The Diet Fix - A talk by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff

I doubt Carnie Wilson ordered salads at McDonalds.  And, I see your point, although, on principle, I hold it to be true that it is good to have Blind Restriction when it comes to foods loaded with toxins and chemicals.

It's one thing to say that you aren't going to eat something due to an ethical principal. I don't shop at Wal-mart, for example. But it has nothing to do with thinking that if I do end up buying something there some day (say it's the only place in town that has the one item I need for my kid's High School graduation) that I am somehow some sort of failure and now I'm going to go out and kill a man because clearly I have no ethical principals. Because THAT is the analogy to the dieting sin of Blind Restriction. 

It's this idea we get on a diet that eating certain foods means certain dieting failure. That if we eat that one thing that we've said we can't eat on this diet that the diet is blown.

You know what's ironic? The usual example I use of this is a cookie... the idea that, if we eat a cookie, we are a failure and we'll immediately gain 10 pounds so we might as well eat the whole bag because we suck and we've blown it.

I didn't use the cookie example because, usually, when I do that, I get a big argument about how I AM AN ADDICT and I can't just eat one cookie. I didn't feel like getting into that argument. I figured the McDonalds example would be safer. I should have known I'd get the MCDONALDS IS EVIL argument.

At least you didn't trot out how a McDonalds hamburger never rots because its' "full of preservatives". Even though the reason it doesn't rot is because it's the right shape to make beef jerky and a homemade hamburger in that exact shape won't rot either. 

Just can't win, euh? ;-)  You got the addicts, or ya got the McDonald's haters. I shop at WalMart, but hate McDonalds. At a recent bariatric support group we were told their fries are sprayed with sugar. Your bash of Carnie Wilson was a bit odd... If you boycott Wal-Mart then you should be cool with understanding the boycott of McDonald's ...I'm sure you've watched "Super Sized".  I get the point of the all or nothing thinking...even our beloved vets will have cake or something, on a special occasion, and then go back to eating the right way. 

I wasn't bashing Carnie Wilson. I don't agree with her on this one though and I thought it was a perfect example of the exact kind of thinking Dr. Yoni was talking about  - because it was very clear from the context that she wasn't avoiding McDonalds because of philosophical reasons, but because "Fast Food Makes You Fat".

No one food makes you fat and that's the whole point.

I've been following him for a few years now and I don't think he means the normal "it's time for lunch but I'll hang on an extra 15 minutes until I get home and can have something on my plan." That shows a healthy relationship with food and an understanding that mild hunger isn't an emergency.

Bad hunger is the frantic, shaking, low blood sugar because you skipped meals to stay on a severely restrictive diet type of hunger and you're now so hungry that once you take that first bite you go kinda nuts.

We're all familiar with "eat ALL THE FOOD" hunger. That's bad hunger - and preventable if we avoid eating plans and situations that we know trigger it for us. For me that means I need to eat within about 1/2 hour of getting up and about every 3 hours during the day.

Thanks for posting this. I've been following his blog for a few years now and appreciate his sanity.
I give him the credit for my actual goal weight, which isn't a number on a ticker - that weight that I can maintain while eating a diet I can enjoy and doing the amount of exercise I enjoy. Any lower weight than that will be very short lived.

Kelly-Anne

I wish we had more doctors like him in the US and less like Dr. Oz!

There aren't many like him in Canada, either.

Kelly-Anne