It’s everywhere.  We hear all the time about this or that top rated diet pill or program.  But what is (or should be) the real goal in losing weight?  To be thin?  Or to be healthy?  See, if the goal is to be thin, then the means are irrelevant, so long as they produce the desired end.  But if the goal is to be healthy, then using unhealthy means to get there is counterproductive.  And cutting calories (unless one was taking in an inordinate number of calories in the first place) is generally not healthy.

What?!  But to lose weight, I have to take in fewer calories, don’t I?  Not necessarily.  The process of metabolism is actually much more complex than that.  According to Adelle Davis in Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit, around 150 years ago, women consumed an average of 4,000-4,500 calories per day!  (Men consumed, on average, 6,000-6,500.)  We know that Americans today, overall, are much fatter than 150 years ago, so what gives?  To a degree, it’s a matter of lifestyle – they got more exercise from an average day than we do.  But stop and figure up just how much you’d have to do to burn that many calories, and you will quickly realize that amount of exercise cannot be the whole solution to the dilemma.  The real key is, it isn’t how much they ate, it’s what they ate.

Our diets today are much, much different from the average diet 150 years ago.  We eat a lot of refined, processed foods.  And we eat a lot of carbohydrates.  Diets today are often pretty skimpy on protein, especially at breakfast, which sets the dietary tone for the rest of the day.  Our foods are stripped of nutrients, provoking our bodies to crave more and more and more in a futile quest for the nourishing things they desperately need.  And many of us eat sporadically, throwing our bodies into tailspins of confusion.

So…the best diet?  Eat plenty of whole, unrefined foods, including lots of protein, organic when possible (because it will have greater nutrient content than conventional), and don’t skip meals!