Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison

Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating by Christy Harrison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

On the one hand, yes, (1) I see all her social justice points. Very well done. (2) I agree with the culture being a diet-culture complete mess. (3) I agree it helps the diet industry. (4) I agree it's a life-thief. I'm definitely glad I read the book.

On the other hand, (1) I'm not 100% convinced about the health benefits or drawbacks to her position. Even if I take her point that the research is unclear, well, it's still unclear. When I was pregnant with my first child I was very heavy and that was no fun at all. It was tough going up the stairs. I don't relish ever returning to that number on the scale because it had consequences even though I was "healthy" because my body was doing what it was supposed to be doing- growing a human life and building up fat to feed the baby. (2) My personal experience with long periods of intuitive eating is that I just gain and gain weight and never plateau. I don't think I'm alone in this. (3) My only periods of weight maintenance have been while I am dieting. And my current diet doesn't benefit the diet industry because while I don't deny myself any foods I do try to eat more fruits and veggies and eat in a certain time frame. It doesn't cost more money because eating less food and less food at restaurants is costing me less money. Finally, (4) let's not pretend that her position doesn't benefit the food industry. As a former employee of the food industry, this is the exact kind of book they would love to champion. For an obvious example, soda is trash food. Sure you can have it as an occasional treat; nothing really needs to be off the menu. But if you're having soda every day, I promise you that's harming your health. There are a million studies about this.

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1HI1...

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Why Diets Make Us Fat by Sandra Aamodt

Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession with Weight Loss by Sandra Aamodt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This strikes me as an irresponsible title and first few chapters. The author has clearly looked at a lot of weight studies, though she’s often drawn aggressive conclusions that all diets make you gain weight. Some of the diets aren’t even diets but actual periods of starvation that caused food-related psychological issues.

As the author herself states, there are numerous reasons why people gain weight, not just as the first few chapters suggest, the actual act of dieting. By Chapter 9, she’s listing people who can’t lose weight through intuitive eating. By Chapter 10, she’s discussing how the food environment is itself a huge factor in causing weight gain.

She’s also underplayed the importance of achieving a lower weight- even temporarily- to lifespan.

Maybe start with Chapter 11, and read chapters 1-10 in backward order.


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The Fast 800 by Michael Mosley

The Fast 800: How to Combine Rapid Weight Loss and Intermittent Fasting for Long-Term Health by Michael Mosley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In 2015, I did 5:2 and lost about 15 pounds. I stopped doing the diet and gained back the weight in two years. I lost the weight at the same slow rate as I have on any other diet (WW, Atkins, arbitrary calorie limitation). Back then, time-restricted eating wasn't a big thing but I quickly realized that if I was going to limit to 500 calories I had to put off eating as long as possible. Since I've gained the weight back and read tons of diet and nutrition books, I've come to the conclusion that all diets work, the only really hard part is maintenance. I actually think this is a diet I could stay on forever this time because it only requires Mediterranean-style eating once you reach goal weight and if you don't stop weighing yourself, you can correct small weight gains very quickly.

I like this diet because 1) based on all my reading, it is the most scientifically up-to-date, 2) it's free to implement it, 3) I find it very empowering to be able to skip breakfast and do very low-calorie days but also to be able to easily take days off, 4) I think I might be able to maintain this new form. I advise you to take every single thing he says very seriously though. I even have a friend-support group this time.

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Wasted by Marya Hornbacher

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Riveting memoir with very interesting insights into family, psychology, loneliness, and life in general. Kindle and Goodreads tell me that I highlighted 49 sentences or passages, which should give you an idea of how much I valued this writing. A lot of people are overly focused on the fact that the memoir is about the author's struggle with anorexia, but to me, the part I valued most was the author's honest and brilliantly written struggle with despair, depression, and just life itself. It is a bit lopsided because she discusses her pseudo-recoveries after her first two hospitalizations but not after the third, but perhaps her next memoir, which I plan to read, covers that more.

As I said, I highlighted many sentences in the memoir, but this one is so me, haha: "I was my parents' only child, which is unfortunate because you are their pride and joy and the bane of their existence all at once."

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The Food Therapist by Shira Lenchewski

The Food Therapist: Break Bad Habits, Eat with Intention, and Indulge Without Worry by Shira Lenchewski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was pretty good. It had some good points and good tips. My main problem with it is that it entirely dismissed the fasting diets and there is a lot of science to support both their efficacy and their long-term health benefits, so just dismissing them without any explanation seemed very unscientific to me. That said, most of what she recommends here works well with fasting diets, and makes the fasting diets more likely to stick. On the flip side, fasting diets make Lenchewski's suggestions easier to implement. Lenchewski's suggestions also fall in line with what commercial diets like Weight Watchers aim to make clients do (though they mostly hide it behind their point system so you keep paying them).

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Proteinaholic by Garth Davis

Proteinaholic: How Our Obsession with Meat Is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It by Garth Davis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Davis is persuasive that animal-derived products are mostly terrible for you. I especially enjoyed the section where he explains to the public how to look at scientific studies. I also enjoyed the very scientific bent of the book with study after study because I generally enjoy super-nerdy-science reading.

This book isn't a diet book though. He's strong on the not-eating-meat point, but he doesn't spend much time on other things you shouldn't eat, and he only spends a little bit of time on things he thinks you should eat. I suspect that the vast majority of his research was on meat only, and he has very little idea about the specifics of say, wheat. I'm dubious based on the science that I've read that wheat is a healthy food to consume. Yes, maybe meat is even worse, but that doesn't mean you'll do great on a high wheat diet. The Okinawans don't eat much meat- though they do eat some fish- and they don't eat wheat. I don't doubt that some very specific healthy wheat products are available (and likely to go bad quickly because of lack of preservatives), but it seems like the majority of wheat products are pretty bad. And sugar is the devil.

Conclusion: working on cutting the animal products out of my diet.

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Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Pretty boring, fairly disorganized, but occasionally has some interesting information. I love fish eggs of any kind so I kind of enjoyed that (very short) part in particular. If the apocalypse hits this book would probably be handy since we'll have to figure out how to obtain salt and keep food fresh all on our own. ;)

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The Longevity Diet by Valter Longo

The Longevity Diet: Discover the New Science Behind Stem Cell Activation and Regeneration to Slow Aging, Fight Disease, and Optimize Weight by Valter Longo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I trust Dr. Longo's research, he's a recognized expert, but I don't think this plan is very useful to normal people. The concept is basically this: do the Longo "Fasting Mimicking Diet" for 5 days a month, every month. The rest of the time, eat the Mediterranean diet and exercise 5-7 hours a week. Okay.

So my problems with the Fasting Mimicking Diet is that it's super hard. Mind you, I've done "every other day fasting" for three months (then I fell off) and I've done time-restricted eating: not eating for 16 hours, and eating for 8. So my objection about difficulty is not fasting per se. It's that eating 800 calories a day for 5 days sounds harder than a water fast for 5 days because hunger actually decreases on a real fast. This low-calorie diet results in constant hunger for 5 days. So maybe I'd actually try what he recommends but just substitute a water fast? (I am not a doctor so you definitely should not follow any of my ideas or advice.)

Then I also have a number of objection about the OPTIONAL ProLon product they sell- just the food measured out for the 5 days so it's a no-brainer for you:
1) Anytime you're trying to sell me something I lose trust in the science (even though it is tempered in this case by the fact that Longo claims to make no personal profit)
2) ProLon isn't real food but packets of things you mix or whatever. Yuck.
3) It's super expensive $250 a box (one box lasts for the one-month 5-day fast) unless you buy a year supply in advance. No. Just no.

A counterargument to my complaints: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpN5V...



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The Gut Balance Revolution by Gerard E. Mullin

The Gut Balance Revolution: Boost Your Metabolism, Restore Your Inner Ecology, and Lose the Weight for Good! by Gerard E. Mullin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

5 stars for nutrition and biology research. I’ll give the actual diet a try and get back to the rating and review. I suspect it works- as the author himself admits, all diets work initially. The issue is if it can be easily maintained. I’ll probably be combining with Alternate Day Fasting (ADF) so my attempt might not be especially instructive to others.

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Pandemic by Sonia Shah

Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond by Sonia Shah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the more interesting science books I've read in a long time, and one of the most important. I strongly recommend it to everyone. I'm also going to try some of the books recommended below.

The author does spend too much time on cholera history in the middle of the book- interesting but not the only focus of the book so it feels belabored. Power through it, it's worth it.

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Sugar: The World Corrupted by James Walvin

Sugar: The World Corrupted: From Slavery to Obesity by James Walvin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While it did get better starting around chapter 11, there was not a lot of new information here. I didn’t think the time regarding slavery was appropriate. The author discussed it in a very matter of fact way. If you’re going to discuss how sugar contributed to an increase in slavery then you better discuss the horrors and the long-term consequences of that horror otherwise the entire point of discussing it is lost. To a lesser degree, the author also did this with the nutritional effects of sugar. Okay we know it contributes to obesity but what about the medical horrors of diabetes, kidney disease, and cancer?

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The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I first read this book in 2007, I gave it 4 stars. Since then I've read other books on the farming-industrial complex, and on a reread I found a lot to appreciate about this book in particular. It's a well-researched, thorough look at different ways we can choose to eat an omnivore diet. It talks about the corn industry, the chicken/egg industry, the beef industry, small sustainable farms and farmers' markets, and hunting and gathering in America.

My reread reminded me to pay more attention to what I'm eating since after 10 years I've slipped back a little to including some processed foods in our diet again.

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A Guide to Wine by Julian Curry

A Guide to Wine by Julian Curry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first 40% or so was interesting, but the last 60% did a very summary of some of the most popular wine regions, and this part, in particular, was less valuable in audiobook form. (It doesn't appear to come in ebook or paperback.)

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Wheat Belly by William Davis

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health by William Davis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book starts out simply but becomes more medically complex as you read on. I almost gave up after the first few chapters because I felt that I got it, don't eat wheat. Later chapters filled in the numerous diseases and conditions that Davis believes are related to wheat consumption and discusses his evidence for that relationship. It's persuasive even if I'm not convinced by the science aspect of it- probably because there are still insufficient studies on many of the connections he cites.

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Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It by Gary Taubes

Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It by Gary Taubes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The substance of what this says is not surprising; it largely agrees with the Atkins or Paleo diet. However, the argument and scientific citations are highly persuasive, and the book is very readable.

I'd recommend reading this book along with The Every-Other-Day Diet: The Diet That Lets You Eat All You Want (Half the Time) and Keep the Weight Off by Krista Varady and The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor by Mark Schatzker.

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Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In many ways this book is more interesting than The Black Swan, and I agree with a lot of what Taleb writes about in the book. I especially enjoyed and agreed with his thoughts on diet. (Really!) But there are also more things in this book that can be picked apart, either because he is wrong or flippantly unclear about them. Maybe that just makes the book more interesting to discuss in a book club or seminar.

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The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker

The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor by Mark Schatzker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Surprisingly good thesis about the cause of the obesity epidemic. The premise is that human (and animals) recognize and crave the nutrients they need by recognizing the appropriate flavors. So for example, strawberries have countless things we need. Therefore, they taste delicious to us. Many plants also have toxins that we tolerate well in low doses, but once we start to consume too much of the toxins our bodies tell us we're full or we stop desiring to eat that particular plant.

However, in the modern era, healthy foods have been bred for mass production and these foods have become less and less tasty. This is an accurate sign that they are also less nutritious now. We mask the lack of flavor with artificial flavors. Sometimes we add vitamins or minerals to things but it's not in the efficient balance nature provides such as in low-calorie nutrient-dense fruits, vegetables, and meats.

So on the one hand, we wrecked the healthy foods- making them less healthy and less tasty. On the other hand, we made delicious unhealthy foods like the book's namesake Doritos. Our instincts tell us tasty = healthy. But now our instinct are wrong. Since our nutritional needs are not properly or completely being met we eat more and more delicious things to fill this nutritional void. But it doesn't work because the tasty things (junk food) don't contain nutrition- in fact, they make us feel worse. Also, they don't contain any of the chemicals or toxins that other foods do that signal our bodies to stop eating.

Most of this is backed up with animal and plant studies, though the author frequently states the need for more research into the science of the link between flavor and nutrition. I especially found this argument interesting because it's a partial rejection of the pure calories theory of weight gain and obesity.



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The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond

The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution & Future of the Human Animal by Jared Diamond
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was both very interesting and entertaining. It precedes Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel. It ties in pretty well with some other books I've recently read including The Sixth Extinction and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and even Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History.

It's a little out-of-date. For example, our ancestor Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals co-existed approximately 100,000 years ago. New research shows that many modern humans contain a little Neanderthal DNA showing that there was interbreeding, whereas Diamond was pretty sure that there was basically no interbreeding.

The title of this book comes from the fact that chimpanzees and pygmy chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than to gorillas. Thus, especially from the perspective of chimps, humans are a third chimp.

Fun topics include the emergence of language in humans, male penis and testes size, sexual selection, adultery, racial variation due to sexual selection not natural selection, aging, menopause as an adaptive solution to childbirth, the arts, agriculture and animal domestication, drug use, the question of intelligent alien life, genocide, and extinction. Whoo. It didn't always feel like it was well-organized or related but it was all very interesting.

Personally, I don't think the menopause explanation makes a lot of sense. It seems like if you weren't well-suited to give birth to your partner's baby, a first or second birth would kill you. At the rate of a baby every 4 years from ages 16-40, you'd be up to 6 births before menopause. Instead, menopause seems to make grandmothers more available to tend to their grandchildren instead of having more babies of their own (think prehistoric Michelle Duggars).

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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is excellent. It's not just another eat-real-food book to make us feel bad about the horror of the food industry in our country. This book is inspirational, scientifically accurate, apolitical, and beautifully written. She practices what she preaches too (though she's not very preachy), so the book is full of her own challenges and reflections on eating locally. Her daughters have clearly gained a lot from this way of life as well. This is a new nonfiction favorite for me.

It remains to be seen if I can implement some of the changes she's inspired, but I'm very optimistic I'll at least make some small but meaningful changes thanks to the book.

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Gulp by Mary Roach

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this right after First Bite because I was in the mood to learn more about eating and feeding. This book is more about digestion and it's full of random facts and ideas rather than being a focused on giving you a complete view of the digestive system. It was entertaining I guess, but I didn't find particular educational, and it was definitely gross.

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