Fat Is A Self-Inflicted DiseaseWritten by Virginia Bola, PsyD
I just came back from three days in Las Vegas. What an eye-opener!The biggest, most lavish buffets in world attract biggest, most expansive people. "All you can eat" takes on a whole new meaning when you realize just how much some people can consume at a single sitting. Most remarkable was sight of a dutiful wife bringing a piled up platter to table for a husband who was obviously way too fat to stand in line on his own. That picture was rather unusual in that wife was about normal weight. It seems that in most cases, woman is humungous one, waddling through casino in her big-as-a-tent shorts, followed by a skinny, wiry guy who looks, at best, disinterested in life. Of course, it is harder for women to lose weight, courtesy of nature's trick of a small frame coupled with sinister hormonal influences. But in our society, where pretty girls and sex sell everything, women tend to be so much more weight conscious.
| | Diet Fads: Supermarket SheepWritten by Virginia Bola, PsyD
Eighteen or twenty years ago, I was into high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate diets, courtesy of original Atkins Diet Revolution and, to an even greater extent, Stillman's Quick Weight Loss Diet (which I must admit I still prefer to Atkins but that's merely personal taste). At time, every aisle was loaded with labels proclaiming Low Fat or Reduced Fat. I didn't care about fat and sought much different information. Unfortunately, low fat was "in" and I felt alone and abandoned.With a certain sense of resentment, I tracked down carbohydrate costs of a wide variety of food, keeping a sharp eye on ingredients, calorie levels, and nutritional values. Certain items were strangely emblazoned with banners announcing low fat: pasta sauce, potato chips, candy bars, and ice cream. I was puzzled: how could certain foods, full of fat to their very core, be low fat? How could all fat be removed and there be anything left? I became fascinated with certain labels. Have you ever, for example, read labels on those flavored coffee creamers? Zero fat. Zero carbohydrates. Zero protein. Zero calories. How can anything we put in our mouths have zero calories? A negligible amount, maybe, but absolute zero? What is in that stuff? Or is it virtual food, existing only in our mind's eye as a kind of edible hologram? Mercifully, low fat craze died its natural death. Atkins and similar regimens took over and low fat labels were reprinted (corporate recycling at its finest) to read Low Carb. Suddenly, everywhere you looked, there were foods recast as low carb - again with pasta sauce, potato chips, candy bars, and ice cream. I was curious. Had manufacturers taken out all those carbs and put fat back in? Where did those carbs go? Are there vast dumpsites in desert where unwanted carbs are buried - next to worn tires, plastic bags, and nuclear waste?
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