I’ve been thinking a great deal about the essence of Diets.
The term “diet” is defined as Habitual Nourishment.

The term “calorie” is the term used to measure the energy value inside food, i.e. the unit equivalent to the energy-producing amount of food when oxidized in the body.

In order for the human body to become a smaller size by losing bodyfat, that body must take in less energy than it uses.

 I have read hundreds of diet books, and been on many, many weight-loss diets.
Each of them appears to be some variation of a way to “EAT LESS and MOVE MORE”.

One of the things I find fascinating about Gary Taubes’ books, one of which is now featured here in the section BOOKTALK. is that in one way his concept seems to break that mold……and yet in another way…the concept seems to fit into it.

I’m going to share some thoughts about this here. Then at some future time, I plan to share some further personal insights on this matter.

It seems clear to me that there are essentially 3 issues involved in all Diets,
One main food issue, AMOUNT,
and two sub-issues, KIND and FREQUENCY.

AMOUNT -- of food eaten –

KIND – fundamental nature (micronutrients) of food eaten .

FREQUENCY of eating food.

RESTRICTIONS:
All Diets involving weight-loss or maintenance of weight-loss place restrictions on one or more of those 3 food issues.

AMOUNT –
This can involve either DIRECT or INDIRECT restriction.

DIRECT restriction involving AMOUNT, some Examples include:

• Counting food calories with the goal of staying near a certain number.
  
  
• Counting food points.
  
  
• Portion control – eating a specific size of a food substance
  
  
• Counting bites
  
  
• 1 plate, no seconds  -as in The No S Diet.
  
  
• Meal size restrictions – i.e. large Lunch, other meals smaller, etc.
  
  
• Variation of Amounts on alternating days - QOD, JUDDD, Calorie Cycling, Fast-5 
  .............are actually Blends of the Amount and Frequency categories.

INDIRECT restriction involving AMOUNT
This involves restricting the KIND of food eaten, and/or the FREQUENCY of eating food.

KIND –
This involves a DIRECT restriction of KIND, resulting in an INDIRECT restriction on the total AMOUNT of food calories. DIRECT restriction of KIND usually involves a shift in the balance of the intake of various  food micronutrients. Reduction of KIND frequently involves a flavor/taste reduction or satiation factor that results in less overall food intake.

Some Examples of restriction involving KIND include:

• Sweets Restriction – reduction of the intake of sugar, resulting in an additional
  reduction in fat and other carbs such as flour etc
  
  
• Fried Foods Restriction – restriction of cooking method resulting in a reduction
  of the intake of fat miconutrients.
  
  
• Low-fat –overall reduction of the intake of fat miconutrients.
  
  
• Low-carb – overall reduction of the intake of carbohydrate miconutrients.
  
  
• High-Protein – increase in protein along with reduction in carbohydrates.
  
  
• Food Exchanges – Divisions of foods restricting intake of specific food
  containing specific miconutrients, resulting in a reduction in total intake.
  One example: Dividing food portions on one’s plate such as:
  ¼ protein, ¼ starch, ½ complex veggies and fruit.
  
  
• Food Combinations – Divisions of food intake involving specific combinations
  of micronutrients at specific times (includes a frequency factor) resulting
  in a reduction of overall amount.
  
  
• High-fiber – reduction of the intake of miconutrients with low-fiber.
  
  
• Vegetarian – restricting animal proteins
  
  
• Liquid – restricting solid foods.
  
  
• Organic or No Processed Foods – restricting foods containing various chemicals
  
  
• Raw – restricting cooked and processed foods
  
  
• Low-sodium – reduction of foods containing salt, less flavor resulting in less overall intake.  

FREQUENCY –
This involves a DIRECT Restriction on eating FREQUENCY,
resulting in an INDIRECT restriction on the total AMOUNT of total food calories.

Some Examples of restriction involving FREQUENCY include:

• 3 meals each day, with no snacks (The No S Diet)
  
  
• 3 meals and 2 or 3 snacks per day.
  
  
• 6 small meals per day ( or 4 small meals per day)
  
  
• All snacks, no meals
  
  
• Zero food – i.e. water fasting
  
  
• No eating after dinner.
  
  
• Eat only before sunrise, and after sunset
  
  
• All eating to be within a certain time period a 5 hr daily window (Fast -5)
  
  
• 24 hr fast – No food after 5 p.m. until 5 p.m. following day (EatStopEat)
  
  
• Alternate day eating – (QOD, JUDDD)
  
  
• Intuitive Eating - Eat when hungry stop when satisfied/before full.
  
  

I'll be writing more about this concept in the future.

                        
An individual Fit is necessary
when it comes to Diets or Lifestyles.

Have you thought that if you did just what someone else does,
you would look just like them? Yet when you try to copy their
choice of foods and fitness activities, you’re miserable.

Then when you stop doing it, you feel like you failed.
You didn't fail. It was just a bad lifestyle fit.

 Each of us is an individual on our own journey, and none of us are exactly alike.
Some people need to follow a specific eating plan and have foods they never eat again.
A Plan like this makes some people feel deprived and leads to binge eating.
Some people need to eat smaller quantities of what they want at frequent times,
while taking extra care to carefully log that food into their trackers.

I don’t like any outside control on my eating behavior
I hate having well-meaning people ask: "Should you be eating that?"
Others aren’t any more right or more wrong than me.
We all want to save ourselves from obesity, and there are many options available.
The secret is to find what works for each one of us personally.
There is a lot of advice out there from the weight loss industry.
So many “medical discoveries” happening in the field,
So many magazines promoting “new miracle diets”,
So many tips and tricks.

Now Obesity is considered an epidemic
but there’s no vaccination…no one-cure-fits-all fix.
Each of us has to find our own way.
 We know some basics of calories-in and calories-out
which is one starting point of our physical problem.
However genetic, psychological, character-related,
disease-related, and other problems, are involved as well.
These are all variables which cause more than one problem
and require more than one solution.

Note that in “Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It” by Gary Taubes,
the basic belief in calories-in/calories-out is even termed the "Original Sin”.

What works for me may not work for you.
What works for you might not work for me.

Each of us wants to find a way to change our life without severely disrupting it.
That’s a tough Goal. To accomplish that, we need to gather as much information
as is possible, and make changes that work best individually.

How do you know what fits you personally, 
and  how do you push out of your comfort zone?

I’ve heard that the change should fit into your life
the way you try to fit a puzzle piece in place.
Keep turning it around and trying it at different angles
to see if that’s the right one.
If it isn’t, it will never go in place, so try another.

No Diet is one-size-fits-all.
No single answer will solve everyone’s problems with obesity.
If you’re still fat, you aren’t a failure,
you just haven’t found your own answer yet. 
Just keep searching.  
 

                         
There are many different diets, ways-of-eating, and lifestyles.
I believe that each of us has to find his or her own way.

All of the Weight-Loss/Maintenance research and theories contain flaws, and
each of us is individually conducting an Experiment of One.

I totally agree with the following quote by an online forum member.

"You see a lot of contradiction in diet books
and on diet blogs and message boards.
Some people will tell you to eat certain foods,
others tell you to stay away from them,
eat six meals, or maybe just three meals,
do aerobics, avoid aerobics,
take these pills, don't take any pills.

Nobody's right. Everyone's right.

You have to think of a diet as a trip home for Thanksgiving --
it's a personal destination
and you should know better than anybody how to get there.

If you're driving east on the highway heading home for Thanksgiving,
you'll see a lot of cars driving west.

If the person in the passenger seat said,
"There's a lot of people heading home for the holiday,"
you wouldn't turn to that person and flip out and say,
"What the hell!
What a bunch of retards!
Don't they know home is this way?"

But that is what diet writing often is --
people arguing over how to get home."

When life takes you in a different direction than the one you originally chose. You can fight against life, and keep trying to go toward what s no longer available to you,

Or you can pause to observe your new direction, Take a good long look; take it all in; Look for the positives in that new path, and learn to accept and enjoy the process of traveling.

With dieting, it can all be about just enjoying the process. If you can find a way to make that process enjoyable, so that it isn’t just one big exercise of self-denial and self-depravation, you can make dieting a lifestyle that works for you.I’m doing that with DietHobby.

In an earlier post I told you about a video my son made of meinforming people about the DietHobby Book Discussion on  Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes here on BOOKTALK

Today it went up on YouTube, and here it is.

I found the DietPower food journaling program in September 2004, while surfing the net.  I started using it.  I had good success, and still really like it.  

   I have logged all of my food into DietPowerevery day since 9/20/04, today, 2/21/11 makes 2346 consecutive days.

DietPower is my most essential tool for weight-loss and maintenance.……….However, like any tool, it won't be helpful unless………you make, and follow through with, a commitment to consistently use it.

Before using DietPower I tried many times to keep track of my food and calories. That was very hard to do using only paper, a pen, and a calorie dictionary, I was never able to keep doing that for more than a week or so.

Diet Power changed all that for me. As entering all my food was easy, it became an enjoyable Habit. It is now as natural to me as brushing my teeth or making my bed every day. DietPower works with every diet one might care to use,and no matter what specific diet I’m on, I still use DietPower.

Counting calories long-term used to be very time consuming and difficult, however, using a computer software program like DietPower lets one do it with ease. In fact, because of my habitual use of DietPower, counting calories is now a Habit for me.  I’m currently doing a Low-CarbExperiment and DietPower also makes it easy for me to count my carbs.

DietPower is a very small company, and it gives great personal support. There is a free 2 week trial, and the program pretty much explains itself. When I first got it, I downloaded the free 2 weeks and I liked it so much immediately, that I bought it after using it for only 3 days.

Although DietPower is a simple program, learning anything requires effort.Also, installing a habit is not energy free.  One must keep one’s commitment to consistent action for the weeks that it takes to establish the habit

of logging in one’s food. Consistent effort can result in habitual behavior.

 DietPower has a big food dictionary with thousands of foods of all types and brands. For example it has tons of generic granola bars, and if you want to input quickly, you can just pull up whatever appears to be the closest to what you're eating. However, one thing I really I like, is the ease with which I can input the exact info from the label of my favorite food (for example: a specific Atkins bar) into DietPower's food dictionary, and then from that day forward, I have that EXACT information in my program.

I use DietPower’s recipe function all the time.  Although initially DietPower’srecipe dictionary contains a number of recipes,  I must admit that I've never used any of them.  However, I’ve put all of my own recipes into DietPower, by using ingredients from the food dictionary. So I know exactly what the nutrients are in one serving of any of my favorite recipes.  When I eat that serving, or part of it,  I simply input that choice into my food log which then tells me the exact amount of calories, carbs, protein, fat etc. in my food intake.

Another good use for the recipe dictionary is that I can combine foods to makemy usual salad or sandwich; or even combine all the foods of a standard meal including a salad, a main dish, fruit etc. and then just  a few clicks puts all of that food information into my daily food log. 

 DietPower can be used just as it is, and you will want to do that at first until you learn the program well,  but the benefits of individualizing the program are fantastic.

There is a lot of information about DietPower on its online website, and I've found it all to be true.  I have no financial interest in it, and I’ve chosennot to receive any payment for people who buy the program after clicking my DietPower links.

If you buy the program, my advice is to pay the small extra charge for them to ship you a disk. I don't like that "key" process, because it can take a day or two to implement, and having the program disk has really saved me a few times from computer glitches.

Personally, I’m not fond of the metabolism function of DietPower, except as an area of interest.  I find it much more effective to set myself a "constant calorie budget" than let DietPower zigzag my calories up and down.
The program will tell you to eat far too few and then far too many calories.  Perhaps that function works well for large men, but I've found it doesn't work very well for medium size to small women.

The thing to remember is that DietPower is just a tool. 
It doesn't work unless you use it.

If you have questions, feel free to ask them.  You can easily access the DietPower website by clicking the icons located on the top and bottom of this page.

Update, January 2018: DietPower now only seems to work on an older Windows computer, and over the years, it has become relatively obsolete. Although I still choose to use it to journal my daily food, I supplement it with the use of My Fitness Pal, an online food journal which performs similar functions. As of this date, if I were just beginning to learn to use a food journal, my choice would be to use My Fitness Pal.