Old Adages and Nutritional Wisdom

I happened to be up very late last Friday night channel surfing. I don’t watch much TV, but I can say with a good level of certainty their is nothing worth watching in the wee hours of the morning. Unless, of course, KTC happens to be re-running somewhere. I happened to land on an infomercial for a diet supplement I had never seen before. This particular supplement is supposed to aid in losing weight;  it comes in the form of powder that you sprinkle on food before eating it. The sales pitch from the screeching voice prohibited me from watching the infomercial for too long lest my ears bleed, but from what I deduced, the product worked by making you feel fuller quicker, resulting in fewer calories consumed. Part of the insufferable pitch from the TV salesman was “Eat whatever you want and still lose weight!”

Now, fellow Doug-heads will take issue with this bold claim as immediately as I did for the same plethora of reasons. I think most people that have followed Doug for a while can sift through outrageous claims and sound nutritional wisdom. But what worries me about this infomercial and others like it is that it underscores a greater issue in our collective understanding of not just weight loss, but health in general. Men in ancient times tried tirelessly to find a way to turn lead into gold; the modern equivalent of that alchemic goal is the the quest to turn fat into lean, toned muscle without so much as lifting a finger and while enjoying the same fare that helped expand our waste lines to begin with.

People like to hear that they can have their cake and, well, eat it too without, jumping a few sizes in pants. The truth is that what you eat matters just as much as how much of that food you eat. Diet pills and appetite suppressants can help you lose weight, albeit with some dangerous side effects (like I’ve written about before). One thing that really bothers me about this “miracle-pill” approach is that they disregard Doug’s approach, which says you can eat plenty of food, as long as it is the right kind of food. Eating fresh veggies, nuts, some fruits and lean, clean grass-fed meat can help you lose weight, but it does way more than that. Eating these type of foods nourish the body and encourage good health, not just simply slim waste lines.

Losing weight can be tough. Whether you’ve tried any of these “miracle” supplements or not, I would encourage anyone to try Doug’s Kaufmann 1 Diet, even if it is just for 2 weeks. If I could dispense some folksy wisdom my mom used to tell me, the proof is in the puddin’. How you feel and look after a couple weeks (after a potentially nasty Herxheimer reaction from all those nasty fungi dying off) will remove all desire to try some silver bullet supplement, if you ever had one to begin with. And with said supplements, I believe another old adage comes to mind; if it is too good to be true, it probably is.