I probably shouldn’t be laughing about this, but I can’t help myself.  When a group of Weight Watchers members in Sweden got together recently for their regular weigh-in, the floor collapsed.  As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.  Here are some quotes from the online news story:

“We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air,” one of about 20 group members said to the Smalandsposten newspaper. “The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls.”

After the initial collapse on Wednesday evening, the floor started to cave in other parts of the room, and the stench of sewage crept into the clinic, which is in Vaxjo, a city in south central Sweden. The group is looking for an alternate location for future meetings, Weight Watchers consultant Therese Levin told the Swedish paper.

 Since they were able to break the floor badly enough to stir up some sewage, I’m guessing these people were 1) brand-new members of Weight Watchers or 2) long-time members of Weight Watchers.

I’ve known a handful of people who joined Weight Watchers at least once — all women, by the way.  They all lost some weight.  And they all gained it back, usually with a few extra pounds as a going-away present. 

Given what Weight Watchers believes constitutes a good diet, I’m not surprised.  Their entire program is based on the belief that the federal government’s nutrition guidelines are actually based on something resembling science.  So Weight Watchers preaches the same guidelines:  fat is bad, a bit of protein is okay, and carbohydrates are wonderful.

I never joined Weight Watchers, but before I knew better, I did try living on their low-fat Smart Ones meals (along with Lean Cuisines and other diet meals I could nuke.)  By the end of the day, I’d be famished.  Eventually I’d give up and then, like most dieters, blame myself for not having any discipline.  Now I understand the problem wasn’t a lack of discipline; it was a lack of good nutrition.

To illustrate the problem, I went to the Weight Watchers site and put together a sample diet for one day.  Since I’m a male, I allowed myself about 1700 calories.  Figuring three meals and couple of side dishes, I chose a breakfast sandwich, angel hair pasta with marinara, chicken enchiladas, chicken on grilled flatbread, mac and cheese, and rice and beans.  That’s a pretty fair sample of the kind of meals I chose back in the day.  Here’s how they add up:

Total Calories: 1673
Fat: 37 grams
Protein: 77 grams
Carbs: 258 grams

As a percent of total calories, it works out to 20% fat, 18% protein, and 62% carbohydrates — just what the FDA prescribes.  It’s also a prescription for hunger.

If you’re a regular reader or have seen Fat Head, you already know that fat is the most satiating macronutrient …  in addition to being cricual for mood, hormone formation, vitamin absorption, etc.  I won’t go into the many wonders of fat here, except to say that this diet contains far too little of it.  That’s one reason I was so hungry.

The diet is also too low in protein.  The FDA would approve, but not the people who actually know what they’re talking about, like Drs. Mike and Mary Dan Eades.  According to their calculations, I need more like 120 grams of protein per day.  Eating too little protein produces exactly the kind of physical effects dieters don’t want.

For one, it’ll make you hungry — never mind the calories.  Research shows that primates eat until they satisfy their protein requirements.  If the food is low in protein, they’ll eat more of it.  Here are some quotes from an article on the subject:

Nutritional ecologist Professor David Raubenheimer’s just-published collaborative study with international colleagues found the Bolivian rainforest spider monkey regulates protein intake by eating greater quantities of low protein/high carbohydrate foods when protein-rich foods are not available.

“This is interesting because our experiments show that humans do the same,” says Professor Raubenheimer from the University’s Institute of Natural Sciences at Albany. The consequence is the current obesity epidemic.

Professor Raubenheimer has been involved in a range of similar studies on other primates, as well as human subjects in Australia, the Philippines and Jamaica, to observe how the protein content of their diets influences energy intake.

The findings, published in the latest issue of the journal Behavioural Ecology, reinforce the theory that humans and other primates are physiologically predisposed to maintain a constant level of protein in their diets. But when the range of foods available to them is low in protein (yet high in fats and carbohydrates) they are compelled to eat greater quantities in order to maintain correct protein levels.

Trust me, I definitely felt compelled to eat greater quantities.  I just didn’t allow myself to, at least until I couldn’t stand it anymore. 

The other problem with eating too little protein is muscle loss.  I’ve heard some researchers claim people lose the same amount of weight on almost any diet if the calories are controlled — that hasn’t been my experience, but let’s suppose it’s true.  So what?  The point of dieting isn’t really to lose weight, it’s to lose fat.  Digesting your own muscles is a lousy idea.  In Protein Power, Drs. Eades & Eades wrote:

On typical low-calorie, high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets, protein intake is often marginal, and as a result as much as 50 percent of weight loss can be muscle weight.  Each pound of active muscle mass lost reduces your rate of metabolism.

Now, a pound of muscle loss isn’t going to dramatically affect your metabolism, but I don’t think most people – especially men — go on a diet hoping to shed a few pounds off their biceps and pecs.  Muscle makes a body look good, whether the body is male or female.

The biggest problem with the diet is, of course, the 62% carbohydrates.  If you’re insulin resistant — and most fat people these days are — all those carbs are going to drive up your insulin and tell your body to store a disproportionate share of the 1673 calories as fat.  Then you’ll starve at the cellular level and really feel hungry.  Keep it up, and you’ll probably make your insulin resistance worse.

And as I learned from an excellent article by Dr. Doug McGuff, insulin resistance can also shrink your muscles.  Dr. McGuff wondered why so many fat people have weak muscles — they are, after all, hauling a lot of weight around.  That ought to make them stronger, but usually doesn’t.  Here’s an edited version of what he figured out (the full article is worth the read):

The key to the paradox of the obese-yet weak client was insulin sensitivity. The modern Western diet is very high in refined carbohydrates when compared to the diet in our evolutionary past. In the face of very high carbohydrate intake, one’s glycogen stores will become completely full. Once the glycogen stores are completely full, glucose will begin to stack up in the blood stream. The evolutionary-based response is to increase insulin to drive more glycogen storage. However, pushing more glucose into a cell whose glycogen stores are full can be very damaging.

In the chronically overfed state, the body protects itself by decreasing the sensitivity of insulin receptors on the muscle cells and preserving (actually increasing) insulin sensitivity on the fat cells. By this mechanism blood sugar can be held in check without making the interior of the cells a syrupy mess, and energy is stored for future starvation (which never comes). The problem is, insulin not only controls glucose homeostasis, it is a major hormone for nutrient storage and all of the anabolic processes of the body. In the state we describe above, a vicious form of nutrient partitioning begins to occur. Nutrients used for growth and differentiation are shunted away from the muscle and the liver and are diverted to body fat. The muscles become smaller and weaker and the liver becomes infiltrated with fat as it desperately tries to produce VLDL.

Not a pretty picture, is it?  I know, because by the time I was 14, I was a fat kid with skinny muscles.  I finally started reshaping my body a bit when my older brother bought some barbells and more or less insisted we work out together.  Our high-school health teacher also us to cut back on sugar, potatoes and bread if we wanted to lose weight, so I did.  Then the low-fat diet craze hit, and I got stupid all over again.

Now I’m at least smart enough to know that Smart Ones aren’t going to help most people lose weight and keep it off, and neither will Weight Watchers.  They claim a success rate of nearly 50%, based on a study they funded.  But it’s interesting how they came up with that figure. 

First off, the study only included people who were already lifetime members.  To become a lifetime member, you have to reach your goal weight and stay there for six weeks.  That means all the people who yelled “I’m starving!” and quit after a month or so were excluded …  as were all the people who stuck it out but didn’t reach their goal weight.

After five years, most of the lifetime members included in the study had regained at least half of what they lost —  but Weight Watchers defined “success” as weighing 5% less than when they first joined.  So if you started at 200 pounds, reached your goal weight of 170, and went back up to 190, you were counted as successful.  Wow.  Sounds like “budget-cutting” in Washington.

A blogger analyzed the study, crunched his own numbers based on Weight Watchers’ enrollment figures, and calculated something closer to 6% of all members ever reaching their goal weight and staying there for six weeks … and when he crunched them again, counting only people who stayed at their goal weight for five years, he calculated a success rate of about two in a thousand.

I’d say the best thing Weight Watchers could do is reinforce their floors.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, nutrition labels were pretty much non-existent. People who wanted to lose weight usually just put a little less food on their plates and cut out the obvious offenders, like desserts and potatoes. If you actually wanted to know exactly how many calories were in your food, you had to go buy a book.  Almost nobody did … but amazingly, there were fewer fat people.

Now nutrition labels are everywhere, but there are more fat people. I’m surprised the proponents of the Lipid Hypothesis didn’t leap to the obvious conclusion: nutrition labels must make people gain weight … I mean, just look at the correlation.

You’d think this little bit of history would convince the high priests of the Holy Church of Accepted Advice For Living A Long And Healthy Life that accurate calorie-counts aren’t the key to losing weight. And of course, you’d be wrong. They’re still convinced it’s all about counting calories. Take a look at this video:

Ohmigosh, the calorie counts on restaurant meals and pre-packaged meals are off by an average of 18 percent! Horrors! No wonder we’re all waddling around these days. This study naturally received a lot of media attention; evil restaurants making us fat and all that. Here’s my favorite headline, from this online article about the study:

Study: Restaurants Lie About Calorie Count

Ah, I see:  they’re lying to us!  That’s quite an interesting slant, especially since the article itself included this paragraph:

The researchers and other experts aren’t accusing restaurants and food companies of trying to deceive customers. They said most of the discrepancies can be explained by variations in ingredients, portion sizes and testing methods. For example, the teenager behind the counter might have put too much mayonnaise on one sandwich.

I guess journalism school ain’t what it used to be. But if I get started on media bias, I’ll be writing for days, so back to the “experts” in the video …

They’re convinced the inaccurate calorie counts are making us fat. The co-author of Eat This, Not That — one of the many worthless diet books out there — even warns us that being off by 18% could result in gaining 30 to 40 pounds per year.

Wow! Imagine diligently counting your calories for a full year and ending up 40 pounds heavier. You’d be so shocked by the inexplicable weight gain, it would never even occur to you (after, say, gaining the first 20 pounds) to cancel out that extra 18% by thinking to yourself, “Hmmm, my calorie limit might be a little too high. Maybe I’ll reduce it a bit.”

But even if people were actually that stupid, Mr. Eat This Not That’s calculation is based on these assumptions — not a one of which is true:

• People religiously count calories, and continue counting calories even if they gain 40 pounds in a year.
• People eat nothing but pre-packaged food and restaurant meals and therefore depend on precise calorie counts.
• Our metabolisms never adjust to what we eat, so our daily caloric needs always stay the same.
• Every time we exceed those daily caloric needs by 100 calories, we gain exactly 0.02857 pounds.

In other words, they still believe gaining or losing weight works like a bank account: you have a fixed number of expenses to be paid daily from the account (your basal metabolism), and everything else depends on deposits (eating) and withdrawals (activity). The bank counts every calorie.

So by gosh, if you want to lose 10 pounds this year, just cut 100 calories from your daily intake, and you can start shopping for that smaller dress by Christmas. But if you accidentally deposit an extra 100 calories per day — darn those teenage counter clerks with their extra mayo! — you’ll gain 10 pounds.

The bank-account analogy only works if you add a crazy banker to the equation — so crazy, not even the Federal Reserve would hire him. If he’s decided your account should stay at the same level, he doesn’t really care if you deposit a little more or a little less … he’ll just adjust the expenditures and the interest rates until your account is back to where he likes it.

On the other hand, if you eat foods that jack up your insulin, you send a coded message to the banker telling him to build up your account — like it or not. You may think you’re consuming just enough calories to cover your daily expenses, only to discover that he cut your heating bill and deposited them anyway.

In Good Calories, Bad Calories, Gary Taubes recounted a study in which naturally-lean prisoners were fed an extra 1,000 calories per day for six months. If it’s true that every calorie counts, they should’ve all gained 50 pounds. Not one did. Most only gained a few pounds. Their bodies simply adjusted to the higher intake. As soon as the experiment was over, they returned to their previous weights — and none of them counted calories to do it.

My son’s weight is also remarkably stable.  He’s always the same size, always has the same six-pack abs, year in and year out. He consumes well over a million calories in a year, but doesn’t count any of them. Do these experts really believe he just happens to eat exactly the right number of calories every year — with better than 99% accuracy? That’s ridiculous. His hormones tells him how much to weigh, then adjust his appetite and metabolism to keep him there.

Very few people gain 40 pounds in a year, and trust me, the ones who do aren’t counting calories or anything else.  And since most of us eat a mix of packaged foods, restaurant foods and home-cooked meals, counting our daily calories precisely is nearly impossible. It’s also unnecessary, if we eat the rights foods.

Yesterday morning I had an omelet with sautéed onions, spices, raw-milk cheese and sour cream on top. My wife made it, she didn’t measure anything, and we split it. (In our case, that means I ate about 2/3 of it.) I have no idea what the calorie count was.

It rained all afternoon, so we took the girls to the mall to get them out of the house. We stopped for lunch in the food court, but I didn’t eat. I wasn’t trying to restrict my calories; I just wasn’t hungry, so nothing appealed to me. Later in the evening I had another one of my wife’s concoctions: a mix of spaghetti squash, grass-fed hamburger, onions, alfredo sauce, and a bit of tomato sauce. Delicious.

Once again, I have no idea how many calories I consumed. Nor do I care, because I don’t calories. I eat the foods I know are good for me. I keep my insulin down. When I do that, I don’t have to control my appetite. My appetite takes care of itself.

It’s amazing what you find while unpacking after a cross-country move.  In the boxes that contained the contents of my desk drawers, for example, I found random post-it notes with phone numbers written on them … no names, no idea whose numbers they were.  It’s been years since I staggered home from a bar, so the numbers might have even belonged to people I intended to call.  I was tempted to dial a few of them, but my curiosity was overridden by the potential for embarrassment.

“Hi, this is Tom Naughton.  Was I supposed to call you, say, six years ago?  Oh, the casting workshop!  Right.  No, no, no … I’m sure you would’ve made a fine scene partner.  It’s just … uh … I was so intimidated by your acting talent, I was afraid I’d drag you down.  What?  Well, of course I’m not very convincing!  That’s exactly my point.  Hello?  Hello?”

Among other assorted and mysterious junk, I also found one side of a cardboard package for something called “SmartMeat.”  I vaguely remember buying SmartMeat at the Costco in Burbank, but that was years ago.  For the life of me, I don’t know why I saved part of the package.  We only tried the stuff once and didn’t care for it, which means it’s unlikely I thought to myself, “I must keep this package so I’ll never forget the brand name, even if we someday decide we can’t stand California and move 2,000 miles away.”

And the fact that I tried SmartMeat at all means I still believed it was smart to cut the fat from my diet, so obviously I wasn’t thinking, “Hey … some years from now I might produce a documentary called Fat Head and then start a blog.  I should keep this as a reminder of SmartMeat so I can make fun of it.”

But I did keep it, for whatever reason.  And I’m certainly going to make fun of SmartMeat, and of myself for buying it.  Take a look at the pitch on the package:

Yup … for 30 years, Americans have been hoping for low-fat steaks that taste great.  That’s because for more than 30 years, Americans have been bamboozled into thinking fatty, juicy steaks will kill them.  SmartMeat steaks to the rescue!

But I’m using the word steaks rather loosely here.  SmartMeat looked like a steak, it was shaped like a steak, we grilled it like a steak, and it even tasted a wee bit like a steak.  But as I read the package again today, I realized the manufacturer (and that’s the correct term, as you’ll see shortly) never actually labeled it as a steak.  That’s because SmartMeat is a beef product … probably in the same way Cheez-Wiz is a cheese product.

In fact, as you can see from the label, SmartMeat is a whole new grade of beef.  It was even developed that way, by gosh.  Sadly, it didn’t occur to me during that particular shopping trip that beef should never be developed.  Film should be developed.  Ideas should be developed.  But beef should be raised, preferably as part of a cow.

The whole purpose of all that SmartMeat R&D was apparently to produce these bragging rights:

Okay, so I ate a low-fat steak … I mean, beef product.  No big deal, right?  But there’s a problem with low-fat beef:  take away the fat, and most of the flavor goes with it.  Clearly the SmartMeat people needed to find a way to enhance the taste.  And that’s where the horror show begins:

Now keep in mind, these looked like marbled steaks.  And yet 63 percent of the fat was removed and replaced with “marbling ingredients.”  I’m not sure I even want to know how they did this.  I picture the steaks (soon to be beef products) spending a leisurely afternoon soaking in a vat of chemicals formulated to dissolve away most of the naturally-occurring animal fat, then taking a ride down a conveyer belt so a piece of industrial equipment can inject them with marbling ingredients.  And what lovely ingredients they are.

I can’t figure out why water was listed twice, but at least I understand the word.  I also recognize partially hydrogenated soybean oil.  That’s trans fat … the stuff that knocks down your HDL and weakens the walls of your cells.

(Yes, Mr. Naughton, but the Guy From CSPI assured us trans fats were safe, and surely it’s a small price to pay to avoid all that icky animal fat, don’t you think?)

Hydrolyzed soy protein means the product contains MSG.  The idea is to add some taste, but if you read up on the stuff, it’ll make you lose your appetite … and I found this description on site that’s actually pro-soybean:

The extraction process of hydrolysis involves boiling in a vat of acid (e.g., sulfuric acid) and then neutralizing the solution with a caustic soda.

The resultant sludge is scraped off the top and allowed to dry. In addition to soy protein it contains free-form excitotoxic amino acids (e.g., MSG) and other potentially harmful chemicals including cancer-causing chemicals in many cases. A newer method of hydrolysis involves the use of bacteria by itself or in addition to the chemical processes described above. There is a possibility that genetically-manipulated bacteria may be used.

In almost all cases, hydrolyzed soy protein contains a significant amount of genetically-manipulated soy. The hydrolyzed protein products currently added to foods should be considered a detriment to one’s health.

Yuuuuummy, eh?  I remember how my grandma used to always boil her chickens in sulfuric acid.  Those were some awesome Sunday dinners.

(But monosodium glutamate IS yummy, Mr. Naughton!  Since we felt compelled to remove the icky animal fat from our steaks … excuse me, from our “beef products,” we had to find a substitute.  You wouldn’t want to eat a tasteless st– er, beef product, would you?)

The other ingredients were a mystery to me, so I had to look them up.  Here’s what I found on vegetable mono- and diglycerides:

These not-quite-whole fats are common food additives used to blend ingredients together that don’t naturally blend well, such as oil and water. Think of processed peanut butter like Jif. It contains mono- and diglycerides to give it a creamy consistency, and to prevent the oil from separating and sitting on the top. Just like hydrogenated oils, mono- and diglycerides increase the shelf life of foods, but they are on the Generally Recognized As Safe list according to the FDA.

See, that’s the problem with skinny cows.  You can’t just squirt water into them to make them juicier, because the stuff will separate.  So if you use a chemical process to produce a skinny beef product that needs some artificial marbling, you have to mix up some trans fats and water, then bind them togther with not-quite-whole fats.  Otherwise the water will just squirt out during grilling and douse your charcoals.  But hey, anything approved by the FDA has to be okay.

(Mr. Naughton, you tried one of our st– beef products.  It was juicy, wasn’t it?  Let’s see you try making a juicy product after removing the icky animal fat, SmartGuy!)

Of course, it’s not enough to support the soy industry with hydrogenated soybean oil and hydrolyzed soy protein.  We should also toss in some soy lecithin.  The pro-soy web site had this to say about the stuff:

Soy lecithin (E322) is extracted from soybeans either mechanically or chemically. It’s actually a byproduct of the soybean’s oil. Some people use it as a supplement, because it has a high value of the nutrient choline. Choline is good for heart health and brain development. But that’s not the reason soy lecithin is used as an additive in foods. It possesses emulsification properties. This means it can keep a candy bar “together” by making sure that the cocoa and the cocoa butter don’t separate. It is also used in bakery items to keep the dough from sticking and to improve its ability to rise.

Since soybean are one of the cheapest crops in the US (thanks in part to federal subsidies to growers), it makes sense to use a cheap, natural soy derived emulsifier in food processing.

Cool … the next time someone tells me to keep it together, I’ll roll myself in some soy lecithin.  And I really appreciated the reminder that my tax dollars are making Archer Daniels Midland rich.  I didn’t see anything online to indicate soy lecithin is a toxin and it may even be good, but I generally avoid soy, and I certainly don’t expect to find it in my st–  beef product.

(Trust us, Mr. Naughton, it’s good for your heart!  The soy people wouldn’t lie to us about something that important.)

My favorite ingredient is the sodium benzoate, because of what I found on it.  Apparently, Coca-Cola has promised to remove the stuff from Diet Coke.  Here’s part of that story:

Coca-Cola is phasing out the use of the controversial additive sodium benzoate in Diet Coke on the back of consumer demand for more natural products…. However, the additive removal is only currently planned for products sold in Britain. The Coca-Cola Company could not confirm if any other countries would follow suit.

Sodium benzoate is used as a preservative in drinks, providing safety and stability for the product. It has proved a controversial additive, as recent studies have highlighted health concerns from its use… Last year, research linked the product to cell damage. The study was conducted by professor Peter Piper from Sheffield University, an expert in molecular biology and biotechnology… Benzoate appeared to attack cells’ mitochondria, damaging their ability to prevent oxygen leaks that create free radicals. Yeast cells were used because of their similarity to human ones, but no research on humans has been done.

I’d say research on humans has been done, at least informally.  I’m glad I stopped drinking diet sodas.

(Mr. Naughton, for pete’s sake!  You don’t expect us to sell a beef product that could actually spoil someday, do you?  What if you need to leave town for a couple of months with some SmartMeat sitting in your refrigerator?)

But my favorite nugget about sodium benzoate was this one:

It is also used in fireworks as a fuel in whistle mix, a powder which emits a whistling noise when compressed into a tube and ignited.

And to think I compressed SmartMeat into my own tube.  There was probably some whistling and fireworks afterwards, but I don’t remember.  I just know I feel dumb for ever buying this chemical concoction.  The steaks I buy now have one ingredient:  grass-fed beef.

Now that’s actually smart.

January 1, 1995

It’s a new year, and by the end of it I’m going to have a new and improved body! I’ve decided I’m going to lose 25 pounds this year. That’s only a couple of pounds per month, so it’s not a tall order. I can do this. Just limit myself to maybe 1800 calories and no more than 30 grams of fat. To that end, I went to the store today and stocked up on Lean Cuisine meals. If I only have low-fat meals in the fridge, It’ll be easier to stay disciplined.

January 2, 1995

Okay, I want to know what idiot decided to label Lean Cuisines as “meals.” I ended up eating three of them for dinner. I tried to get by on one, but an hour later I was famished. Maybe these things are made for women … well, really small women. Anyway, I felt okay for awhile after the second one, but an hour later I was starting to get pretty light-headed, so I had a third. I also had a fourth one around midnight, but I’d kind of planned on including a snack in the diet plan, so I guess that’s okay. At least I kept the fat grams down for the day. I’m sure my appetite will adjust if I just grit it out for a couple of days. Glad it’s only the second day of the year.

January 9, 1995

I have GOT to stop being such an undisciplined slob! I forgot it was Mitch’s birthday this week, and course the skinny little bastard insisted we go to La Canasta. Easy for him; the guy eats more than I do and ever gains an ounce. (Plus I swear every time a hair disappears off my head, it ends up on his.) I was going to just order a salad and have maybe three or four chips with salsa, but once I started tasting the chips, you’d think I hadn’t eaten in weeks.

After the waiter brought us another basket of chips, I figured if I’m paying for a birthday dinner, I’m not going to sit there and watch Mitch stuff himself while I chew on lettuce, so I had the full burrito combo platter (only about a million grams of fat!) and a couple of beers. I also had a small jar of peanuts around midnight — yeah, like burritos don’t have enough calories in them. No more. I’m glad it’s still early in the year. If I lose just under three pounds per month, I can still make my goal.

January 20, 1995

I don’t @#$%ing believe this! Lean Cuisines and Budget Gourmets and Weight Watchers meals for a solid week, and I weigh exactly the same! I swear I didn’t go over 1800 calories all week. I’m hungry as hell, I didn’t cheat, and I’ve got exactly nothing to show for it.

Time for a new plan: 1700 calories per day, and longer sessions on the treadmill. Less fat, too. I picked up some Grape Nuts for breakfast. The turkey sausage is lower in fat than the porky stuff, but it’s still a little on the fatty side.

January 22, 1995

Okay, I want to know what idiot decided a “serving” of Grape Nuts is half a cup. Does anyone eat half a cup of this stuff? Two bites and I’m done. I could eat a doggie biscuit and feel more satisfied. I ended up licking the bowl this morning to get the last drops of milk. I don’t really like skim milk, but I sprinkled some Sweet N Low into the cereal, so at least it had a little flavor. Well, just have to stick with it. Like they say, nothing tastes as good as thin feels.

January 31, 1995

Exactly what kind of moron resolves to lose 25 pounds and then eats an entire pizza? And I did such a good job on the diet all day; all I had to do was go to bed without eating again! They had a big bowl of fruit at the commercial shoot, so I just had an apple and a banana for breakfast, with some soy milk in my coffee. A turkey sandwich from the craft services cart for lunch — mustard, no mayo, and I even threw away the cheese. A Healthy Choice Sweet ‘n’ Sour Chicken for dinner. That’s it. I was at maybe 1100 calories for the day, trying to make up for yesterday. Just don’t eat again, and you can call it a successful day.

But then as I was watching Forrest Gump (great flick!) on the VCR, it’s like this little demon appears on my shoulder and says, “Look, it was a long shoot, you were on your feet all day, you deserve a treat, one little pizza isn’t going to kill you.” So I pick up the phone to order a small pizza. Guy from Giordano’s asks what size, and the demon says, “You know, you get a lot more for your money if you order the large, so just eat maybe a third of it and then freeze the rest. You can do it.” Yeah, like hell I can. NO MORE PIZZA! I turn into a total pig when I’m around that stuff.

February 3, 1995

I don’t think the frozen pizzas from the store have as many calories as the ones they make at Giordano’s. The cheese looked a little thin on top so I added some extra slices of mozzarella before baking it, but it still wasn’t exactly thick. Same size around, but it’s the thickness that counts. Anyway, I think I can get away with having one of them on the weekend as long as I tighten up the diet the rest of the week. Tomorrow I’m going to just have a Slim-Fast for breakfast and lunch, maybe a skinless chicken breast for dinner.

February 4, 1995

Okay, I want to know what idiot decided a can of Slim-Fast qualifies as a “meal replacement.” Maybe if you poured it over a big bowl of Cheerios. I swear I was hungrier an hour after drinking the stupid thing than when I woke up. Lucille saw me through the window of the training center around 11:00 and came in to ask if I was okay. She said I looked kind of shaky. I ended up taking an early lunch and had some lo mein from Chan’s in the food court. That was stupid — there’s a ton of grease in their brown sauce.

February 14, 1995

I @#$%ing hate Valentine’s Day. Maybe if I lost a few pounds, I’d feel more like asking someone for a date. Fat and balding — hey, there’s a great combo for you. Maybe I should move in with my parents, too, just go for the whole package. Then I’d be a total chick magnet.

March 1, 1995

Okay, enough already. Two months gone, and I’m up two pounds. I should’ve been down at least five by now. At least it’s looking like a long winter, so I can keep covering up with the big sweaters for awhile. But summer is going to get here, like it or not, so it’s back to the diet and NO MORE CHEATING.

March 7, 1995

Pretty good week. It’s been a hassle getting to the gym, and I don’t like signing up for a treadmill and then waiting around while some goof pretends he didn’t see the “30 Minute Limit” sign, so I bought an electric treadmill! It kind of cramps the apartment, but what the heck, it’s not like I throw a lot of dinner parties in here.

Anyway, instead of sitting on the sofa and watching TV, I’ve been watching while walking, using a pretty steep incline. I also really stuck to the low-fat diet this week and limited my snacks to some microwave popcorn with non-fat butter spray. This is finally working. I feel GREAT.

March 27, 1995

I don’t how in the hell I could be depressed right now. I finally lost a pound and a half, so you’d think I’d have something to cheer about. Well, it’s been a long winter. Probably just a seasonal thing.

June 18, 1995

Next time I go to Wrigley field, I am NOT DRINKING ANY BEER, and I don’t care if everyone else is. All it does is kick my appetite (for beer and food) into overdrive. When those “nachos” they serve start to taste good, you know something’s wrong. Then of course Mitch decided we should go to La Canasta for dinner. At least their nachos are real. It was fun, but that’s enough. I’ve already gained back most of the six pounds, and the year is practically half over.

September 19, 1995

The new bits about gaining weight when you hit 35 went over pretty well, especially in the early show — more people my age. Maybe I should just give up, gain another 50 pounds, become another “funny fat guy” comedian. Naw, not worth it. I don’t want to be one of those guys people talk about in the past tense … “Yeah, he was funny. Too bad he died.” Okay, I’ll get back on the diet, and no cheating this time, at least until my birthday.

November 15, 1995

I should know better than to step on the scale the day after my birthday. I’m 37 years old and at least 25 pounds overweight, maybe 30 pounds. Some birthday present. If this keeps up, I’ll be a blob by the time I’m 50.

January 4, 2010

Chareva made big almond-crusted pork chops for dinner. Awesome. We couldn’t finish them, so looks like I’ve got lunch for tomorrow.

Sara, of course, trimmed the fat off the end and ate that first. She wanted to play chess after dinner, but I told her I have to write tonight. She squeezed a promise out of me to play tomorrow. She also informed me she doesn’t mind when I tell her if she’s making a good move or a bad move, but she doesn’t want me to tell her exactly which moves to make to beat me. Fair enough. The way her mind works, I’d better rack up a string of victories while I still can.

Fat Heads keeping themselves amused on New Year's Day.

‘Twas the night before statins, and all through the land
Our lipids were lethal, as we’d soon understand.
Our eggs were all stacked in the fridge with great care
In hopes they’d be scrambled, or fried if we dare.

The children were calm and well-fed in their beds,
While visions of sausages danced in their heads.
The dads, mostly lean, and wives often thinner
Had just settled down for a porterhouse dinner.

When out in the world there arose such a clatter,
They sprang from their plates to see what was the matter,
And what on the cover of TIME should appear,
But an arrogant scientist, peddling fear.

Cheers and belief from an ignorant press
Gave a luster of truth to the new, biased mess.
So away to the doctor we flew in a pack,
In hopes of a plan to end heart attacks.

He was dressed in all white from his neck to his butt
(which conveniently hid the size of his gut).
He sat us all down for a well-meaning chat:
“More carbohydrates — avoid all that fat!”

So sugars and starches we passed through our lips,
Only to wear them on bellies and hips.
Our hearts with their plaques continued to swell,
We grew diabetic and weren’t feeling well.

The doctor announced it was likely our fault –
We were, after all, still eating salt.
“But there’s no other option,” he said with shrug,
And pulled out his pad to prescribe some new drugs.

“Now Crestor!  Now Zocor!  Then Lipitor next!
Now Lipex!  Now Lescol, and best take Plavix!
To the depths of the liver!  To the artery wall!
Force it down, force it down, foul cholesterol!”

Our appetites crazed, we soon looked like blimps.
Our children lost focus, our manhood went limp.
The doctor examined joints now wracked with pain
And concluded the patients were old or insane.

He chose Celebrix for muscles that ache,
And added Cialis to the drugs we should take.
“Now stick to your diet, and be of good cheer,
If this doesn’t work, I’ll do lap-band next year!”

We’ve got family coming in to celebrate our first Christmas in Tennessee.  I’ll be taking the rest of the week off, except to check comments.  Happy holidays to all of you.

My four-year-old daughter Alana will be packing bread in her lunchbox tomorrow when she goes to preschool.  No, we haven’t gone over to the dark side, and no, she didn’t ask for it.  But she did bring home a note this afternoon that reads as follows:

Dear Parents:

Our STARS assessment is coming up.  As you might recall, a Meals Guidelines paper was included in your packet of information at the beginning of this school year.  Whether fairly or not, we are evaluated and rated on the lunches that you send in for your children.

Each child MUST have 3/4 cup of milk, whether they drink it or not.

Each child MUST have two servings of fruits or vegetables:
100% fruit juice counts as one serving
Fruit cup or applesauce counts as one serving
Raisins count as one IF they equal 1/2 cup
Carrots count
Celery counts
Potato chips don’t count (nor do other chips)
Salad with dressing works also - but remember the fork!

Each child MUST have one serving of grain or bread:
1/2 slice of bread
1/4 cup of dry cereal
1/4 cup of pasta, noodles or grain
Peanut butter crackers

Each child MUST have one serving of meat or meat alternative:
1 1/2 oz. of meat or poultry
1 1/2 oz. of cheese
3/4 egg or 3/8 cup of cooked dry beans or peas
3/4 oz. of nuts and/or seeds
6 oz. of yogurt
3 tablespoons of peanut butter or other nut or seed butter

For snack time, please pack components from two of the four categories.

Alana attends preschool at a Methodist church in downtown Franklin.  It’s a private preschool, but evaluated by the state — which I’m guessing receives its marching orders from the federal government.  Perhaps it’s part of the No Child Left Without Grain program, or the No Parent Trusted to Make Proper Dietary Decisions Act.

Either way, the evaluation process is simultaneously laughable and appalling.  We’re actually going to have officials visiting the school to make sure every child is packing a government-approved lunch.  Why?  What is the rationale here?  We’re not talking about a lunch prepared and served by the school; this is an evaluation of the lunches sent to school by parents.  So apparently, the school is being judged on how well they’ve convined us to substitute the government’s dietary wisdom for our own.

That’s bad enough.  But worse, I could ensure that my daughter passes inspection by spreading three tablespoons of peanut butter on a slice of white bread and adding a box of fruit juice and a half-cup of raisins.  (Better not forget the milk, though.)  Yup … I could make the state happy by giving Alana a lunch guaranteed to send her blood sugar on a roller-coaster ride.

Conversely, I could screw up the school’s rankings by packing a lunch I believe is good for her … say, some meat and cheese and nuts, but no bread or fruit juice – in other words, the kind of lunch she usually eats.  I’m not comfortable having that kind of power.  Skip the carbs entirely, and I may inadvertently shut down the whole school.

When I first read the guidelines — shortly after my wife finished shaking her head and handed them to me — I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if we sent Alana to school with a salad but no fork.  I picture some state official realizing there’s no fork in the bag, then banging the heels of her boots together to spring a poison blade from one of the boot-tips and kicking a teacher while screaming, “Zere ees no fork vit dis salad!  Zis child has no intention of eating her green leafy vegetables!  You are attempting to circumvent zee guidelines!”

The groupings are simply laughable.  How exactly did fruits and vegetables all get lumped together?  Do the government nutrition nannys really believe celery and bananas provide anything close to the same nutrients and macronutrients?  Celery is nearly all water and fiber.  A medium banana, on the other hand, contains more than 100 calories, mostly from sugar.

Or let’s look at the “meat” group.  Sliced turkey breast is nearly all protein.  Cheese is mostly fat with some protein.  Peas provide a little bit of protein but are mostly starch.  The typical yogurt cups you’ll find in the grocery store are mostly sugar.  Yet all them count as “meat” in the evaluation.

I’m tempted to send to her school with a couple of celery stalks, a quarter-cup of dried noodles, three-quarters of an egg and big thermos of chocolate milk, just to see what would happen.  I’m even more tempted to write up a list of 95 reasons these nutrition guidelines are hogwash and nail the document to the church door. 

But of course, the church is just doing what they’ve been ordered to do by the government nutrition nannys.  So my wife will dutifully prepare Alana a lunchmeat sandwich and toss in the required fruits and vegetables, and the school will pass the all-important evaluation.  And then Alana will go back to eating the kind of lunch she prefers, at least until the next evaluation day.  I suspect the other parents will be doing the same.

Your tax dollars at work.  Ain’t it a beautiful sight to see?