My Unremarkable Brain

“People don’t get fat from overeating.”  This bold statement by Robert Cywes, MD, PhD snaps me out of the lull of my morning commute.  “People get fat,” he goes on to say, “because they are addicted to a drug called carbohydrates.”   In the course of  three episodes of the Diet & Health Today podcast , author and researcher Zoë Harcombe, Ph.D., interviews Cywes on his great success in getting patients thin and healthy.   Cywes is a bariatric surgeon, so for his patients, losing weight is the easy part.  Bariatric surgery has a very high success rate in the short term.  The problem is, the long-term results are  not so hot .  Many people regain the weight after a few years, as they slip right back into old habits.  Cywes’s solution: follow up the surgery with ongoing support in what he calls “AA for fat people.”  (As a former obese person himself, he feels comfortable using the very un-PC term “fat person.”) ...

Now that ketogenic diets have become “#keto,” the biggest diet trend of the year, I want to look a little more closely at this thing that has people all atwitter. As I mentioned  in an earlier post , a ketogenic diet is one that generates ketones; that is, the body burns fat and produces these chemicals as a  by-product.   Doctors are exploring ketogenic diets to treat epilepsy and other brain disorders  because those ketones are terrific fuel for the brain, and do a great job at providing the brain steady, lasting energy. Other folks use ketogenic diets as a weight-loss strategy.  This is where all the commodification and fad-ification and hashtag-ification has come in.  Instagram photos of suddenly skinny people with piles of bacon.  Keto bars, shakes, powders and potions.  But looking past all that: does it work? Here’s the thing: there are two types of fat. (Actually, there are lots of different types, including  some tha...

A friend of mine recently joined Weight Watchers and lost 4 pounds in the first week.  Daaaaang! I thought.  Maybe I should…. But no.  Nope, nope, no. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing since I started this journey, jumping from raft to raft, trying to find the one that would effortlessly take me upstream, to the magical land of milk and honey (or of bacon and weenies, as the case may be).   I’ve committed to a year of low-carb, high-fat, and I’m stickin’ to it.  (Aren’t I?) I’ve goofed on Weight Watchers in the past , but for some people, it seems to work, so they’ve gotta be doing something right.  Yesterday when I was listening to my first audiobook of the year, James Clear’s Atomic Habits , I realized what that was.   If you haven’t read him, Clear has some really interesting insights on the power of habits.  I first discovered him when my friend Ed shared a few quotes, like “Every action you take is a vote for...

Last week , I talked about the worst diet of 2018 (which happens to be the one that I’m currently on).  This week, I thought I’d go back to the US News list and take a look at their  #1 diet of the year , the Mediterranean Diet.    If you’ve read anything about health and diet over the past ten years, you've probably heard of the Mediterranean Diet.  Though the definition is a bit of a moving target , it’s described in the article as “eating fruits, veggies, whole grains, beans, nuts, legumes, olive oil, and flavorful herbs and spices; fish and seafood at least a couple of times a week; and poultry, eggs, cheese and yogurt in moderation, while saving sweets and red meat for special occasions.” Nothing shocking here.  What’s more interesting is the history of the Mediterranean Diet.  For that, I turn once again to the amazing Nina Teicholz and her mind-blowing book The Big Fat Surprise , which devotes an entire chapter to the Diet (50 pag...