Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Spring Break Readings on Health and Dieting

Continuing my research, into the delirious smörgåsbord of dietary options, keeps my head spinning and my stomach confused. Here is a bit of my recent reads: 
To the moderate middle of Paleo-Atkins is The Sugar Busters written by a team of sympathetic doctors, with concrete advice on our cultural abuse of sweeteners... and some half-way measures negotiating between both the pro and anti-fat consumption communities. The scientific dietary debate, whether fat is best enthusiastically consumed or rabidly avoided, still simmers on the stove.
 An enjoyable journalistic approach to the conflicting dietary sciences is New York Times author Gina Kolata's Rethinking Thin. I can not say I felt any more reassured, to the correct dietary solution, but I was told being fat may not be as dangerous as I fear. Is that an encouragement to diet or to surrender, like most, in the plateaus of dietary futility? Perhaps I need to read her Ultimate Fitness: The Quest for Truth about Health and Exercise or, better still, Sex in America: A Definitive Survey.
But beyond my reading in the Zoned world of South Beach Dieting  there was a temporary diversion into HGH (Human Growth Hormone) introduced to me with enthusiasm by a fellow traveler in the Philippines. Another massive topic and one requiring still more research. If I insist on not eating when reading, while continuing a steady diet of weight-loss podcasts when walking on my treadmill, perhaps there is still hope in all this nutritional and fitness research.