Some Pet Peeves About Health

I read a lot.

In fact, at any given time I am "reading" somewhere from three to ten books.

I guess I should explain how I do that.

I read a chapter in the Book of Mormon every day.  I also try to read one parable from the New Testament daily.  Then I read a chapter (scroll) from "The Greatest Salesman in the World".  For school, I read numerous pages from any number of books daily.  And then there are books that I don't read from cover-to-cover - like Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible - but read regularly to look up information on the various languages I am trying to teach myself to read.  (Currently they are Hebrew, Greek and Latin.)

And with all of that, I always have a diet/exercise book from the library that I am trying to get through.

Most the diet/exercise books I read have good information.  The funny thing is, they all conflict in their information.  One will say, "Eat more carbs" while the next one will tell you that carbs are made by the devil himself.

Some tell you that meat is bad, while others tell you that you can't survive without it.

"Working out your back with your biceps is a good workout."  No wait, you need to do biceps with chest.

And so it goes.

Last night, my wife & I had a few hours without four of our five children.  We took advantage of the situation by going out to dinner to Zupa's.  (I had Tomato Basil soup.  I could eat that every day.)  Afterwards, we went to a couple of stores and I chose Barnes & Noble.

Of course, I went straight for the diet/exercise books.  As I was looking around, one caught my eye.  It was written by a guy who had gastric bypass surgery and wrote a book about his struggles of keeping weight off.

To be fair, I haven't read this book, so what I'm about to say may be totally out of line, but here goes...It drives me nuts when people who had gastric bypass surgery try to tell me how to lose weight.  

Now, before I am bombarded with hate mail, let me state that I have family members and friends who have had this surgery and it worked wonders for them.  I have nothing against the surgery itself.  (However, that is not an option for me.)  But let's be honest here.  You didn't lose your weight by changing your lifestyle.  You lost your weight because you shrunk your stomach.  Once again, there's nothing wrong with that AT ALL, but it's not the same as the struggles some of us go through every day with diet and exercise to lose a couple of pounds a week.

And while we're on the topic of weight loss, it drives me absolutely batty when I read diet books written by people who have never been fat.  While the science of losing weight is obvious ("eat less, move more") and doctors like to share the knowledge they have, what do they know about losing weight, really?  They can write, "eat less, move more" in every book and it makes perfect sense on paper.  Yet, these same people have never tried to walk up the street carrying 100 extra pounds on their frames.  

These people probably have never known what it's like to struggle to NOT eat an entire pizza in one sitting.  

That's not to say that all weight loss books should be written by former fat guys, but perhaps asking fat people what the struggles are, instead of just saying, "It's easy to lose weight if you eat less and move more."

And one final thing I would like to mention here.  Too often, diet books are written for the general public.  A kind of "one size fits all" mentality.  Except that doesn't work.  We all struggle with different "trigger" foods.  We all hate different vegetables.  We all like different exercises.  

So, when writing a diet/exercise book, don't add something like, "The only way to lose weight is to avoid cake, eat more broccoli and run 5 miles a day."  There are going to be a whole bunch of people that will read that and say, "It's not worth it."  Give some options.  

I am reading a book by Tom Holland right now called "Beat the Gym".  He gives a whole bunch of different exercises to cater to your lifestyle, schedule and abilities.  (Even a "prison workout" that doesn't use any special equipment.)

Anyway, sorry to go off on a rant like that.  I really try to keep this blog positive, but I've just read a bunch of stuff lately that drove me crazy (er).  

So onward and upward.  

As a positive note to finish on: I am down almost 10 pounds since the beginning of the year.  And that makes it 35 (out of 100) total!

I can do this.