THE TEN MOST INFURIATING CLICHÉS ABOUT DIETING

Who doesn't love a good list?  Thanks mostly to David Letterman's "Top Ten," the list is fast replacing the expository essay as the literary form of choice for periodicals.  Everyone benefits.  The reader is spared long-winded explanations, grandstanding commentary, and pointless flourishes of style.  The writer doesn't spend untold hours worrying about structure, progression, or transition.  A short intro, ten zingers - badda bing, badda boom - you're done.

So I couldn't have been more delighted to find "Ten Secrets of the Effortlessly Thin" on the MSN Health & Fitness website.[i]  For contained in this one list of supposedly helpful hints are the most irritating and noxious platitudes ever uttered or written about dieting.  Even the use of "effortlessly" in the title is an affront to anyone who has struggled with weight loss.  If it's really effortless for you, you should thank God every day and keep your precious suggestions to yourself.  But since you feel that our lives would be so vastly improved by your keen insights, let's tackle them one by one.

They don't diet.  Well, "they" don't need to diet because they're already thin.  The explanation for this banality emphasizes the despicable, "permanent lifestyle change," i.e., eat better regularly and make more sensible food choices.  Yeah, and you'll live a lot longer if you don't get hit by a bus.

THEY KEEP TRACK OF THEIR WEIGHT.  That's because the scale is their friend, not an instrument of abject terror.  It gives them positive reinforcement.  It gives us nightmares.

THEY EXERCISE REGULARLY.  They don't look like the Hindenburg in sweatpants.

THEY DON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS WITH FOOD.  They don't have problems with food.  In fact, the effortlessly thin have fewer problems in general.  Since "the food won't fix what's bothering you," they suggest "going for a walk, watching a movie,...or taking a bubble bath."  I can't speak for everyone, but when I'm ravenously hungry, food works a lot better than lukewarm suds.

THEY STOP EATING WHEN THEY'RE FULL. They're full when they've consumed enough to satisfy their biological hunger.  I'm full when it would take an air compressor to drive so much as a single Cheerio into my body, and my pants are so tight I sound like Al Green on helium.

They don't surround themselves with temptation.  They're so pure that nothing tempts them.  For the rest of us, seeing a Snickers wrapper in the gutter is enough to trigger a binge.

THEY ALLOW THEMSELVES TREATS.  "A small but really delicious chocolate bar" may "put the craving to rest" for the saintly slender, but it incites me to clear out the snack inventory of Seven-Eleven.

THEY EAT BREAKFAST.  Not Denny's Lumberjack Slam.

THEY MOVE, STAND, AND FIDGET MORE.  If nervous energy provides such a great weight loss benefit, how do they explain the late Rodney Dangerfield?

THEY DON'T SKIP MEALS.  "Thin people keep their gas tanks [i.e., their stomachs] between one-quarter and three-quarters full all the time."  How thoughtful of them to clarify the gas tank-stomach conundrum; I was halfway out the door to fuel up the car.  But keeping with the metaphor, it takes a lot more gas to fill up my Lincoln Navigator than their MINI Cooper.

Please, just go back to living your naturally skinny lives in silence and leave us to our efforts in peace.

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[i] http://health.msn.com/weight-loss/slideshow.aspx?cp-documentid=100218116

VIDEO ERGO DEVORO (I WATCH, THEREFORE I EAT)

The recent return of NBC's The Biggest Loser has generated some interesting criticism.  Amanda Vogel, a certified fitness professional, has provided a thorough analysis of the show's training methods on the IDEA Health & Fitness Association website.1  Among the concerns of her sources:

“There seems to be no rationale for exercise program design. Clients are pushed to their limits, which places them at risk of injury and overtraining."

“Making a person feel badly about his or her effort, mental/emotional status or progress is not a strong motivator..."

“I believe [the show] sets unrealistic expectations for many people who have a large amount of weight to lose.”

However valid these complaints might be, they ignore one crucial but obvious detail; it's a TV show.  The categorizing of such shows as "reality programming" only confuses the issue.  Jean Shepherd, the late humorist, broadcaster, and social critic, had the most profound answer for those who complained that television didn't reflect reality.  He simply pointed out that it isn't reality, it's television.

Look no further than the show's use of the "cliffhanger" scale.  When you step on your bathroom scale in the morning, does the indicator swing wildly for twenty seconds while dramatic music plays?  I didn't think so.

The fact that weight loss is a serious concern for so many people only adds to the confusion.  I don't imagine viewers of The Bachelor really feel that withholding a rose is the proper way to dump a potential mate or consider the bungee jumping on The Great Race a normal component of foreign travel.  These shows are clearly contrived competitions manipulated for maximum thrills and with no long-range consequences for the contestants beyond winning a prize.  But the very real health risks of the contenders on The Biggest Loser resonate with viewers who then look to the show for personal guidance.  Caveat emptor.

And while you debate the merits of dieting as seen on TV, it's also wise to remember that watching TV itself can be major factor in needing a diet in the first place.

This issue is far more complex than mere couch potato syndrome.  In my case, the conjunction of food and television has not only affected my girth, it has influenced my personality, my cultural tastes, and my choice of profession.  It also explains why I whistle "Howdy Doody Time" when I'm hungry.

There is a strong elemental synergy between the tube and the fridge.  For one thing, they are both purveyors of the limited yet precious freedom afforded modern man.  Your TV may provide you with five hundred channels of absolute swill, but at least you control which swill to watch.  And during commercial breaks, you can run to the fridge and choose which swill to swill.  There's more personal autonomy for the average American in an hour of TV viewing than exists for the entire population of Albania in a year.

My own blurring of show business with chow business began in infancy.  When restless at night, I would be rocked and fed, but not to some old-world lullaby.  No, I was soothed by the gentle sounds of Jerry Lester and Morey Amsterdam on Broadway Open House.  The bottle-and-Borsht Belt combo was my first TV dinner.

During my grade school years, my bond with television and Twinkies grew stronger.  This came about as a byproduct of my early bedtime.  I knew that while I languished in bed, something was going on that was exciting, something denied to me by rigid and autocratic adults.  Through the bedroom door, I could hear the muffled sound of the TV along with my parent's laughter, and I seethed with revolutionary fervor.

My parent's absorption in their program allowed me to sneak downstairs and stock up on goodies.  Since I was a chubby kid, they severely restricted my intake of snacks but inexplicably, kept the house loaded with them.  I'd creep back to my room with enough provisions to last the siege of Leningrad, and except for an occasional telltale crumb, they were none the wiser.  Not much of a rebellion to be sure, but I was ten, and Holyoke wasn't Havana.

Eventually, unable to monitor my hours due to their own fatigue, my folks sensed defeat and eased the restrictions.  During school nights, I could only stay up until 9:30, but on weekends, I had carte blanche.  With this last concession, they opened up Pandora's (and Admiral's) 21" black-and-white box, and out blew the strange cultural winds that shaped my character.

Unencumbered by parental oversight, I watched TV until comatose, and consumed mountains of junk food with impunity.  The link was forever forged.   Happiness is a warm puppy, said Charles Schultz, but for me, you couldn't beat Steve Allen and Cheez Doodles.

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1 http://www.ideafit.com/fitness-library/weighing-in-on-the-biggest-loser

BRUSHES WITH FAME: I BUMMED A CIGARETTE FROM A NOBEL LAUREATE

I've been fortunate in my life to have had several encounters with the rich, famous, and infamous.  I've eaten Chinese food with Joseph Heller, bumped into Abe Vigoda on 3rd Avenue, and was running camera on a late-night Boston TV show when the late Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics pulled her top down on air.  None of these, however, has had the lasting impact of my encounters with Professor Allan Cormack.

I was a student at Tufts University School of Engineering in the late sixties, and I use the term "student" in the loosest way possible.  I was convinced that my youthful fascination with tinkering and taking objects apart made me well-suited for the program.  Given my inability to ever reassemble said objects, this was perhaps a bit presumptuous.  The curriculum for all freshman engineering students included an introductory physics course in Newtonian mechanics which was taught by Dr. Cormack in the fall of 1967.

Almost immediately, I ran into problems - linguistic, ophthalmic, and sociological - none of which were the fault of the professor.  I was assigned to a lab group where the instructor had an accent so thick and indecipherable, he might as well have been speaking Romulan.  Maybe he was.  All I know is that it took most of the first session to figure out that an "offapackle" was an alpha particle, and by then, I had already bungled the experiment.

In those halcyon pre-Hewlett-Packard days, all experimental data and statistical evaluation was calculated using a slide rule, an ingenious but complicated device as common today as a chariot on the interstate.  For those of you too young to remember, it was an adjustable ruler with multiple scales and a cursor that you manipulated to perform various math functions.  Given the infinitesimal size of the scale markings and my abysmal eyesight, it was as useful to me for computation as a chainsaw for embroidery.

In spite of my empirical ineptitude, I enjoyed the lectures and had a good grasp of the theory, until the moment a girl with great legs and a penchant for short skirts started sitting next to me.  I spent the rest of the semester in a R-rated reverie while the voice of one of the century's great minds drifted like faint Muzak in the background.  Before Tufts, I had attended an all-male boarding school, and my social graces weren't fit for a Tijuana Bordello.

After three torturous semesters, it was obvious that I wasn't cut out for engineering, but in my clueless egomania, I blamed the subject.  The problem was that I was clearly too abstract a thinker for such a practical field.   Despite mediocre grades, I decided to become a theoretical physicist.  I met with Dr. Cormack who was the department chairman, and switched my major.  In retrospect, that was the task I really excelled at.

I don't remember much from that first meeting, except that he was a kind, down-to-earth man who didn't laugh in my face outright as he might have considering my qualifications.  We talked about the curriculum, and he suggested I enroll in his course on advanced electricity and magnetism for the next semester.  It was at this point that my tobacco jones got the best of me.  I asked for one of his cigarettes which he graciously provided and lit.  For anyone correlating Nobel laureates with their preferred cigarette brands, Dr. Cormack smoked Parliaments.

Advanced E and M turned out to be the most difficult course of my academic career.  It was only through his superhuman patience that I wasn't KO'ed by Maxwell's equations, and could get up off the canvas to earn a respectable B.  But I had stretched my science brain as far as it would go, and I knew I would never make it to my degree that way.  I swallowed my pride and told him I was switching my major to English.  As before, he was understanding and non-judgmental, and he wished me well.  He also let me bum another smoke.

Dr. Allan Cormack was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1979 for the theoretical work behind CT scanning.  He died in 1998.  It was my honor and privilege to know him.

THE UNBALANCED DIET

The principle of moderation has been espoused by nearly every religion and philosophy, but it's most often associated with the ancient Greeks.  The temple at Delphi was adorned with the inscription, "Nothing in Excess," and I doubt many people would disagree with that sentiment today.  It makes sense, right?  Yet in the convoluted world of food and dieting, this simple concept has been overshadowed by theories of fanatical abstinence as well as their polar opposite, the embrace of gross indulgence.

On the "less is more" side is the CRON or Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition diet.  Based on scientific studies, this theory holds that a reduction of caloric intake by as much as 30% from the average western diet can lead to longer life and minimize the effects of aging.  According to various CRON websites, the studies that support this contention were carried out on monkeys, cows, rats, mice, fish, worms, and various insects.  One website (www.cron-web.org/) provides a colorful chart that lists the extended lifespan of various species on restricted intake.  White rats top the list with up to 14 months extra life, guppies get an additional 13 months, bowl and doily spiders pick up 49 days, and protozoa, 12 days.

This is wonderful news for anyone who has ever felt the pain of reduced rat longevity or lamented how badly bowl and doily spiders were aging.  Another article1 gushes about test results showing that mice "retain a youthful appearance much longer."  I'm sure this is a great comfort to my wife whose blood-curdling screams last winter might have been mitigated if only our rodent intruder had looked more youthful.  And remember, all you kids out there:  Withholding a few extra grains from the top of the fish tank might keep your beloved pets a few precious days further from their Viking funeral in the family commode.

Most importantly, we all laud the tremendous strides made in solving the protozoan obesity crisis.  What exactly scientists withheld to keep them svelte remains a mystery.

So much for creatures small and microscopic, what about humans?  The optimal.org website lists the following potential drawbacks to CRON:

- Feeling cold

- Having difficulty sitting comfortably

- Reduced libido

- Hating it

So not only does this diet severely restrict the amount and type of food you can eat, it also makes you cold, uncomfortable, sexless, and angry.  You've got to wonder why it isn't more popular.

On the "more is more" side, one need only consider the oft-reported expansion of the national waistline to realize that the world's largest consumer society is largely consuming too much.  Clues to the blubbering of America are not hard to find.

7-Eleven has done its part with its "Gulp" line of soft drinks.  These are fountain drinks served in cups with straws, not bottles meant for storage and consumption over time.  The Big Gulp holds a mere quart, the Super Big Gulp, 44 oz., and the Double Gulp, a full half-gallon.  A Double Gulp of Coca Cola has 744 calories and 186 grams of sugar - enough, I imagine, to bring on diabetes in a blue whale.  It's only a matter of time before 7-Eleven markets the Super Double Big Gulp, 44 gallons of your favorite soda served in a standard oil barrel.  It'll come with a straw, but you'll have to bring your own forklift.

McDonald's is also in an inflationary mood, moving beyond the Quarter Pounder to the new Angus Third Pounder.  I'm guessing we're about two years away from the Five Pounder which will be packaged in a disposable bowling bag.

Not only are we not ashamed of this excess, we exalt it.  Eating competitions, such as Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, continue to proliferate and attract media attention.  There is even a governing body for the "sport," the IFOCE (International Federation of Competitive Eating) which supervises and regulates contests, and also awards the coveted Mustard Yellow Belt to the Nathan's winner.  I can think of nothing that would make a parent more proud.

The apotheosis of this trend is the Travel Channel's remarkable show, Man v. Food.  A burly New York food maven, Adam Richman, travels the country and takes on insane eating challenges, including a twelve egg omelet, a thirteen pound pizza, and a seventy-two ounce steak.  The show website refers to him as an "ambassador to all things delicious," but this hardly describes his noble stature.  He is a lone warrior in the tradition of the Homeric heroes, knights-errant and samurai, an Achilles for our gluttonous times who battles burritos and chicken wings instead of Trojans.  I love this guy and I love the show, but it may not present the best blueprint for rational diet and nutrition.

Can someone tell me how I get to Delphi?

1www.brighthub.com/health/dietnutrition/articles/23680.aspx#ixzz0PsApxdSz