I shall be an experiment.
I got some spam the other day. Not the icky kind you don't ask for, but spam I kind of opted in for when I subscribed to a health mag. The publishing company put me on its e-mail list, and I haven't yet bothered to get out of it yet, because I think maybe it might send me some useful tips.
So this spam was for a book called "Flip The Switch" by Robert K. Cooper, PhD.
Fuel your metabolism and burn fat 24 hours a day. Use your "metabolism thermostat" or what Cooper cutely calls your "Meta-Stat" (insert your own tm thingie here).
Yeah. Whatever.
I was bored, so I researched the guy's name, and found out he's got a BS in health, and a PhD in neuroscience, has written a coupla feel-good books for corporate types and has an incredibly healthy looking bod.
I googled some more, found a copy of the book for $10 and bought it.
Because I love you all.
I want to be the experiment. I want to fuel my meta-whatsit and see if I can do what this guy claims.
I gotta say, I distrusted the ad and after reading the prologue, I distrust any PhD that peppers his prose with exclamation points, you betcha.
But I'll see if it makes sense, bounce his stuff off of other resources, try it and let you know if my meta thingie is flipped.
Wish me luck.
Luck!
I tend to believe that anything other than counting calories is complete BS, but good luck anyway!
A number of years ago, a fellow wrote a book about investing -- I think it was Malkiel's "A Random Walk Down Wall Street", but I'm not sure -- who followed a large group of investors of different philosophies. What he found was that *all* of them did well *as long as they stuck to their philosophy (with the obligatory exceptions of patently stupid practices, but those are easy to spot).* The ones that lost money were the ones that switched around and panicked when things were not going well in the short term.
It turns out that the same thing is true of diets. Of course there are some diets that are downright dangerous, but most are not, at least in the intermediate term. (Truby H. Randomised controlled trial of four commercial weight loss programmes in the UK: initial findings from the BBC "diet trials" BMJ. 2006 May 23; [Epub ahead of print] and Dansinger ML Comparison of the Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and Zone diets for weight loss and heart disease risk reduction: a randomized trial.JAMA. 2005 Jan 5;293(1):43-53).
It almost doesn't matter what program one uses as long as one does it consistently. The trick is finding one that fit's your tastes and lifestyle. When I first moved to Georgia, my wife and I joined Weight Watchers with great success. Unfortunately, Weight Watchers is very difficult to maintain on the road, and I travel at least one week a month. Those weeks where I travel, my weight goes up.
It almost doesn't matter what program one uses as long as one does it consistently
Absotively.
I successfully used Weight Watchers©. Even when travelling, I was able to keep on the plan in part because I used the on-linen version and am rarely away from an Internet connection, but I also carried a Points© calculator on my Palm©, and had a food database on the Palm so I could look up calories, fat, etc. Also I followed the rules of thumb concerning portion sizes for meats, knew enough to ask for fat-free or low-fat substitutes, etc. I wrote things down on a scrap of paper if I didn't have my Palm or computer to record it all on.
This ... thingie ... that I'm trying now isn't to lose weight, though. Not for me, at least. It's to burn the fat I still have clinging to my hips and thighs in more quantities than I want. It's also to see if I can do these seemingly simple things and NOT have to keep track as obsessively as I do now.
And maybe those of my friends who are struggling to find something they can work regularly -- the ones who try WW or try Atkins or try this, or try that, and then can't stick to it -- maybe this one will be the one that works for them.
We. Shall. See.
I listened to the taunts of "fatty-fatty two by four can't get through the kitchen door" when I was young. Lard ass and breasts J-Lo would suck me for.
Nothing really worked and then I metabolized and grew taller and so became what the singles adds lovingly call 'height/weight proportionate'.
But there was that frightened fat little pudgewinkle still looking out through the tall lanky kid's eyes.
"Can't have that, it'll make you fat."
Pshaw. A truck load of grain woudn't have made me fat. But it nagged.
What am I alluding to?
Diets don't work.
That's the actual title to a book by some guy named Bob Schwartz.
After you lose the weight, pumpkin, look at the causes. And be free once and for all.
You know I love freedom. For me and for everyone else.
Okay,
Father Luke