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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eat and Exercise For Health, July 8, 2002
"Plenty of whole food and plenty of fresh air are not only the reliable treatment for overweight, but also the means to a full, happy, and long life" (p.11). This book is about dieting, and a guide to energy, food, fitness, and health. It explains why calorie counting and unbalanced diets do not work, but often lead to fatigue, depression, and malnutrition. Energy expenditure and balanced food intake will allow you to stay thin.Chapter 8 "All you Need To Know" sums up this book in thirty short paragraphs on 6 pages. You can read this first as a quick guide to the rest of this book. It will give you the knowledge to eat wisely. The first ten points tell the effects of dieting on the human body. The next ten points tell why people in Western countries tend to get fat. The last ten points tell how to lose fat and gain health. Following are some interesting quotes from this book. Page 26 notes those insurance company weight tables created during the Great Depression. (Were they ever proven to be valid?) When he added up the calories in the diet books he found their reasoning to be preposterous (p.34). Measurements showed that fat people ate less than thin people (p.35)! So the answer is "metabolism". After the author started running as a hobby, he lost weight and fat, and could then eat and drink what he wanted (p.43). Activity, not dieting, reduces weight and fat. Dieting causes a loss of glycogen and water, and low blood sugar levels. The result is weakness, depression, irritation, tiredness, and sometimes faintness and dizziness. Dieting is like famine or starvation, and causes involuntary changes (p.50). Dieting slows down metabolism, a fact that makes "most diet books so much waste paper" (p.59). Overfeeding causes a person's metabolic rate to speed up when asleep of at rest (p.62). Your metabolic rate determines whether you'll stay slim, or get fat easily. Activity will change your metabolic rate, exercise will build lean tissue. Eating a lot of sugar is bad because it contains no vitamins or minerals. Its digestion subtracts nutrients from the body. The most nutritious parts of meat (blood and guts) are usually discarded (p.81). Heart disease and obesity become epidemic about twenty years after a population starts to consume more than seventy pounds of sugar a year (p.102). Be aware that many processed foods are high in sugar (Table I, p.115). Pages 127-8 tell of a painless and effortless manner to lose weight: eat four slices of whole wheat bread before each meal. If you want to lose fat and gain health, do not go on a diet and do not eat processed foods, especially sugar (p.129). Some food of animal origin is exceptionally nutritious: fish, game animals and game birds above all. Their flesh is lower in fat, and their fats are high in essential fatty acids (p.15). (Another argument for hunting?) He tells of a study that compared runners to sedentary people; the former were lighter than the latter, yet ate more. "Lose weight, eat more. Gain weight, eat less" (p.175). So what about all those "fast days" promulgated by some religions in the springtime? I think it was an attempt to modify people's metabolisms so as to extend dwindling food supplies. A true "miracle of the loaves and fishes"?
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