one again.

Grocery store tomatoes are not worth it when you’ve had the real thing.

Here’s a link to the company, which became famous (or infamous) for Bacon Salt. They don’t mention this product on their site – just on this blog posting.

It was posted awfully close to April Fools, and I’m hoping (praying) that it’s just a sick joke. If so – kudos.

If not, God help us.

Warning: if you are easily discouraged when your assumptions are challenged, you might want not want to read this. Check back the next time I have a recipe or something.

If you need an excuse to stay fat, grab a box of cookies, pull up a chair and read this: many studies suggest that people who lose weight actually have higher death rates than those whose weight remained stable, even if they’re overweight.

Just call me Debbie Downer. Hey: you want a ‘rah-rah-happy-go-lucky’ low carb blog, look elsewhere – I’m far too cynical and skeptical for that.

Another aspect for me is: I’m not scared of people whose opinions differ from mine – I’m fascinated by them.

So if you’re game, let’s explore this avenue for a little while.

Anyway, my source for this is a book called ‘The Healthy Skeptic‘, which takes a number of assumptions about health and skewers them. It’s an interesting read so far, but the weight loss being a killer is a great contrarian read.

Now, let’s be clear: nothing is cut-and-dry in the world of health and nutrition, and there’s a difference between overweight, obese, and morbidly obese. There’s also great controversy over these terms and their relation to BMI – which is itself controversial.

But let’s not stray the course and see what the book has to say about the Finnish Twin Cohort study:

Researchers…separated out the intentional from the unintentional weight losers and included only people who appeared to be free of illness. All were obese or overweight when the study began. Over an 18-year period, those who had lost weight on purpose were more likely to die than those whose weight remained stable. The researchers concluded that deliberate weight loss in healthy, overweight people “may be hazardous in the long-term.” (pg 65-66 of hardcover edition)

It sure does suck to be fat. We’re born into a world that feeds us crap food as real food, we eat the junk, get fat, then have our character put into question because of our pants size (discrimination against fat folks is still not taboo). Next, when we do realize we need to lose weight, we are provided with 1000s of options – and most don’t work – so we waste lots of time and money – and lose nothing. Then, if we finally, finally! come across something that works for us and beat the odds, which vary between 80-95% against us, and actually lose weight and keep it off – we only succeed in dying prematurely compared to our fat cohorts that kept up on the intake of Ring Dings!?!

Going back to the book, the word ‘skeptical’ used in the title is applied as the fellow who wrote it does show that it is not as cut and dry as the above sounds, mentioning that other studies show the opposite result – and some show no difference.

It is also mentioned that yo-yo dieting might have something to do with it. Fact is: most people who lose weight have done so before and gained it all back, and there’s a lot of research that says this is not good for one’s overall health.

So maybe it’s not the weight-loss per se – it’s really the long history prior to the weight loss that is the contributing factor.

The author does goes on to say, however:

As a whole, the research suggests that dieting is not a risk-free endeavor and in some cases the drawbacks may outweigh the benefits. The Editors of The New England Journal of Medicine reached that conclusion in an editorial published on January 1, 1998. Under the headline “Losing Weight – An Ill-Fated New Year’s Resolution,” Drs. Jerome Kassirer and Marcia Angell wrote: “We simply do not know whether a person who loses 20 lb will thereby acquire the same reduced risk as a person who started out 20 lb lighter.” Warning doctors to be cautious about urging all overweight patients to shed pounds, they said, “We should remember that the cure for obesity might be worse than the condition.”

To the author’s credit – and to the dismay of people who just want to be told what the heck to do, he explains that ‘neither the doomsayers nor deniers tell the full truth’. There’s a lot of money to be made selling us diets – and plenty to be made selling us food that make us fat.

Here’s a decidedly biased view toward being fat as OK. This excerpt is from Kate Harding, who is part of the ‘Fat Acceptance’ movement. She’s a little strident, but don’t confuse your impression of the messenger with the content of the message:

Weight itself is not a health problem, except in the most extreme cases (i.e., being underweight or so fat you’re immobilized). In fact, fat people live longer than thin people and are more likely to survive cardiac events, and some studies have shown that fat can protect against “infections, cancer, lung disease, heart disease, osteoporosis, anemia, high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis and type 2 diabetes.” Yeah, you read that right: even the goddamned diabetes. Now, I’m not saying we should all go out and get fat for our health (which we wouldn’t be able to do anyway, because no one knows how to make a naturally thin person fat any more than they know how to make a naturally fat person thin; see point 4), but I’m definitely saying obesity research is turning up surprising information all the time — much of which goes ignored by the media — and people who give a damn about critical thinking would be foolish to accept the party line on fat. Just because you’ve heard over and over and over that fat! kills! doesn’t mean it’s true. It just means that people in this culture really love saying it.

The above is an excerpt from her FAQ, which is definitely worth a read.

Ok…you’re saying ‘Thanks for sharing…NOT!‘ Well, I did warn you.

My take on all this is to reiterate my impression that science is quite clueless when it comes to things like nutrition. It is quite easy for researchers to apply their own biases – both conscious and unconscious – to the data, and while the scientific method eventually weeds out the flawed thinking, this ‘eventually’ might not happen in our lifetimes.

Remember that modern medicine is little more than 100 years old, and professors of medicine, at least the honest ones, are famous for saying to their students that half of what they teach them will probably be proven wrong in a few years.

So it comes back to you, dear reader. It’s not their life – it’s yours. Read, research, ask questions, experiment, find what works for you and don’t be swayed by the opinions of others if you feel you are on the right track.

And take personal responsibility for your decisions. They might be right – or not. You have to either live with the uncertainty, or stick you head in the sand and only consume information that confirms your biases.

I won’t pass moral judgement on either path – in the end, it’s all about being happy.

I’ve been in the state known as ketosis, brought about by following the rules of Atkins Induction, more times than I can count. I have also been either very successful or not-so successful at staying in Induction for an extended period of time and losing weight.

While I am not recommending long-term ketosis- Atkins doesn’t, and you’ll find few people who do as there’s little research as to what it might do to long-term health – I try to stay in Induction for extended periods – months.

Anyways, for those of you who don’t follow my blog, to summarize the last couple of years: I’ve been maintaining while trying to lose – win on one level, but a big fat fail on another.

I lost my weight in 2003, when I was a carb fiend. Such an abrupt change to low carb produced phenomenal results: 65 lbs. in the first year – another 15 in the second.

As is standard with losing weight and aging, some has crept back on. I’m still down 50 lbs. from my high in 2003, but I’m not satisfied.

So I did some looking back at what I’ve tried that succeeded, what failed miserably, what caused initial progress to evaporate, what and what traps have I fallen into again and again.

I started with a very personal list of concepts that I wrote up a few mornings ago:

Find What You Lost, Remember What You’ve Forgotten

You forgot how to live surrounded by cookies, cake and ice cream and not eat it. Remember how you had your low carb sweets and managed to stay away from the regular stuff.

Remember how you used to fill your mind with spiritual and motivational content. You’re more cynical now, it seems. It might be a good time to revisit it.

You forgot how good it felt to be thin and don’t feel it’s worth the effort so you attempt half-heartedly rather than whole-heartedly.

You forgot how poisonous the news is to your mind and how much healthier you feel on a total news diet.

You forgot how good simplicity feels, how less is more, how to live without needing so much.

Your existential crisis of the moment is because you’ve forgotten how to live in the moment, awake, and counting all the riches you have through good luck and hard work.

You’ve forgotten how good self-discipline can feel if you only hang in there and make it through the initial rough part.

You feel like a fraud because you’ve forgotten that education isn’t knowledge, degrees do not impart wisdom, and study does not inevitably lead to good judgement.

You also feel like a fraud because you’ve forgotten that setbacks do not equate to failure.

You’ve forgotten how procrastination is evil in that it fools us into thinking that ‘tomorrow’ doesn’t really mean ‘never’.

Pretty words – but the trick to ask yourself is how to make them actionable. Without actions attached to the above, it’s all just mental masturbation.

In my experience, at least for me, losing weight is mainly a head-game – a battle between who you are and who you want to be. It’s not a fair fight. Who you are at present has the home-court advantage.

Go ahead – try and break a habit. You might have initial success, but those years of ingrained habituation will wait until you are not paying attention or weak and try to sneak back in.

This is why I think the ‘Just do it’ crowd – who can’t seem to fathom that someone might be having a problem – are pinheads, in my humble opinion.

Plato said: ‘Know thyself.’ To which Oscar Wilde retorted: ‘Only the shallow know themselves.’

So, keeping this all in mind, not as discouragement, but armament against what I will inevitably come up against, I’ve turned the pretty words into some actionable, measurable goals.

So here’s my checklist for this particular try at VLCD. It’s complicated by the fact that I have been withdrawing from nicotine (from my failed nicotine-as-weight-loss-device -experiment), and my doctor recently advised me to cut way back on the coffee. (I told him I only drink a pot.)

This gives me absolutely NO substance to overconsume, which will be tough – I always had some small vice to compensate for a vice I had recently given up. Now, whatever portion of the brain controls the love of small vices, it will now go hungry.

Anyway – the rules I am trying to follow this time are:

1. One large coffee per day. Decaf is fine if I want more.
2. Resist the temptation to look at the news. It is not actionable and only depresses me.
3. Instead of reading the news, journal your progress. This has proven helpful in the past and prevents ‘forgetting’ what has been learned.
4. Measure weight once a day. Any more is noise.
5. Check blood glucose a few times a day, as I am still learning about my early-stage diabetes.
6. Eat a fatty breakfast – somewhere around 3-400 calories. Even though I’m not hungry most mornings, past experience shows I lose weight when I eat breakfast.
7. Take my vitamins after breakfast.
8. Drink at least 2 liters of water per day. Seltzer is fine.
9. Explore hunger. Meditate on it. Allow myself to be hungry. Explore the fear and learn to be unafraid. I had food, and I am going to have more food. The fear is primal. Conquer it rather than trying to eliminate it – that has been a failed strategy.
10. Don’t go more than 6 hours without eating. I’m not out to starve. The larger goal is to be healthy. The weight will follow.
11. Zero bread – even the low carb type.
12. No low carb junk food. Sorry, Atkins, this means the bars and shakes.
13. Three heaping teaspoons of fiber therapy every evening before dinner.
14. No eating after 8pm. After 8 pm is my ‘stupid time’. Here is where I am most vulnerable to the ‘just a little taste’ trap. A total prohibition prevents this.
15. Count calories without fixating on it. We’re trying to be close and use the act of counting as an awareness exercise.
16. No alcohol. While I have proven time and again I can drink alcohol and maintain, I have also proved that I cannot lose weight and have alcohol – and losing weight is the point of this.
17. Think you’re doing good and want to ‘reward’ yourself? Go ahead – but have it have NOTHING to do with what you put in your mouth. Clothes, toys, movies are fine. But don’t allow yourself to be tricked into thinking that a cheat is a ‘reward’ – this is a mind game you play on yourself, pure and simple.
18. Make this list a checklist of sorts. You should be able to go down this list daily and see if you’ve followed all the rules.

There you have it. I’m starting day 4, have been successful so far, and lost a few pounds. Right now, the coffee issue is the toughest.

It’s way too early to tell how I might bet blind-sided – caught unawares by the forces inside me that are absolutely against this plan and conspire to trip me up.

In a way – that’s kinda the fun of it.

Others – not so great.

I got to thinking about this when reading a post on ‘low carb Nazis’, the link to which I promptly lost. Ugh.

Anyway, first, let’s put aside the justified criticism of the use of the word ‘Nazi’ here. I know many people are offended that the word ‘Nazi’ is linked with things like ‘food’, ‘feminism’, or ‘soup’. They think it trivializes the atrocities that the real Nazis did in the last century. They can be very militant about it – I suppose we can call them ‘Nazi’-Nazis, but they wouldn’t be happy about that.

The fact is, you can’t control language. If that were possible, I would first banish the word ‘blog’ as it’s about the ugliest word coined in the past 100 years.

But there’s more than just the low carb Nazis out there. There are multiple groups that each interact and sometimes learn from one another, and sometimes are angered by one another – or haven’t a clue what the other groups are talking about.

Below I’ve arbitrarily identified four groups, not that there aren’t more, and not that these are even correct of fair. You make that judgement – I’m not going to be a Nazi about this.

The Nazi

These people seem to have a very clear view of right and wrong. They don’t feel it is necessary to discuss or debate – their conclusions are solid, the path is clear, and anyone who doesn’t agree with them is in for a smackdown. Robert Atkins was like this. He was nice about it, in a doctor’s all-knowing, condescending way. Anthony Colpo is also like this. Matt Stone is also like this to some degree, but I’ve corresponded with Matt Stone – he’s a nice fellow and he is still learning and experimenting. While he’s pretty adamant in his derision for the Atkins diet – creating a diet plan called FUDA (short for ‘F__K you Dr Atkins’) and referring to the late doctor as ‘Fatkins’, I give him a pass on these things.

Anthony Colpo is seriously cranky. Smart as a whip, and given what great shape he’s in, he’s a living tribute to the fact that a low carb diet is a very healthy for some people. It’s just that he sees the world in black and white. With posts like ‘The Great Eades Smackdown‘, for him, there appears to be One Right Way – and it just happens to be his way.

To give you a taste of Anthony’s style, here is an excerpt from his email newsletter:

CORRESPONDENCE POLICY – PLEASE READ BEFORE EMAILING

Comments and questions from readers are always welcome, but due to time constraints a response cannot be guaranteed. If you find lack of response to your correspondence offensive, please don’t write. Emails with offensive, argumentative, hostile or imbecilic content will be ignored.

I’d be scared to write Anthony Colpo – he’s probably bitchslap me in his reply – if he’d even reply to a human pissant like me.

I like all four of these fellows – Dr. Eades as well, though I don’t see him as a Nazi nor do I follow his plan. I learn from each of them, but I don’t want to choose sides.

Nerds

Nerds are also quite sure of themselves – sometimes. The trap that they fall into sometimes is expecting everyone to understand what they are saying. For them, there’s no way you can do low carb without understanding the whys. They tend to give too much information, thinking people are as engrossed in the topic as much as they are, and seem to miss the point that you must fine-tune your message for your audience.

They spew out information like a firehose, and when they glaze over their victim, they think their victim is stupid.

Geeks

Geeks are obsessed with particular aspects of low carb. They zero in on a particular topic and learn everything – all the other aspects of the low carb – psychological, cultural, practical, financial, spiritual, don’t exist. They’re the ones that rail about the horrors of grain-fed beef, or the Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratios – in every response to every post, even if the post has only a tenuous connection to their particular obsession.

Sort of like Amway people tend to look for any opportunity to weave their ‘business’ into the most casual conversation.

Newbies

Newbies – those folks who have just learned about low carb and would like to learn more are frequently put off by these folks – unless they themselves have in them the makings of a Nazi, a Nerd, or a Geek. Most likely they start a low carb diet – a lonely task for a lot of us, hit a bump in the road, and post a simple question to a forum.

They sometimes don’t get a simple answer.

The Nazis tell newbies that they must follow a set of rules that they devised or follow, maybe eat organic and avoid Omega-6 fats, or whatever their Nazism is based upon. Even if it’s not part of the problem the poster asked about – it IS the problem to the Nazi. Haven’t lost weight? You’re not following my rules! Simple as that. Eating ham? Has nitrates? Bad. Like Atkins bars? They’re crap – that’s your problem. Can’t afford pricy organics? You’re screwed – and until you come around to their way of thinking, don’t waste their time.

Nerds are friendlier and less black-and-white in their thinking. What they do is ‘love bomb’ the newbie into a stupor of links on 17 different topics covering every aspect and tell them: take a look at this stuff and you’ll understand. Make no mistake – they are trying to help, but the sheer mass of complex info they expect the newbie to take in almost guarantees that the newbie will be even more confused and frustrated than before.

Geeks are friendly and helpful as well. What they do differently than the nerds is to provide you with 17 different links on the same topic – enough to make you a friggin PhD in the subject.

They are the experts – and remember: one definition of an expert is knowing more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing.

Again the newbie feels about as stunned as a  clubbed baby seal and slinks away, feeling overwhelmed and stupid.

I’m certainly not a newbie anymore, but when I was, I felt these things when I posted questions.

I think I started off this blog as a Nazi, but have mellowed to nerditude – with occasion dalliances into geekdom.

I loved the book ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories’ – the seminal work on the science behind low carb dieting – but I hated reading it. In my opinion, Gary Taubes is not a great author – he is a great presenter of information, but his writing style is dry and sterile – as if he places each word on the page with tweezers while wearing rubber gloves.

His style leans too much toward an audience accustomed to clinical research, where the author removes themselves from the content. In research, this is necessary as science is a presentation of ‘just the facts’ and any warmth or emotion carried in the message will put the research into question, making readers think that the message conveyed might be biased by the researcher’s own opinions.

This is always the case, of course – we’re just not supposed to show it.

I have read way too many books of similar depth that were more engaging, so I was very disappointed – this was supposed to be a work that would show the world the sound scientific basis for a low carbohydrate diet – and he created a near unreadable tome that would allow laymen critics to seize on the style rather than the substance.

I have always wished it would be rewritten – perhaps co-authored with Bill Bryson or Michael Pollan – two of my favorite authors – with both of them, I could read anything they wrote, no matter the topic or my interest in the topic because of the warmth, passion, and wonder they can inject into their narratives.

I have found engaging writers make me interested in subjects I never knew I had an interest in.

That’s what Gary Taubes needed to do in ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories’ so that detractors could come to see that low carb is not as quackish as many think.

He failed.

But there’s hope.

On December 28, 2010, Gary Taubes releases a new book ‘Why We Get Fat’ - here’s the description from the Random House website:

An eye-opening, paradigm-shattering examination of what makes us fat.

In the New York Times best seller Good Calories, Bad Calories, acclaimed science writer Gary Taubes argues that certain kinds of carbohydrates—not fats and not simply excess calories—have led to our current obesity epidemic. Now he brings that message to a wider, nonscientific audience in this exciting new book. Persuasively argued, straightforward, practical, and with fresh evidence for Taubes’s claim, Why We Get Fat makes his critical argument newly accessible.

Taubes reveals the bad nutritional science of the last century—none more damaging than the “calories-in, calories-out” model of why we get fat—and the good science that has been ignored, especially regarding insulin’s regulation of our fat tissue. He also answers key questions: Why are some people thin and others fat? What roles do exercise and genetics play in our weight? What foods should we eat or avoid?

Concluding with an easy-to-follow diet, Why We Get Fat is an invaluable key to understanding an international epidemic and a guide to improving our own health.

Statements like ‘Now he brings that message to a wider, nonscientific audience’ and ‘Persuasively argued, straightforward, practical’ gives me hope that I might soon have a book I can recommend to friends curious about my seemingly odd predilection for eating burgers without a bun and asking for heavy cream for my coffee – a book that won’t put them to sleep.

I’m on your side, Gary. I’m pulling for you. You created an awesome tome defending low carb for nerds like me.

Now set the information free and give us a book for the non-nerds.

Cognitive Biases – A Visual Study Guide

I wish that losing weight was just about what you eat.

It isn’t.

It is also about what you think.

When you cave and give in to temptation, it was some thought that allowed you to do this, that bargained for that piece of cake, that told you it would be OK.

But it wasn’t.

My own problem is ‘bargaining’. My mind tells me things like this:

“You’ve been very good – now you should reward yourself.”

“You can cheat now and then and not gain weight – why not build this in to your diet?”

“It’s a special occasion – enjoy.”

“Life is too short NOT to have a RingDing now and then.”

When I’m tired or stressed these thoughts can catch me with my guard down – and afterword I say to myself: what was I thinking?!?

Understanding how we trick ourselves can go a long way to prevent these lapses, and the above presentation is an encyclopedia of how we trick ourselves – and is a great introduction to the weight-loss mind game.

If you are the type of person who thinks: ‘It’s my thought, so it must be correct”, read this and see just how many ways our minds can lead us astray.