"'No-Fad Diet' offers hope for the weak"

[conuly]

The weak? Excuse me?

Oh dear. It's time for me to break out Connie's Theory of Eating.

See, way back when we lived in the real world (that is, not this world), we couldn't be sure if we'd have food tomorrow. So our bodies wisely evolved to say "eat today, there may not be enough later". Eat the food now, when you're not hungry, and maybe tomorrow you still won't be hungry.

There was never enough fat, and never enough salt, and you can always use a quick bit of energy, so of course we evolved to crave the things that there was just never enough of. And, of course, once we had the technology to produce enough food to gorge ourselves, that's what we gorged ourselves on. Fatty, salty, sugary foods. Why not?

And, of course, going hungry makes things worse. Now your body isn't just saying "Hm. Food tends to be scarce. Better eat up", it's going "OMG! I WAS STARVING! I NEED TO EAT! I was hungry before, and I will be hungry again, and I need to eat as much as possible now to prevent this from happening".

So when you try to cut yourself down to 1,200 calories a day, and cut out all the foods that your body is convinced it lacks, and then you find yourself gobbling up burgers and ice cream and who knows what else, that's not you being weak. That's your body being smart. Okay, so it's being smart for a time that, for people who need to go on diets, probably will never exist, but historically speaking people have been much more likely to die from lack of food than from surfeit.

Weak. Such a stupid word.

Comments

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I think they mean this diet is for people too 'weak' to manage Atkins or no-fat or whatever the latest fad diet that requires you to cut huge amounts of stuff out of your diet.

[conuly]

That's not being weak though, and using that word is dishonest and unhelpful.