Category: Eat, Drink, and Move That Body!

… to Niemoller.

When it was melamine in the cat food, I said nothing, for I did not use that brand of cat food.

When it was anti-freeze in the toothpaste, I said nothing, for that brand of toothpaste is supposedly not even imported to this country.

But now it is fugu in the monkfish, and even though I have probably not had monkfish in 20 years, I’m saying something. I’m not even sure how one would confuse the two!

Here are some pictures of fugu. Here are some more. The Wikipedia article on them includes this picture:

Ok, now here are some pictures of monkfish. They aren’t even close to the same shape! The official NOAA FAQ on monkfish includes this picture:

I’ve left that picture bigger than the other to illustrate a point: Monkfish are a lot bigger than fugu, as this restauranteur and Julia Childs illustrate.

Now, even before this news broke, the United States was asking for changes to the “food safety relationship” with China. And predictably, China doesn’t like it. However, like it or not some changes are critical inasmuch as big agri-business is fighting efforts to put country of origin labels (“COOL”) on food.

So my question is this: how much tainted food does one country have to send us before we start wondering if maybe we should stop letting them send food at all?

In closing: Europe and Japan will likely have more economic growth than the United States this year, so much for being strangled by socialism and high taxes; Congressmice are catching heat about the immigration bill, maybe it will do Trent Lott some good to answer his own phone; Al Gore is “on fire” now that he isn’t running for anything; opposition to the Iraq war is at an all-time high, and all the American people got was a minimum wage hike from their Congressmice (yes I’m still mad, can you tell?); oh yeah, and it turns out “intelligence experts” knew how bad things would get over there; it’s long and long-winded but don’t miss George Lakoff debunking all the spin guys like Harry Reid have been spewing about the war funding bill; and finally one person in Congress who isn’t a Congressmouse. I’m glad I had a chance to vote for him.

Today’s news includes an admission that yes, Laura Bush has had a small skin cancer removed. I’d like to take a minute to quickly discuss the proper care of something I know you have, skin.

My sincere apologies if you are in fact a burn victim with no skin. Moving on.

The nice people at the Skin Cancer Foundation have this to say about the type of cancer Mrs. Bush had removed: it is the second most common form of skin cancer, and ” Like all skin cancers, chronic overexposure to the sun is the primary cause of nearly all cases of squamous cell carcinoma.” It is worth noting that your face is a prime area for such cancers because unlike most other body parts, it is almost never covered by clothing.

Taking care of your skin is not difficult, but it does take a few minutes every day and a little thinking ahead. To me that seems a small price to pay for both preventing cancer and looking good. In fact, I’m going to give you both versions of Skin Care for Humans, the lazy version and the deluxe version.

The lazy version is for you if I can only get you to spend an extra 60 seconds on your skin each day: when you clean your face daily (you are doing that, right? I mean otherwise… ew), use a good quality facial cleanser instead of soap; use a moisturizing sunscreen or sunscreen with moisturizer designed for use on your face each and every day.

When selecting your products, remember that you only have one face. Don’t accept anything inferior to Avon or Neutrogena, even if you are trying to be budget conscious. I like SkinMedica products, personally. Did I mention that I’m a thirty-something woman who gets carded regularly? As for your sunscreen, it should specifically say it blocks both UVA and UVB rays and have an SPF of at least 15. I specify a moisturizing sunscreen because it reduces the number of products used by combining two things everybody needs. And yes, you need sunscreen every day, even in Seattle, even if you are “just going to and from the car.” If you spend 5 minutes outdoors 12 times a day, that’s still an hour; you wouldn’t spend an hour in the sun without sunscreen, would you? And the nice folks at Cancer Research UK tell us that “Untreated glass, water and clouds are not good shields against UV radiation,” and “Even on overcast skies, 30-40% of UV will still penetrate through cloud cover.”

Now then, if I can get you to spend 5 minutes a day on your face, here’s the Deluxe 4 Step Skin Care for Humans Plan. Follow these steps twice daily:

Clean. Good quality facial cleanser. Use your hands instead of a washcloth, because the lines in your hands are just exactly abrasive enough to get stuff like dirt and loose skin off your face without ripping healthy skin cells off your face. Pat dry with towel when you are done instead of rubbing, for the same reason. Folks with facial peircings have already figured this one out the hard way.

Tone. Ideally, your toner should be made by the same company that made your cleanser. The purpose of toner is to bring your face back to a normal pH after cleaning or other treatments, and prep it for the next step.

Serums and/or eye cream. A serum is nothing more complicated than a skin treatment. There are more serums out there than you can shake a stick at. You have anti-oxidant serums such as vitamin C, and you have retinol based serums, and hydroquinone serums for getting rid of dark spots, and acne serums with ingredients like benzoyl peroxide or salicytic acid. Basically anything you would apply to your face to address a problem goes here. Make sure you let this product dry before doing anything else.

Sunscreen/moisturizer. Suncreen during the day; moisturizer at night. You don’t need sunscreen at night — the mass of the earth does a good job of blocking all the sun’s direct light — so why put it on?

I hope this is helpful. Take care of your skin; it’s attached to you.

China Follow Up: Chinese middle class fights back, making it clear that even people with an oppressive government can (and do!) fight back when necessary; the Chicago Tribune onthe ecologic effect of cheap Chinese goods such as cashmere; the AFP in a news item that doesn’t even mention China but illustrates the economic effect of cheap Chinese goods; a Chinese spin on the soup kitchen, or a publicity stunt?; and finally the Chinese experiment with a city run on cheap migrant labor is a failure, but the migrants are too poor to leave the sinking ship. A choice quote:

Among Chinese economic planners, Shenzhen’s recipe is increasingly seen as all but irrelevant: too harsh, too wasteful, too polluted, too dependent on the churning, ceaseless turnover of migrant labor.

“This path is now a dead end,” said Zhao Xiao, an economist and former adviser to the Chinese State Council, or cabinet. After cataloging the city’s problems, he said, “Governments can’t count on the beauty of investment covering up 100 other kinds of ugliness.”

Gee, sounds like they have figured out what Americans have not.

In closing: Wil Wheaton’s Security Theatre Experience; a news item not to be underestimated, Japan rolls back pacifist pillars; CNN brings you 6 strategies to survive the coming real estate bust, particularly if you are in one of the 10 housing markets they think is poised to fall in 2007; and finally don’t blame Taco Bell for the problems of big corporate agri-business.

The world is making my brain hurt today. Between Republicans blaming Democrats for a Republican aide outing a Republican pedophile, The President being pleased with the economy despite the fact that job growth was only a third of what it needed to be in September, news that four times as many Iraqi cops have died in the last 2 years as American soldiers, the continued assault on Constitutionally protected rights and Constitutionally mandated division of governmental powers, and all the other stuff going on, it’s hard to single out one most important thing. So I am going to take a deep breath and talk about something else. And since we all eat food, it is relevant.
I like food. And I like to think I am a decent enough cook. By this I mean that I can generally follow a good recipe, and I can make food that does not involve boxed dinners, packets of seasoning mix, or canned soup. Although I use several internet recipe sources, that only is a useful strategy if you know exactly what you want to cook in the first place. Go ahead, google for “chicken recipes” and find yourself buried under millions of links. The fact of the matter is that there’s nothing like looking through a good cookbook to give you new ideas and help you through “well, I went crazy at the Asian market, now what do I do with this stuff I bought?”

Although I own quite a few cookbooks, there are really only a few that get used often. Please allow me to share them with you.

Such a list would be incomplete if I did not start with the classics: The Joy of Cooking. This is my go-to book for classic recipes (biscuits, quiche, pretty much anything “basic”) and general information about any given foodstuff. All the directions are straightforward, although you will want to read through a recipe in entirety before getting started, as ingredient lists are presented on an as-needed basis. A new edition comes out at the end of the month, so think Christmas present for anybody you know who will be moving out on their own soon (getting married, graduating college, whatever).

How to Cook Everything is a worthy successor to Joy and Betty and their ilk. This book does contain some advanced recipes in addition to some very basic ones. There are many recipes that are vegetarian/vegan, or can easily be made so by omiting optional ingredients, using olive oil instead of butter, etc.. There’s also a basic version.

I so wanted to love Alton Brown’s cookbook. But frankly, the layout sucked. It’s hard to read, let alone cook from. There’s lots of great information on the science behind cooking, but relatively few recipes. Maybe this will be fixed in version 2.0, but I’m not lining up to pre-order it. Alton, sweetheart, it is clear from recent episodes of your show (two episodes on water? Please!) that you are having a hard time with ideas. May I recommend you pick up a copy of either of my first two selections and work your way through the veggies chapter? That will keep in you new episodes for at least a couple years! I mean can’t you think of a half hour worth of things to say about rutabagas?

Well, I just panned one celebrity cookbook, so it’s only fair I rave about a different celebrity cookbook. Ted Allen’s cookbook is well worth buying. Mine came with a plastic book cover that wipes clean from the inevitable things you will get on it. He covers everything from how to have a cocktail party to how to cook things outdoors to what to do if you invite vegans to dinner.

My last favorite must have item is an apparently out-of-print cookbook by the California Culinary Academy entitled “Cooking A to Z.” Beautifully illustrated, encylopedic format to help you easily find what you need, concise information about any ingredient or techinique, and good recipes as a bonus.

If you want to get into cuisines of the world but don’t know where to begin, this last title is a good place to start: The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors: Recipes You Should Have Gotten from Your Grandmother. This book is no substitute for books that specialize in one ethnic food at a time, but it will get you started, and show you what shelf of Borders you should be browsing for more information on your favorite cuisine.
In Closing, IgNobel prize winners for 2006 include researchers who published a paper called “Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage”; a disturbing trend, nutcases storming schools (where they do not belong, so measures designed to stop students with guns will have little or no effect) and specifically targeting girls (what’s up with that? Welcome to the Middle East or the Middle Ages?); and an all too true cartoon.

Yes yes, I’ve said it before, but there’s yet another new study — actually a study that looked at 30 studies published over the last 40 years — that supports what I’ve been saying for a long time. Americans drink lots of sugary sodas with no nutritional value, and as a result gain weight. Did you know that an extra can of soda daily can cause you to gain 15 pounds in a year? And that’s a 12 ounce can, not the 20 ounce bottle you’ll find at most convenience stores. Maybe you weren’t aware that on average Americans get 8-9% of their total calories from sugary beverages.

Super-sized cheesy poofs and snacky cakes are part of the American obesity problem, sure. But 8% of your calories coming from sugary drinks could sure explain why your pants are a bit tight.

Oh, the USA Today version of the article includes quotes from two scientists who are paid by such “impartial” groups as the American Beverage Association that amount to “Waah! They didn’t use the two studies that say what we wanted them to say!” Nope, in the Associated Press’s words, they only used “40 years of nutrition studies that met strict standards for relevance and scientific muster.” (Emphasis mine)

Want a healthier diet? Not ready to run out and buy a copy of Diet for a Dead Planet? Start by cutting the soda. Maybe it won’t cause the pounds to melt away, but getting rid of the calories that come from sugary drinks has to be a good start.

In closing, The BBC confirms that employers don’t want to hire people who can’t use the language properly; Windows users, get that security update ASAP; “Polite Advice for Mainstream Journalists”; Maya’s Granny offers concise wisdom on why Lieberman lost; Seeing the Forest has an interesting view on the draft; and finally American Academy of Pediatrics offers more advice parents can’t follow, “warn[ing] parents against placing children in shopping carts and… advising they look for alternatives.” Alternatives? Like what? Having groceries delivered, or maybe pushing a stroller in addition to a cart? Even coverage of the study says “that child restraints in shopping carts are just part of the solution and that shopping carts need to be redesign to prevent them tipping over and the current safety standard strengthened to prevent such injuries.” Of course they don’t mention paying attention to junior while you shop. These are the same people who recommend that children under the age of two not watch any tv under any circumstances, effectively meaning no tv for the whole family if “the baby” is awake. Too bad if your pre-schooler wants to watch Sesame Street. Too bad if you want to see the news.

It seems like when I was a kid, “food poisoning” was something that happened if Aunt Margaret left the macaroni salad in the sun too long, or what your brother got if he actually ate what came out of that puffed-up can in the pantry. Sure, Great Aunt Gertrude said that you should never ever lick the beaters when she made cookies because raw eggs carried a risk of salmonella, but you’d never heard of that actually happening to anybody, and you secretly beleived she told you that just to keep you out of the kitchen while she was baking.

Then we all got older. We would help out in the kitchen, and if a tablespoon or so of ground beef got put into our mouths intead of directly into the meatloaf mix, that was ok. Just don’t ever do that with pork or poultry, ok? Mom would say.

Maybe you remember Thanksgiving turkey. Mom would always get way-too-big a bird and you’d be eating turkey until December 1. And then she’d get a big roast beef for Christmas and the leftovers would last several days. Last year you cooked a turkey for Thanksgiving and the leftovers were barely palatable on the Saturday after. As much as you like roast beef, you didn’t have the courage to cook it yourself.

Then we got older still, and The Authorities said we must be sure we cook meat completely or we risk DEATH from food-bourne pathogens. Now, some of us who had paid attention in Social Studies remembered reading that in third world nations like Ethiopia, they eat raw beef all the time. Some of us started to wonder how exactly they could serve raw beef safely there when we had to cook it silly here, in the land of refrigerators and cattle drives.

Time continued to move, and now Great Aunt Gertrude’s caution is standard, and most people would never think to order a hamburger medium rare — assuming they are someplace where a burger is thick enough to be more than either “raw” or “well done”. I haven’t done beef since 2003, when the United States identified its first case of “mad cow disease.” Now, of course, we are all waiting to see if bird flu will effect poultry flocks in the Western Hemisphere, and whether or not it will spread to humans and become a pandemic.

As if the risk of pathogens was not enough, I first became aware that the food we were eating was maybe not as nutritious as might be optimum a dozen years ago after reading a book called “Please, Doctor, Do Something.” I quickly progressed to the writings of people like Andrew Weil, and came to think that just maybe, more of the household food should come from places that sold organic products. It turns out that many other households have decided the same thing, and now demand for organic products exceeds supply. We already risk weakened rules on organic food, and this news will put further pressure on the system.

My vegetarian friends know that around the beginning of the year, I started asking questions and prowling around for favorite cookbooks. I do not run a fully vegetarian household; it’s loosely pescatarian if not flexitarian. Nor do we eat this way for any kind of spiritual ideal. When I started to consider the idea that “all life is sacred,” I failed to come up with any reason why animal life should be more sacred than plant life. Since just about everything that humans can eat comes from animals or plants, I quickly decided that this was not an adequate yardstick by which I could measure a diet.

Nevertheless, it was clear that our food supply was in trouble, and meat was a riskier proposition than veggies, so we tried “going veggie” for a week. Then we went on a second week. I emptied the freezer of leftover meat one meal at a time, and we kept on eating a largely pescatarian menu. Week after week progressed, and we ate more veggies, fish a couple times a week, but no real meat except occasionally at restaurants. We don’t use a lot of meat substitutes, either.

Fast forward to last week, when for the first time in months, I bought and cooked chicken. More specifically, I bought frozen chicken, took it directly home, put it directly in the freezer, defrosted it days later, and immediately cooked it. If you care, I made Chicken Stroganov, a family favorite that just doesn’t work with tofu. We put the leftovers away immediately after dinner.

The next morning, the leftovers were not fit for human consumption. It was a plastic container of gamey, unappetizing goo.

Our food quality in this nation is continuing to decline. Casual conversations reveal that it is not my imagination that meat just doesn’t keep like it used to. For that matter, onions are much more bitter than they used to be, and tomatos are much mushier than they used to be. The very idea that food quality is declining in quality in “the richest nation on earth” is quite repugnant to me, but I am at a loss for what to do.

What has gone wrong with our food supply, and what can we do to fix it?

In closing, Dick Cheney betting on economic collapse; a late cartoon for Independence Day; we don’t have an illegal immigration problem but rather an illegal employer problem; 20 amazing facts about voting in the United States; maybe we can’t find Osama because we are no longer looking but at least he helped Bush win in 2004; and gas prices stall prices of big vehicles.

Some years back, I was reading a medical journal called The Cortland Forum. Now, those of you familiar with medical journals know you are more likely to find this one in your doctor’s bathroom than his private office. It’s about 20% cartoons by volume. However, there is a section where doctors get to outline “interesting cases” they have encountered. The one I am thinking of right now involved a man whose wife had made him an appointment, concerned that he’d lost a bunch of weight despite not actually changing his diet much. It turned out this fellow drank copious amounts of soda at work — like multiple two liter bottles daily — and had recently switched from regular to sugar-free varieties. Gee, imagine that; cut a thousand calories from your daily diet and watch the pounds melt away.

And this brings us to last Monday’s L.A. Times. Researchers in Massachusetts did a study and found that teenagers can lose weight by simply switching to beverages that do not contain sugar. This should not be a revelation! I have always said you have to watch sugars — even the naturally occurring ones — to lose weight. The FDA says if you want to lose weight you need to pay attention to the calories you drink. So do the folks at Kid’s Health and the folks at Family Doctor. This is hardly cutting-edge research. Just remember the next time you reach for a glass of orange juice that if you want to lose weight, you are better off just eating the whole orange.

On an only sort of related note, I’d like to talk about Food In Bar Form. It turns out they may well be Candy Bars that Taste Bad. If you must eat the darn things, remember that Not all of them are good for you. These folks recommend “It can be confusing, but you want to look for whole grains, brown rice syrup, something that’s complex. You want to stay away from things that are refined, that have preservatives – anything you can’t pronounce.” Well heck, wouldn’t it be simpler to eat a piece of fruit or a packet of nuts? Heck, make it a balanced diet and eat both! It sure seems like the real purpose of these bars is to suck money out of your pocket $2 at a time.

It’s December, and the parade of food has begun. The cookies, candies, parties, and special meals won’t let up until you’ve shoveled black-eyed peas into your mouth on New Years Day. Figure in Thanksgiving, and you have six straight weeks of assorted feasting. Nobody can really blame you for putting on a few pounds over the holidays, can they?

This fellow came up with a novel diet plan: he only eats when he is hungry. That means not eating because “Gosh, that looks good” or “Everybody else is” or “It’s on my plate” or “It will just go to waste if I don’t” or “It’s lunchtime” or “It’s traditional” or even (particularly) “I’m depressed/stressed/tired/bored.”

He lost 50 pounds that way, and kept it off. His buddy tried it, lost 35 pounds, and seems to be keeping it off. They eat whatever strikes them, without counting calories or fat grams or carbohydrate grams, and stop when they are full. There are no forbidden foods. They do eat their vegetables.

Sounds worth a try, doesn’t it?

If you don’t like that idea, there’s the No S Diet. Here’s a fellow who decided to say NO to Sweets, Snacks, and Seconds except Sometimes on Special days. I like the fact that he admits up front that you can’t lose weight by eating a lot of sugar. I like even more that he addresses (like the first fellow) that our overriding diet problem as Americans is we just eat too darn much. And I really like the fact that it allows for a treat on the weekends or a piece of cake on your birthday. His approach to diet is very honest, and it’s worth a read no matter what your dietary paradigm. It’s hard to argue with his results.

In closing, the housing bubble may deflate slowly as Americans Just Say No to overpriced real estate markets, the GOP says they want to start a secret biological research and defense agency, but it sounds more like a biological warfare facility to me, more states start to say “No, thanks!” to Federal education dollars, how to reduce your chances of being hacked, and finally by way of follow up, I told you months ago that DINOs like Joe Lieberman should expect to have their Congressional seats challenged.

Ok, I am going to say this one more time. Nutritious food does not naturally grow in bar form.

I have never been a fan of “diet” plans whose “plan” is for you to give them money for the rest of your life. Did you ever notice that the skinny girl who used to be fat in the diet shake ad mentions that she still drinks her lunch every day? Or that the big weight loss club wants you to be a member for ever and oh yes don’t forget to buy their frozen entrees? These plans make that guy who lost weight eating fresh sandwiches seem like a genius; it’s the only sustainable plan, and he’s also the only one who seems to keep the weight off. And note: all these plans involve you giving them money; only the sandwich guy’s plan can be done without paying someone. You can figure out how to make a sandwich at home, right?

In the beginning, the Atkins Diet was about eating plenty of protein, adequate fat, minimal carbohydrates, and no refined sugar. In the practical realm, this meant plenty of meat, dairy products, legumes, nuts, and non-strarchy veggies — anyone who says no veggies are allowed does not know what they are talking about — but no junk food. It helped people be honest with themselves and say “I am on a diet, therefore I cannot have cookies and cake and candy.” The protein helped people keep from feeling hungry all the time. People lost a lot of weight doing this. Because little pre-processed food met these dietary criteria, people ended up eating relatively unprocessed foods: cheese instead of Cheez-Whiz; roasted nuts instead of Chex Mix; steamed veggies instead of “vegetable mix with creamy sauce”; hamburger without bun instead of Hamburger Helper.

There are two basic problems with this. For the dieter, the problem is that food must be thought about and prepared. Dinner was more complicated than sticking a frozen pre-cooked meat-wad in the microwave. On the go food was an even bigger issue, given our hectic daily lives and the fact that many low-carb foods require refrigeration. Just about the only diet friendly item you could keep in your desk drawer was a package of nuts. Never mind that this “problem” actually kept you from eating calories you probably didn’t need.

The other problem was even more serious, at least to the big food conglomerates. There were entire aisles of the grocery store that low-carb people weren’t even going down! Entire categories of food they weren’t buying! This could negatively impact profits.

Atkins Nutritionals is the company founded by Dr. Atkins in 1989 as essentially his promotional arm. Around this same time, according to the site’s timeline, they started selling vitamins. By this time, Atkins himself had already been writing books on diet and nutrition for well over a decade. By the turn of the millennium, they were selling meal replacement bars. At present, they sell meal replacement bars, low carb “candy” bars (never mind that dieters shouldn’t be eating candy), quick breakfast foods (apparently a hard boiled egg or a hunk of cheese or some lunch-meat is too complicated), supplements, and “quick cuisine” (mostly baking mixes). They also have “partnerships” with such companies as TGI Friday’s and eDiets.com.

They solved the “no pre-prepared foods” problem themselves. And one must assume they made some money doing it.

Made. Past tense.

Due to a combination of reduced popularity of the diet and increased competition, Atkins Nutritionals filed for bankruptcy. This is a debt restructuring type of bankruptcy, and contrary to what the LA Times says, not a going away forever type of bankruptcy. According to the company, they will adjust their focus and continue onward.

The bottom line is that they misread their market, over-expanded, and tried to sell stuff people did not want or need. It’s one thing to have one of those bars in your desk in case you just can’t get away for lunch. It’s another thing for that to be a regular meal.

With a handful of exceptions, diet food is not about making you skinny, it’s about making some company rich.

A few things in closing: what some real diplomats have to say about Bolton, a bad idea with a great tagline (unless you like libertarianism turning to anarchy, in which case enjoy!), consumer spending rising faster than consumer incomes although some of the rise was thanks to GM’s employee price for everyone promotion, and finally Medicaid now covers a third of the population, meaning a single payer health care system is a lot closer than anybody thought.

Just a short note about two news items that relate to my last missive on weight loss. Today’s big revelation is that calories matter when you are trying to lose weight. Furthermore, exercise is good for you. Even the article concedes that “The advice is not really new.”

The other news is that there seems to be a link between weight and sleep. Specifically, people who sleep less are more likely to be overweight. Without invoking any science whatsoever, there are a couple of common sense reasons this might be so. Perhaps people who are tired are trying to get more energy by eating more food, when what they really need is a nap. This might be conscious or unconscious. The other unscientific but common sense explanation is that most people do not eat while they are asleep.

In any event, adequate sleep, exercise, and moderate quantities of nutritious food are good for human beings. Science confirms it.

Christmas is over, the clearance sales are picked over, the Christmas cookies are getting stale, the roast beast is mostly gone, and the time has come to consider the New Year fast approaching.

Once more, retail-land is getting rid of those winter clothes, because goodness knows we all want to buy shorts for January. And of course, if you want to look good in those shorts, you may want to pay attention to how much of this week’s Target circular is dedicated to workout gear.

You’ve heard the figures before, and they aren’t getting better: about 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese. The best thing we can say is yeah, but at least Americans are smoking less.

I have written my thoughts concerning weight loss before, but some things bear repeating, revising, or additions. Disclaimer: I lost a bunch of weight some years back and kept it off; so did certain other members of my family; right now I know people who are in the process of losing what I consider to be a lot of weight, and I would like congratulate them for their progress in a very difficult task.

First, BMI is not a crock. It is not the only thing a person should consider when looking at his or her weight, but it does mean something. Unless you are a professional athlete –in which case, defer to your trainer’s judgment — it is worth getting your BMI to 25 or lower. Frankly, the overwhelming majority of people who talk about the inaccuracy of BMI are overweight or obese.

You don’t have to buy her book, but one thing Susan Powter was right about is that you do have to move and you do have to eat. Losing weight is not as simple as skipping meals or bouts of self-destructive exercise. In fact, skipping breakfast or lunch is counterproductive, as your body thinks it is smarter than you and will hoard calories until the self-induced “famine” is over. Breakfast really is important, and should ideally be something nutritious.

Next, added sugar is still the deadly enemy of weight loss. I am not talking about the natural sugars you will find in fruits and vegetables, I am talking about sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, and sugar by any other name. New research keeps saying so, much to the displeasure of the Corn Refiners Association. As I have said before, Dean Ornish never said you could lose weight by switching from Snickers bars to (fat free) Twizzlers.

Calories still matter. You can’t eat huge quantities of even healthy food and expect to lose weight. A thousand calories worth of fresh fruit is still a thousand calories. You have to pay attention to serving sizes, and sometimes what a package calls a serving is unrealistically small. For that matter your body still needs protein. If you fail to eat enough protein, your body will take what it needs out of your muscles, making you less fit. This is particularly true if you do not exercise.

You don’t need prepared foods. This one is tough, but eating a pear is better for you than eating a canned pear (which has added sugar) or pear juice (which has less fiber). You don’t need someone to add sugar, preservatives, colors, and/or unpronounceable chemicals to your food. This counts double for at least 90% of reduced fat, reduced carbohydrate, or other “diet” foods.

Anybody who is trying to lose weight should not consume “sports nutrition” products. If a half hour on the stationary bike is burning 130 calories, and a 20 oz bottle of Gatorade is 140 calories, well, you see my point.

Don’t forget to drink water. If you have to put something in your mouth, let it be water. You might not need 8 cups of water every day, but it’s better for you than a lot of things.

Don’t forget to move your body. I am not saying that you need to buy large pieces of exercise equipment, or sign up at the YMCA. I am saying that physical activity is good, even if it’s a brisk walk around the mall — without a latte! It has to be something you can (and can stand to) do 3 to 6 days a week, every week. If you are claiming lack of time, maybe you can find or think of an exercise regimen that can be done during your favorite TV show. Don’t worry if it isn’t “fun.” It isn’t about “fun;” it’s about how you look in the mirror.

Finally, your body is the result of your lifestyle. This means several things. First, you will have to make changes to lose weight. Second, you will have to maintain certain of those changes if you intend to keep weight off. Funny thing, if you go back to what made you fat in the first place, you will get fat again.

You can do this. In fact, you are the only person who can get you to do it.