Diet & Exercise

I have battled with obesity since I was a little kid and so I’ve read a lot of books and magazine articles over the years about the subject of how to lose weight. Few subjects in our society are more clouded with complete bullshit than this one. One day, a few years ago, I discovered the truth on this subject. I discovered everything I will ever need to know. I knew it was the truth because it was an insight that fit with all of the knowledge I had gathered over many years of reading and it would have predicted all the things I knew to be true if I had started with that insight and nothing else. I felt like an early astronomer who had studied the heavens for years and then one day got turned on to Copernicus and Calculus and found out that suddenly I can predict where everything in the sky is going to be at any time with exact precision.

So now I am going to share this insight with you, dear reader. Why? Because I care. That is why. I want you to live as long as possible and to be as healthy as possible. So here it is:

How can I lose weight? There is one and only one way to lose weight. That is to consume less calories than you burn. Period. End of story. The biggest crock that I consistently hear is that you can do something to increase your metabolism so that it burns more calories while you sleep or some variation. If I know your age, sex, weight and what you are doing, I can calculate how many calories you are burning and it will be spot on. Why? Because you are a human being and we are all alike in this way. Everything that contradicts this is bullshit.

So once you know all this, how do you apply it? Well, you can count every calorie you put in your mouth, thereby making absolutely sure that you will achieve your weight loss goal (Weight Watchers). Or, you can pay someone else to count the calories for you (Jenny Craig). Or, you can change your diet to be closer to what it naturally should be and watch your appetite disappear (Atkins).

So what do I mean by what our diet naturally should be? Well, you and I are animals. We are leaves on the evolutionary tree just like every other animal on this planet. And just like every other animal on this planet, the best diet for us to eat is the one that is closest to the diet in our natural habitat. The same is true for exercise.

In the wild, animals have a natural system that regulates their appetites so they don’t get fat. Even in places where there is an imbalance and perhaps an over-abundant food supply, you don’t see a bunch of fat wolves. Wild animals don’t eat more than they need to stay healthy. However, this self-regulating system evolved around an animal’s specific diet. Start feeding wolves foods that are alien to their diet, like perhaps Snickers bars, and I bet you could make some fat wolves.

That is why our society is so fat and so sick. We are eating lots of sugar and starch and trans-fats (Crisco) that are alien to our natural diet. It would be like pouring butter and candle wax and WD-40 into your gas tank periodically. They all burn, so what is the problem? A whole lot of people’s lives are cut short as a result.

If you want to find out what our natural diet is like, I suggest you go to some really remote area like Alaska (I recommend August) and don’t bring any food with you. You will soon be eating the same diet that the bears eat, mostly wild game and berries. And you will be getting a hell of a lot of exercise chasing your wild game and running away from bears. You will be getting as much exercise as a marathon runner, and you’ll have to eat about 10,000 calories a day not to starve.

That is it. That is the major insight that will allow you to cut through all the bullshit about diet and exercise. You don’t need to know anything else. From this kernel of knowledge, you can deduce the answer to every question in nutritional science.

For example: Why are some ethnic groups more prone to circulatory or digestive diseases than others? Usually this is correlated to how many generations in their family tree have been exposed to all of these alien foods. White Europeans, Orientals, and middle-easterners have been farming for thousands of years; African and Native Americans, perhaps less than two-hundred years. So for some groups, the alien foods that make up the American diet are a lot more alien than for others. For example, yesterday I read that 70% of the women in the Pima Indian tribe will get gallbladder disease by the time they are 30 years old. That is stunning.

In conclusion: If you don’t want to count calories, and for optimum health, eat lean meats, green vegetables, berries (remember tomatoes are berries), fruits, and occasionally nuts, and avoid sugar, grains, legumes, processed dairy, Crisco, and excessive salt. And you can’t possibly get too much exercise. And anything you hear or read that disputes these recommendations is bullshit.