If your experiment needs a statistician, you need a better experiment. ~ Ernest Rutherford.
Over my many years of writing this blog, I’ve received numerous “expressive” emails from readers. Needless to say, I’ve learned to tread carefully around certain topics. Whether it be politics or the minimum wage debate, there are definitely some subject matters that tend to fill up my inbox more than others. Having recently completed a series of posts about weight loss, I can now add another topic to that list: the low-carb/keto diet debate.
Before moving onto another thread, I’d like to offer a few last personal opinions on the topic. This hopefully serves to close things out and more importantly, to allow me the last word.
On diets.
Aside from reasons already mentioned, the biggest reason I would not go on a low-carb diet such as keto is it’s not something I personally could commit to long-term. In a nod to the Greek origins of the word, for a diet to be successful it must become a way of life and, for me anyway, it’s hard to imagine a life without crusty bread, legumes, or the occasional slice of pizza.
So, the next time you consider going on any kind of diet, think about whether it’s really something you can maintain for the rest of your life.
On cheat days.
If you’ve committed to something you can truly maintain for the rest of your life, I don’t see how building cheat days into your diet will have a happy ending. I say this from experience. For example: For Lent, I gave up food with added sugar. I decided to make Easter Sunday a cheat day and headed to Dairy Queen directly after service. After eating what was quite possibly the best ice cream cone I’ve ever had in my life, a funny thing happened…my cheat day turned into a cheat week. Several boxes of Trader Joe’s waffle cones and many pints of ice cream later, I’m now ready to head to confession.
On portion sizes.
As someone who subscribes to the calories matter hypothesis of weight loss, it’s important to pay attention to portion sizes. Although I think tracking calories in detail is something we can all benefit from, given how tedious it is, it’s probably not a long-term strategy.
As such, I view calorie tracking as a training wheels period and suggest you use that data collection period to develop life hacks to estimate portion sizes. One such trick that was passed along to me a number of years ago by a trainer who had his clients send him photos of their meals is to visually divide a regular size plate into thirds and fill it one-third with veggies, one-third with protein, and one-third with carbohydrates. The ratios are simply meant as a guideline and whether they are precisely correct is not the point. Rather, the concept is meant as a framework you can lean on during mealtime to make sure you’re not overeating.
Indeed, along with taking lunches to work, I suspect doing this and not having seconds/desserts would go a long way to help most of us lose unwanted pounds.
Have any thoughts/suggestions? Shoot me an email (expressive or not) – I’d love to hear from you.
On that note, time for me to check out for the week. I’ll be sure to update our Spotify playlist with a new song but, today, instead of a music video, I wanted to leave you with a video that will hopefully put a smile on your face. It’s of Christian Moullec, a man who for over 20 years has been using an ultralight to guide birds to a safer migration route. Apparently, he now takes tourists along for the ride. How cool is that?
In your service…xian
Video not displaying properly? Click here.
