How Not to Diet: The Groundbreaking Science of Healthy, Permanent Weight Loss

The only diet book you’ll ever need – great, weird audio narration. I’ve read a ton of diet books, and this is the best — I suspect, the only one I’ll ever need again. Simply fascinating front to back, and it appeals to the skeptic in me with the author’s frequent refrain to “put it to the test,” to examine weight-loss claims through randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies.Consider programs like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers when actually studied — they lead to about 3 to 6 pounds on average lost after 2 years, 93 percent of participants dropping out by the end of one year. Participants spend about $200 per pound lost.And the keto diet — you’ll never want to try this after reading the book. An institute created with $40 million to study and promote the diet found that keto proponents’ claims were false — those on the keto diet end up retaining more fat in their bodies — so the institute ended up closing.The studies on gastric bypass and other surgical procedures to lose weight are also alarming. Most people who undertake them end up still obese because they just learn to game the system — eating lots of tiny meals of junk food or putting chocolate bars in blenders.I’ve changed numerous habits based on findings that have been put to the test — and have continued to do them every day for 4 months while I finished the book. (It’s a huge book!) For example, the biggest meals of the day are now breakfast and lunch with only a salad for dinner — the same foods essentially have more calories based on the time of day you eat them because of the body’s circadian rhythms.I highly recommend getting both audio and text versions of the book. I would’ve never finished it just reading it. It’s not only big but filled with lots of studies, numbers, and chemical compounds — but these were easy to digest thanks to the author’s “Drunken Capt. Kirk” reading of the material. Absolutely loved it.In short, the way to lose weight is not to decrease the quantity of food but to increase its quality. Cut out sugar (especially sugary drinks) and processed foods, decrease or eliminate dairy and meat, and increase whole plant foods. Some unexpected tidbits: exercise does not help with weight loss generally, diet sodas are linked to overeating, and beans are one of the best foods for maintaining a healthy weight.Oh and one more thing: The author has a thoughtful section on fat-shaming that addresses much of what makes many other diet books creepy in their treatment of fat in general and obesity in specific.Two short excerpts, the first about how frustration causes poor food choices and the second about claims that people won’t stick to plant-based diets.”So this was the setup: Randomize people to memorize either a seven-digit number or a two-digit number to be recalled in another room down the hall. As they walk from one room to the other, offer each of them the choice of a fruit salad or a piece of chocolate cake. Memorizing a two-digit number is easy and presumably takes few cognitive resources. Under the two-digit condition, most chose the fruit salad. Faced with the same decision, most of those trying to keep seven digits in their heads just went for the cake.””Even those who are young and healthy with no health issues appear to have little problem sticking to a plant-based diet. There was a crossover study in which women were instructed to eat plant-based foods for a few months to see how it would affect their menstrual cycles. But then they were to switch back to their baseline diets to note the contrast, a so-called A-B-A study design where you reverse the experimental variable. The problem is that some participants felt so good eating healthfully—they were losing weight without any calorie counting or portion control, they had more energy, their periods got better, and they experienced better digestion and better sleep—that some refused to go back to their regular diets, which kind of messes up the study. Because they didn’t comply with the protocol and go back to their baseline diets, their data had to be thrown out. So, ironically, the plant-based diet worked a little too well.”Oh, what the heck, one more excerpt:”Why won’t cereal manufacturers reduce the amount of sugar in their products? A number of explanations have been offered, such as “a product with semi-addictive properties may be a safe way to ensure long-term revenues.… Another possibility is that selling cereals high in sugar is a smart technique to sell expansively a cheap commodity product—sugar.” Ultraprocessed foods like breakfast cereals tend to have the highest profit margins. Remarkably, the cost of packaging may outweigh the cost of ingredients in a cereal box by more than ten to one.”

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