A Taxonomy of Bad Diets

As a middle-aged rower and “fathlete,” I’m always looking for ways to drop a few pounds, gain some performance, have more energy, and be one step closer to becoming the Men’s Health cover model that I know I’m destined to be. My meanderings to find the right diet have led me down several paths over the years.  Usually it works like this: I’ll find a new diet or program, get all excited about it, read the book, buy the materials, throw myself in, commit really hard for a while, stumble, get frustrated, give up, and then find something else.  It’s the diet merry-go-round, and I’ve taken many trips.  Here’s a little sampling of the diets I’ve tried, in no particular order:

The Fat Smash Diet

The Biggest Loser Diet

The Three Season Diet

Weight Watchers (twice)

SparkPeople

MyFitnessPal

FitBit (not a diet, I know, but let’s throw it in for good measure)

The Wild Diet

The Primal Diet

The Abs Diet

The Calorie Myth

The Fast Metabolism Diet

Clean Eating

Total Body Transformation

Outside Magazine’s The Shape of Your Life

I Can Make You Slim

The Gabriel Method

Never Binge Again

Full-Filled 

…And these are just the ones that I remember off the top of my head.  As unmanly as it is to say, yes, I’ve read diet books, and yes, I’ve been on diet programs.  How to make sense of it all?  It strikes me that it might be fun to create a kind of taxonomy of all the mumbo-jumbo out there.  So far I’ve come up with several categories:

Celebrity Diets — These are the books written by (or more likely, ghostwritten for) some Movie, TV, magazine, or internet celebrity, whose smiling, healthy, well-lit face appears on the cover.  The implicit message is that if you want to look like a red-carpeter, this diet will get you there.  One example would be Laird Hamilton’s online exercise and fitness program.  (Yes, at one point, I actually believed that looking like a Hawaiian lifelong surfing champion was as simple as drinking “superfood coffee” and doing a couple of lat pulldowns.) Let’s also throw in things like The Biggest Loser diet and the Outside Magazine diet, which trade in on the popularity of a particular TV show or popular culture phenomenon.

https://www.nbc.com/maya-and-marty/video/oprah-bread/3048053

Mental Diets — “It’s all in your head,” these diets say.  If only you knew how to control yourself, think good thoughts, groove to a positive vibe, then your weight would normalize effortlessly and easily.  These include self-hypnosis programs, meditations, self-discipline tricks, and the like. (Of course, if it doesn’t work, you must not be thinking hard enough.  You might have to sign up for one-on-one therapy — for hundreds of dollars a session — to really get the results you want).

The I-Lost-Weight-and-So-Can-You Diets — There are a ton of these out there.  In science, an experiment where N=1 is not worth anything.  But in the publishing world, a set of rock-hard abs and the anecdotal evidence of, “Hey, I ate nothing but sprouted-grain muesli for a month, and the results speak for themselves!” is usually enough to get someone a book contract.  

The Programs — You can be sure you’re following a diet when they say, “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle!”  In the Programs, the lifestyle is one of monthly bills.  These are the folks that have figured out it’s better to sell you a subscription than a book, often knowing full well that you’ll start, quit, then restart again many times over a multi-year period.  (Here’s to you, Oprah!)

The Mythology Diets —  These are based on the idea that sometime in the misty past (like when we were all cavemen), or in some far-off and exotic land (say, Crete or Okinawa), people had it all figured out.  All you have to do is eat like they did.  Or like we think they probably did, anyway.  I’ll also throw in here the many “get back to nature” diets that tell you to cut out any stench of modernity from your day-to-day life, get in tune with the living world, stop harming fellow creatures, and all that feel-good stuff that has made organic markets the fastest growing industry in all of food-dom.

That’s a start, anyway.  I’m sure there are more.  As I say, I’ve fallen for each of the above (and you know what they say: the bigger they are…).  That’s not to say that these are all bad, by the way.  Each have at least a nugget or two of valuable information to offer.  Each has taught me something, and I’m sure each of them works for someone.  But, well, none so far have worked for me.

And looking over that list, is it any wonder that we’re Americans are growing so fat and sick?  There’s a glut of information out there: much of it conflicting, and much of it bad.  At the end of the day, if you really want to be healthy, you need to leave the diets behind.  Forget magic bullets and get interested in science.  Read, watch lectures, and most importantly, sniff out the medical professionals that are actually working in this field.  At the end of the day, it’s your health — no one else’s — and your responsibility to get it right this time, because this time is the only time.

Note: The ramblings published on this blog are the opinions of the author alone and shared for entertainment purposes only.  The author is an English major with no medical or scientific background; thus, his words should never be taken as medical advice.  Consult with your doctor or medical professional before undertaking any diet or exercise program.