To paraphrase James Carville’s famous campaign slogan for Bill Clinton, America has gotten fat because of the food we eat. It’s not complicated at all. I can already hear the myriad hands waving in the air for attention to tell me that it’s our inactivity. OK, it’s that too, but it’s much more about the diet than the general inactivity of Americans. If you’d like to read why, I refer you to John Walker’s excellent book “The Hacker’s Diet: How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition“. Mr. Walker has always made his work available for free; find it here. For those that are not familiar with Mr. Walker and his work, he is a computer software engineer who created the software packages AutoDesk and AutoCAD. He is not a nutritionist or a physician, but rather an engineer who took an engineering approach to weight control. It is not a touchy feely book and definitely isn’t for everyone, but it’s a great read, particularly for men who want to lose weight and (generally) don’t have as much emotional investment in the process.
In the part of the book where he discusses the futility of simply increasing exercise levels to help lose weight he concludes:
“But don’t delude yourself into thinking that exercise can do the whole job. For many of us, exercising just causes us to eat that little bit more that cancels out its benefits. The calories burned by exercising, even counting the secondary effects on metabolism, can be erased by even the slightest increases in food intake.”
While I’m giving you the conclusion, follow the link above (or on the Links page) to read his incredibly rational and mathematical reasoning on why you have to change your diet to accomplish long lasting weight control.
When you’re convinced, come back here and I’ll tell you why you should go plant based!