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The diet that really works

women.timesonline.co.uk

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Re: The diet that really works

#41

Post by fendale »

I gave up on this article before I got to the 'meat' as it was too waffley ... anyway, to lose weight my best advice is to:

* avoid fizzy drink as much as possible * avoid crisps (do americans call them chips?) * go easy on fried and fast food (no need to cut them out completely) * Try to cut down on alcohol, but I don't really follow my own advice here!

Then

* walk or cycle as much as possible * take the stairs instead of the lift for 5 floors or less * and exercise 4 or 5 times a week doing whatever you find fun.

Maybe I am just lucky, but I never seem to put on any weight, and I do eat fast food and drink plenty of beer, but I do exercise a lot and cycle to work each day.

Re: The diet that really works

#42

Post by kul »

ars wrote: post #7

Blah blah blah blah blah. The entire article is just blah blah blah. The guy needs an editor to cut it to 10% of it's size. Is he paid by the word or something? He sure knows the art of saying nothing using many words. Heck I can summarize it in 2 words: Modified atkins.

It's in the Sunday Times, so it's meant to be a leisurely read (and most likely in the magazine section). The purpose isn't to convey as much info in as few words as possible.

Re: The diet that really works

#43

Post by orib »

vaksel wrote: post #35
swombat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until you hit your mid-thirties and let's talk again.

As long as your calories out => calories in, it shouldn't matter. Should it?

Yes. Food isn't only calories. If it was, we'd be able to live off of nothing but sugar water.

Food brings in not only calories, but various other nutrients that your body needs to keep itself in good condition. It can also bring in things that the body works hard to get rid of, and still do damage while they're being removed.

Re: The diet that really works

#44

Post by streety »

gojomo wrote: post #27
ars wrote: post #7

Blah blah blah blah blah. The entire article is just blah blah blah. The guy needs an editor to cut it to 10% of it's size. Is he paid by the word or something? He sure knows the art of saying nothing using many words. Heck I can summarize it in 2 words: Modified atkins.

It's easy to criticize 'blah blah blah'. But the style of the article is personal testimonial plus character study. It's going to include discursive storytelling, and it's not trying to boil down a diet/lifestyle/person to the fewest possible words. The cheapest form of criticism is to skewer a work for not meeting some ideal it wasn't even aiming for. DeVany is a very interesting and credible guy with a different sp…

I've got to give the guy respect for giving references with his arguments but I don't think his sources are sufficient to suggest that marathon running is bad for you.

It's a shame he loses much of that respect as we near reason #1 and they get increasingly 'silly'.

Let's take #2: "At least four particiants of the Boston Marathon have died of brain cancer in the past 10 years. Purely anecdotal, but consistent with the elevated S100beta counts and TKN-alpha measures. Perhaps also connected to the microthrombi of the endothelium found in marathoners."

I'm researching this with google but, "In the United States, the annual incidence of brain cancer generally is 15-20 cases per 100,000 people." http://www.oncologychannel.com/braincancer/index.shtml "In 2007 more than 20000 runners completed the race." http://www.bostonmarathon.org/

I can't quickly find numbers for the preceding years, nor how many each year had run it previously, so lets assume the numbers increased linearly over the preceding 10 years to give a total number of runners as 100,000. That, rather conveniently, suggests 15 - 20 incidents of brain cancer should result. Shock result - marathon running prevents brain cancer!

#1 is the first runner of the marathon, Phidippides, died. Hopefully I don't need to explain why this one is silly.

Some of his other points would be worth further study but I can't find a single point without weaknesses.

Re: The diet that really works

#45

Post by [deleted] »

ars wrote: post #7

Blah blah blah blah blah. The entire article is just blah blah blah. The guy needs an editor to cut it to 10% of it's size. Is he paid by the word or something? He sure knows the art of saying nothing using many words. Heck I can summarize it in 2 words: Modified atkins.

[deleted]

Re: The diet that really works

#46

Post by qqq »

This is why we should have topic limitations. Yeah, people will post stuff like this anyway, and I don't think we should punish them.

But we also shouldn't make it officially legitimate which will encourage a higher volume of such posts.

Edit: Umm, you guys like wordy articles about fad diets with bad signal/noise ratio?

Re: The diet that really works

#47

Post by tobyo »

swombat wrote: post #31
rob wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely yes if you're eating tons of it a day.

Nah, most fruit is not energy-dense enough to cause you that kind of trouble. There's not enough room in your stomach to become obese on fruit. If you're eating a ton of fruit a day, keep doing it! It's probably the healthiest thing you can put in your mouth.

Fruit is not bad for you but If you combine it with other sugary food it is no good for you

To be super healthy eat lean protein sources in every meal, a ton of vegetables, some fruit, and some good fats like fish oil and olive oil.

Re: The diet that really works

#48

Post by streety »

streety wrote: post #44
gojomo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to criticize 'blah blah blah'. But the style of the article is personal testimonial plus character study. It's going to include discursive storytelling, and it's not trying to boil down a diet/lifestyle/person to the fewest possible words. The cheapest form of criticism is to skewer a work for not meeting some ideal it wasn't even aiming for. DeVany is a very interesting and credible guy with a different sp…

I've got to give the guy respect for giving references with his arguments but I don't think his sources are sufficient to suggest that marathon running is bad for you. It's a shame he loses much of that respect as we near reason #1 and they get increasingly 'silly'. Let's take #2: "At least four particiants of the Boston Marathon have died of brain cancer in the past 10 years. Purely anecdotal, but consistent with th…

I've just noticed I'm comparing cases with deaths. Clearly some people will survive brain cancer.

The death rate would appear to be 5.6 per 100,000 according to this source neuro-oncology.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/6/3/179.pdf

It is worth noting that this is the annual rate suggesting that 5 runners of the Boston marathon should have died from brain cancer in the last year alone.

Re: The diet that really works

#49

Post by scott_s »

brm wrote: post #3

why is food always the culprit? what ever happened to just increasing the amount of exercise you do? Michael Phelps seems to be doing ok on 10,000+ calories a day This also bothers me: "But what’s different about Arthur is, first, he is not selling anything, except for subscriptions to his website."

Michael Phelps also swims 120 miles a week. He eats 10,000+ calories a day because that's how much energy he needs to maintain weight and muscle mass.

Re: The diet that really works

#50

Post by ars »

gojomo wrote: post #36
ars wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except why do I care that the reporter was early to the interview? Why would anyone care? It's not a diary, it's an article about a new diet. Tell me about the diet. You want to add a supplement about the author fine. But I don't need 3 pages of useless text about the author without once mentioning what the diet actually is. Sorry, but there is too much garbage in the world to spend 15 minutes reading all about some…

Except why do I care that the reporter was early to the interview? Why would anyone care? It's personalizing color, and it also lets the author explain how he's seen DeVany "half-naked". You must really hate novels. Not everything is written for an audience with ADD, nor should it be.

I love novels - except I wasn't reading a novel.

At least I thought I wasn't - this was billed as "The diet that really works". And that's what I was here to read, and then I didn't.

You want to write "personal insights about the man who made the diet that really works" no problem. I might even like to read it - but that's not what I was expecting.

You say you are writing about a diet, then do so, or change the title.

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