Like many of us, I was taught from an early age to avoid public discussion of religion and politics. And after writing about exercise and diet (mostly about exercise) for more than 50 years, I now add these two subjects to the first two.
People have strong emotions about all of these subjects. And if one attempts to make technical progress in one of the four, he is advised to stay focused and not disperse his credibility and political capital unnecessarily by venturing beyond this first one. Of course, such focus is often diffused by the fact the listeners’ emotions often overlap into the other realms.
You’re unlikely to convince a Catholic of your opinion and any subject by starting the conversation with “the Pope is a fag.”—Author Jones.
As publishers often require, an author must include a diet program in his exercise book and another author must include an exercise program in his diet book.
And by recommending a diet program, I cannot avoid alienating some who might otherwise have taken my exercise program seriously. The rub is that diet does play an important role in exercise, although this role is often overemphazised and/or misconstrued. And millions of people buy into the harmful falsity that increasing one’s activity—exercise or not—will increase caloric expenditure.
Recently, I mentioned to Drew Baye that I wished that I had never mentioned anything about diet in my writings about exercise. This outburst was not entirely true.
I have made worthwhile statements that are valid and should carry over into widespread application. For instance, my statement that the respective percentile values of exercise and diet to an exercise program are 90/10 and to a fat-loss program are 10/90 is pretty good, although we now know that physical activity has almost no effect on caloric expenditure. [There are several other exercise contributions to a fat-loss program other than caloric expenditure.]
Nevertheless, my general dietary recommendations have evolved over time, making the earlier ones laughable—at least to me. And some of my more recent suggestions encounter such politically charged ears that they distract from my messages about exercise. I suppose that I would have been on safer ground if I had merely avoided the program approach entirely when it came to diet.
What’s more, on the diet-nutrition front, I don’t know who to believe anymore. Much has changed in this area and continues to change rapidly. As a strict rule, I no longer follow any of the general dietary programs I have written about, although I do adhere to specific principles. And these principles are guided by the current state of my health.
I live—barely—in a narrow alley of existence. My kidney challenges have served to whittle down my dietary choices. So have my diabetic challenges. And it now seems that my Still’s Disease has re-emerged out of remission. Probably, this means that I must not exercise until I resume the IL-1 blocker (now under consideration).
I never really enjoyed writing and discussing nutrition. If I could go back and purge much of it from my writings—not a practical approach—I would.
I was mentioning to Drew, ‘It seems the foodies get more riled up closer to Halloween. Never understood why people take on something about food as a personal character trait. 🤔
Ken:
I can dig where you're coming from, but, I hope I speak for many of us that, you got us to think critically about diet and nutrition. If nothing else, I don't just assume something is correct. I want to know why it is.
The light bulb that illuminates in people's heads when I point out the difference between calories burned during an activity and calories burned because of the activity is ridiculous. Also, comparing maximum calories expended vs. consumed in one minute. I use the example of it taking three minutes to fill a car's gas tank, but two weeks to consume it.
It is interesting to note how many people try to eat their way to super muscle mass, even though their genetics are poor. I've seen multiple former clients in worse shape after quitting with me, because they tried a bunch of things, but nothing worked. I point out that it's not the programs, but that their bodies don't wanna. Why does anyone take drugs? Because they can't get there without them.
Marc Noël