Dieting makes you Fat
In the 1980’s Geoffrey Cannon wrote a book called Dieting Makes you Fat.
He has now completely re-written it in the light of what he has found out in the intervening years.
The first part of the book is a truly fascinating agglomeration of facts on every aspect of diet and dieting throughout the world, and looking from the viewpoint of Society and Government.
The second part lays out 7 golden rules to follow to change your attitude to food, to nutrition and to body weight and fitness.
These golden rules are to be absorbed into your lifestyle one at a time, introducing one each month, so that a complete transformation is effected in 7 months.
A fascinating book- and I’ll let you know how effective his ideas turn out to be…!
July 16th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
I haven’t read the book, but wanted to comment about “dieting making you fat”. I look at my daughter and her friends ( they are all around 18 to 19 years old), and those who “starve” themselves, then binge, are overweight. Those who eat food regularly are just right. “Food” is something that people have such a “thing” about isn’t it?
July 17th, 2008 at 6:48 am
And it is exactly this conundrum that he addresses.
He looks at his own “dieting life” and then at what drives the whole food industry, not just the dieting industry (in his professional life he advises the UK government, UN agencies on food, nutrition and personal and public health).
The things that the food industry, in the main, offer us, are addictive and nutrition-poor. Sugar, fat, salt.
And it is the satiating qualities of these readily-available and tasty foods that makes them the “medication of choice” when people do not want to face their feelings.
Some people choose alcohol, some shop, some gamble – but a huge number eat these empty foods.
And as we cannot completely give up eating, as we can stop drinking, gambling etc, we have to learn new attitudes and behaviours which start from a different premise about food.
So this is what the second part of the book is about.
(The chapter on How to write a best-selling Diet book is particularly enlightening…!)