dieting

Fit for Life was one of my first diets, too; I was probably 14.

I was raised vegetarian and so was vegetarian at the time, and I don’t lose weight easily so was restricting calories as well as following FFL. I believe the writers of the book were also vegetarian and made some minor encouragements in that direction.

I remember reading it one hungry day – I did most of my reading of diet books to remind me why I was staying hungry – and there was something about how “people aren’t really meat eaters: you don’t see a squirrel in a park and want to kill it and eat it.”

And I thought, oh, man, squirrel. I bet that would be delicious. If squirrel were a diet food and I’d feel less starving, I’d be out there with a trap.

That bugged me for a long time; it was the pinnacle of thin diet book writers with sufficient calories to their needs making pronouncements in cultural privilege.

An awesome comment on The Fat Nutritionist, which like Matt Stone's is a blog I enjoy reading despite the fact I don't agree with everything they say. But really they are a reaction to the fat-restriction "healthy" vegetarian and vegan deprivation diets that are so common these days. Such diets are heavy on emotional pronouncements and light on actual science.

Sure, some people lose weight on them. So? Losing weight should be a side effect rather than a goal. Do you want to eat up like Gwynyth Paltrow with her red-meat free healthy macrobiotic eating? It's so healthy that she is heading for osteoporosis.

I also totally agree that Fit For Life and other diet books that market vegetarian asceticism are examples of cultural privilege. My relatives have eaten delicious nutritious squirrels, turtles, and raccoons for hundreds of years.

I personally suspect whole grain-based diets work for weight loss sometimes because they are so hard to digest. When I was a whole-grain eating vegetarian it seemed like most of the grains I ate passed right though me without actually being digested....good for losing weight, but also a perfect path to malnutrition.

Matt Stone and Michelle are right- eat food, lots of it, don't leave yourself hungry. But I'd add that you should avoid foods that make you feel sick. Maybe there is someone out there who feels like a million dollars after eating cupcakes and pizza, but I'm certainly not that person.

Principle: you should NEVER be hungry. NEVER. If you are fasting and feeling hungry, stop fasting until your body is ready for it. And eat some damn bacon while your at it!