Weekend Bonus: Hulu, Viewer Stories

When I do that Hulu that I do so well …

I’m not sure why, but Fat Head has surged in popularity on Hulu again.  I received notification yesterday that the film was ranked #1 most popular in the documentary category, and #3 in all movies.  Outstanding.  I know most of you have already seen it, but for U.S. residents who haven’t, I’m embedding the link below.

http://www.hulu.com/fat-head

Hometown Boy Does Well

A resident of Springfield, Illinois, where I spent most of my school years and where my family still lives, posted a Fat Head success story on his blog.  Here are some quotes:

Back in early March Angie and I stumbled upon a documentary called Fat Head on Netflix streaming … Angie and I found the results of the film, and the revelations about nutrition, intriguing.

We began studying up on low carb nutrition. We found the reasoning to be sound, but the only way to know for sure was to try it ourselves and see what happened. So about five weeks ago Angie and I started our low carb diets (with additional research we are slowly converting to a paleo diet, but that is for another post), and the results have been phenomenal. In the last five weeks we have both lost over ten pounds, and over three inches from around the waist. There has been a tremendous upswing in both our attitudes and energy levels. In fact, I’ve found myself with so much energy I’ve been walking three miles or more a day just to get rid of it.

But that’s not the best part.

The best part is that Andy is a type 2 diabetic who found that changing his diet allowed him to get his glucose under control.  You can read the rest of his story on his blog.

Way to go Andy!  On one my future trips home to Springfield, let’s take our wives out to dinner together.

Can we please stop scaring the kids now?

I received this email a couple of days ago:

Several months ago, my daughters and I watched “Supersize Me” together. Little did I know, that video had a dramatic effect in my 12-year-old. She was probably already close to developing anorexia (My wife and I had been knocking fast food, fat America, bad food corps. etc for several years by then – if that plays any role), but she states that the feeling some foods were poison, and that she would die if she even consumed a small amount, definitely took hold right after the viewing. Her 5’6″ frame dropped to 115 before we realized what was going on. I’d try to make her eat something extra and high in calories, but she would cry and panic.

We had been working with her for several weeks, keeping her weight from dropping further, but we weren’t making much progress with her perspectives on food, until we watched your documentary together last week. She held her head in disbelief throughout, and asked me if what she just watched was true. I assured her I would investigate it myself. She asked if we could watch it again, and this time she wanted to take notes.

Later in the week, she started eating foods like meat and cheese, without putting up her usual fight. She dumped her oatbran for eggs and Spam for breakfast (she use to love Spam when she was younger – we always told her ‘that stuff will kill you’). She’s now asking for more chances to eat when we’re out and about; that’s the real shocker.

It’s too early to say that video cured her, but it certainly made a bigger impression on her than I did (and undid the damage from the earlier video). You changed the eating habits of my entire family, for the better – thanks again! Keep up the good fight.

In another exchange of emails, the father told me his daughter had also been obsessing over her BMI.  That’s one of the many reasons I’m against governments requiring schools to measure and report BMI scores for students.  (The biggest reason being that it’s none of their flippin’ business.)  The last thing we need is the federal government telling kids they’re too fat, then recommending low-fat, calorie-restricted, grain-based diets as the cure.  Lord only knows how many eating disorders will result.

Kids need real food with plenty of natural fats.  If that’s what we feed them, their appetites will handle the rest.  Scaring them is both pointless and counterproductive.