lose weight diet
Sources: weight loss tips
The Mayo Clinic Diet: Eat Well, Enjoy Life, Lose Weight. 254 Pages. Good Books. $25.99.
The Daily Beast’s William Boot reviews bestsellers to see which, if any, are readable. This week: The Mayo Clinic Diet.
Book: The Mayo Clinic Diet
Authors: The weight-loss experts at the Mayo Clinic
Pages: 254
Readable pages: 254
Sample line: “Carbohydrates, fats, protein…oh my!”
Listen up, fatso: The Mayo Clinic Diet is the best-selling diet book in America. It’s not because of the weight-loss prescriptions, which are rather obvious (“eat a healthy breakfast”). It’s because of the book’s writing, the happiness-enriched prose that can make even the girthiest among us feel like a swimsuit model. It’s the feel-good book of the year.
“This diet is not a fad,” writes the Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Donald Hensrud, a handsome, Charlie Crist-looking figure. What Hensrud and his team want is to make your diet as unobtrusive as possible. There will be no humiliations as in NBC’s The Biggest Loser. The Mayoites urge you to “find your eating place”—the part of house you’d like to diet in. “The cool thing about burning calories,” they write, “is that the possibilities are almost endless.”
In an introductory lesson, the Mayoites suggest that you, the dieter, try to estimate half a cup of dry cereal—the point being that you’re probably eating more food than you think. Now, I know of no one, outside of a Kellogg’s executive, who would feel threatened by the outcome of this exercise. But the authors feel moved to add, “If you overestimated, don’t feel discouraged.”
Every diet promises comfort—no calculators, no food scales, etc. But The Mayo Clinic Diet is beatific in the extreme. The authors may work for one of the most cutting-edge medical facilities in the world, but they address the reader as if he or she had never before been in a supermarket. “Common opinions hold that vegetables and fruit don’t have much flavor or that they all taste the same,” they write. Held where, in kindergarten? Elsewhere: “Lettuce or fresh spinach is generally the foundation of a healthy salad.” Still elsewhere: “Keep in mind that you don’t need to like all varieties of vegetables and fruits, just some of them.”
The first section—called “Lose It!”—told me I could lose six to 10 pounds in two weeks. The advice is hearteningly intuitive. I should eat whole grains, fruits, vegetables (not all of them, just some of them). I should exercise 30 minutes a day. I should cut out sugar and snacks, and I shouldn’t eat while I watch TV. Flipping the pages, I kept waiting for the provocative angle, the hook that made The South Beach Diet or Atkins’ New Diet Revolution so memorable. But it never came, nor did any command I couldn’t perform while sitting in the business class section of Virgin Atlantic. The authors later say that this part of the book is “kind of like a boot camp.”
As the book moves from “Lose It!” to “Live It!”—aka, Week 3—a few hard numbers begin to appear. I should lose one to two pounds per week; I should eat 500 to 1,000 fewer calories a day; I should eat one-quarter of the Snickers Bar I find lying around Beast headquarters instead of the whole thing. There is plenty of smart advice: My daily serving of protein, for instance, should be no bigger than the size of a deck of cards.
The author of a diet book must be a gentle psychologist. Anyone who has picked up the thing has done so because they feel bad about themselves, because their vow to run a mile every morning has become a brisk walk to the pastry shop. The Mayo Clinic Diet tries the gentle approach. It’ll cite a “negative attitude” (“Exercise is painful and boring”) and contrast it with a “new attitude” (“I’ll call a friend to go walking and enjoy the beautiful day”). I’m guessing that most of us fall somewhere between clinical depression and unbearable happiness—and even that makes us feel better.
The Mayoites have performed a kind of provocative stunt here: they’ve done nothing provocative. They’ve put some brightly colored jogging shorts on some age-old wisdom. And one more thing: The Mayo Clinic Diet makes a bid to be the official diet of the Obama administration. The book is chock full of helpful hints called “Yes, I Can!” This is a diet for an optimistic age, for those who still believe in the audacity of hope.
Read it? Yes.
Previously reviewed William Boot:
U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton
I, Alex Cross by James Patterson
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler
Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert
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William Boot covered the war in Ishmaelia and wrote the Lush Places column for The Daily Beast. He now reviews commercial fiction.
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I'm in week five of the Money Diet, where I try to lose weight by counting how much I'm saving every week by not eating junk food. And it's still working. I'm really pretty shocked by my weight loss. When I started this, if anyone had asked me to be truthful, I would have admitted that I was full of bravado and would have predicted that, by now, I'd have stormed a White Castle, scarfed down 132 of their little burgers and would have been waving the white flag.
But I've managed to resist the temptation, and I've lost weight again this week. I'm losing it slowly, which is frustrating, but I know that's what you're supposed to do.
Anyway, here's how I'm doing:
My weight when I began: 264
My weight last week: 250.5
My weight this week: 248
I still have a long way to go before I'm dancing a jig — without running out of breath, anyway — but I'm definitely encouraged. And I'm sure that posting my weight on WalletPop isn't hurting. It certainly helps keep me accountable.
Dieting for all the online world to see has been a trend for awhile now, from what I can tell — people are blogging and Tweeting about their weight loss. For fun, I just typed in the word “diet” in Twitter's search engine, and then “lost” and “pounds.” Here are a few of the posts (for better or worse, mostly unedited) that popped up:
“I'm on that special K diet. And there is nothing special about it!! I need some bacon!!!!!”
“I think diet soda tricks your body and makes it think it's sugary anyway and still makes you fat. Might as well drink regular.”
“Have been on the weight watchers diet for 2 weeks and have lost 4 pounds so far, why is it so easy to put on but bloody hard to lose.”
“Guys I lost 4 pounds in 2 days!! Ow watch out.”
“Just weighed in at WW, lost another 2.”
A lot of people are posting their progress on the web in hopes of getting encouragement from the blogosphere. There's even a scale that debuted last year that, when you weigh yourself, will automatically post your weight to all your followers on Twitter. Good grief.
Anyway, here's my “saving money, losing weight” journal for the week:
- Bag of my favorite pretzels that I used to buy weekly (and sometimes twice a week) but still haven't. Actual savings: $3.29. On pretzels alone, I've saved over $15 in 2010.
- I didn't raid any of my wife's stash of Coca-Cola. In the old days, when I ran out of diet soda, I'd swipe a few cans of her regular soda. I haven't yet, so I'm sure I've saved spending money on at least one case of pop this week. Estimated savings: $8.
- I've been eating a lot of grown-up, healthy cereal like, well, Special K (unlike that Twitter user, I like it pretty well), and I haven't added any sugar to my cereal. Let's say that I had six bowls of cereal this week. My old self would have put maybe two (okay, three) teaspoons of sugar into the cereal, so let's assume each teaspoon of sugar costs 3 cents, so that's 9 cents per bowl multiplied by six bowls. So right there, I saved…54 cents.
- I skipped the fast food outlets, although I did go to a Subway, if that counts. Still, I probably saved at least $5.
- I saw a few candy bars at various convenience stores during the week but didn't buy them. Estimated savings: $3.
- I've been skipping late night snacks (mostly) and second helpings and, um, thirds at dinner. That has to count for something, so let's say, I've racked up an estimated savings of $6.
And that's the gist of how this week went. Not to say I've been ideal at weight loss. For my daughter's sixth birthday, for instance, we took her and some of her friends to Dairy Queen, where I weakened and blew $3 on a small Blizzard. Since I still managed to lose some weight this week, though, I look at that as money well spent. Or at least not wasted.
My total saved this week so far: $25.83
Total saved this year so far: $122.38
The slightly less rotund and slightly wealthier Geoff Williams is a regular contributor to WalletPop as well as co-author of the new book Living Well with Bad Credit. weight loss tips
If you are teenage girl you may have asked yourself the question, “How does Britney spears lose weight?”Believe it or not, Britney Spears loses weight just as any other person loses weight. The best way to lose weight, whether you are a celebrity or not, is through a combination of diet and exercise. At one point in Britney's career, she made a mistake of eating very little. As a result, she became very sick and was not able to perform onstage for a very long period of time. You should never go below your daily recommended amount of calories. For girls, you should never drop below 1200 calories in one day. If you eat less than 1200 calories in one day you will become very sick very quickly.
In recent months, Britney Spears has lost more weight,but she has done it in a healthy way. You may not believe this, but she did not even cut calories.Instead, she just increase the amount that she exercised on a daily basis.Many teenage girls do not realize this but you do not need to cut calories to lose weight. If you just increase the amount that you exercise you can lose weight fast and in a healthy manner. However, if you still want to cut a little food out of your diet you can still do this in a healthy way. As a general rule, you should never cut more than 500 calories out of your daily diet. However, many teenage girls have trouble losing weight because they eat a lot of food. This is due to the fact that they get hungry very often.
There are several things that you can do to curb your hunger just as Britney Spears does. When Britney Spears is trying to lose weight she drink large quantities of water. There are several benefits that you can get from drinking water when trying to lose weight. The first benefit that you will get is that the water will fill you up so you will not have an appetite for other foods. It will also keep you hydrated for when you go to exercise to burn off that extra fat. Many teenage girls make the mistake of only running to lose weight. If you really want to lose weight you should do weight training as well as running. This will allow you to gain muscle and lose weight at the same time.Either way, if you want to know how Britney Spears loses weight you should know that she does it to exercise not through starving herself!
