Marching Into The Peace Corps, pt 17: What I don’t like about the new Bob Greene diet
It seems every time you turn around, another celebrity has released a diet plan. As I watched the Oprah show unveiling, I had the distinct impression I was watching an infomercial to help one of her friends sell his wares.
Like many people, I parked myself in front of the TV to watch the unveiling of the new Bob Greene diet on the Oprah show. I am naturally skeptical when it comes to big hoopla unveilings, especially when associated with the word “diet”. I felt like I had lost a perfectly good hour of my life watching an infomercial for one of her friends’ products.
As the curtain lifted on the “Bob Greene supermarket”, I was shocked at the kind of choices he put his name on and tried to claim were healthy. A few months ago I would’ve agreed he was right with some of them, but since then I’ve learned how to look at food from a non-diet perspective while achieving the dieting results. Sadly, I’m noticing more and more how difficult it is to believe anyone when it comes to bad dieting advice – especially when they’re branding products and making statements on how this is going to pay for their kid’s college tuition. To hear that statement come out of his mouth was at least honest, but told me not to trust the content.
Most people like to think in order to lose weight you have to redefine your relationship to food. In some ways that’s true, but only half true. When it comes to dieting and food, you must make wise food choices and realize the benefits and/or consequences of them. If you make good choices to begin with, you won’t gain weight; if you make good choices after you’ve become fat, it can help you to lose weight. This is common sense, but most people do not apply the basic principle.
Foods that can help you to lose weight and promote healing are at their best and most potent when they’re in their raw state. Let me use an example and set up a basic ladder to describe choices. An apple with its skin on is in its perfect natural state, and therefore gets an “A” grade. An apple turned into unsweetened applesauce is still a good choice, but because it has been processed, warrants a “B” grade. Turn the apple into apple juice with sugar, and it slips into a “C” grade. Imagine the apple coming out of the oven in the form of a hot apple pie, and it drops to a dismal “D”. The best you can do for your body is to eat “A” and “B” style foods and avoid the added sugar and over processing of “C” and “D” meals and sugary treats.
This is where the “Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle” diet plan trumps Bob Greene’s diet – it’s about making good, solid food choices that do not contain processed or convenience foods. It’s the old saying of “garbage in, garbage out” that proves true once again when it comes to what you put in your mouth. I use this plan myself and personally have never felt better or had more energy on any other prepackaged convenience food plan, and that’s saying a lot!
As Bob Greene and Oprah toured the makeshift supermarket, they showed cereals like Total and Cheerios. These are bad options because the grains have been over processed and ground so fine, the manufacturers can push more calories into the same size. For example, a single Cheerio might weigh the same as five oat grains, but the grains contain fewer calories because after processing the oats, it might take the equivalent of ten ground oat grains to make the Cheerio. You’ve just doubled the calories! Instant oatmeal is also in the same bad category because it’s been over processed and is starchier than its healthier cousin, whole grain oats.
He moved into the frozen foods section and pulled out Green Giant vegetables. This would seem to be a healthy option, but if you pay attention to most of the frozen Green Giant brands, you will notice they are loaded with fattening sauces and lots of sodium. You need to always be on your guard for salt especially in the frozen foods section of your store! Broccoli steamed is a great choice; broccoli drenched in cheese is not a good choice. Of course it tastes better, but if you’re not into working out, then that cheese is just going to stick to your backside.
Next he moved into snack bars, and that aisle is nothing more than a fat and empty calorie aisle. I couldn’t believe my eyes he was promoting this! These bars are nothing but manufactured food and often loaded with salt, sugar, and trans fats – that’s not diet food! It’s the same pitfall on the so-called “diet bars”, so just because they have a “healthy” name or the name of a popular “fad diet” or protein powder name on it doesn’t mean it’s a wise choice. If you can’t identify any of the ingredients on the nutrition label, put it down and walk away from it.
Lastly he moved into the dairy case and talked about yogurt and milk. It’s often talked about how milk really isn’t good for you , but you’d never hear this from the dairy lobby. I can remember growing up and seeing firsthand milk allergies amongst my siblings. I am not sold on soymilk alternatives, as these are also heavily processed products. Either way, recommending 1% milk is still not a good option as you can reduce the fat by drinking fat free or ½% without missing any flavor. As a friend used to like saying to me, “milk is for baby cows, and the reason baby cows drink it is to put on fat.” He’s correct!
Yogurt is also often thought of as a healthy option, but that’s often not true as well. I heard Oprah talking about her favorite Yoplait flavor and how it contained just 90 calories. Well, that’s true, but I would’ve said to her, “yeah, and they’re all coming from sugar which will turn to fat like lightning!” Stop and read the labels – most have an incredible amount of sugar in them, and again, white sugar IS a processed food.
I learned this lesson with Kefir, a smoothie brand with high calcium and pro-biotic cultures. Normally I don’t drink smoothies, but I heard these were good for you and I took their word for it. It was high calcium and low sodium, but I forgot to look at the sugar content. It was off the charts! I didn’t find a single smoothie under 9 grams of sugar, which in my book was still too high. The oldest trick in the book is to replace fat with high amounts of sugar, but if you don’t understand that sugar turns to fat, you’re just substituting fat for fat. That’s not a wise choice!
The smoothie experience had me reading the yogurt labels (I was trying to hide the taste of the bee pollen), and all those “light” or “non-fat” varieties were sky high in sugar. If you’re going to eat yogurt, buy the unsweetened non-fat variety and add your own fruit to it.
In general, I was very disappointed with the Best Life Diet he created as it contains what I’d grade as all “C” and “D” level foods, and that will not help you to get healthy or lose weight. Be careful of diets pushing large amounts of processed, packaged convenience foods – it’s not about your health, it’s about his wealth via endorsements. You better believe for each sticker or logo on their product that sells, Greene will get a percentage of that sale.
I also felt he was wrong in that he only temporarily recommended cessation of sugars and flours – the main components for most processed foods in this country. For example, he talked about whole wheat bread being a good food, but that’s not true, either. It’s still a heavily processed food and many people have gluten, yeast, and seed allergies. Remember, the more processed it is, the more calories are shoved into the product. I haven’t had a slice of bread in six plus weeks and I have absolutely no cravings for it. In most cases, the attachment to a food is mental, not physical (unless you’re allergic to it). It would have been more prudent of him to throw these ingredients out of the diet entirely, but it’s his diet plan.
You can’t eat many calories from a carrot stick, but you can gain weight from a slice of carrot cake. Set your mind to making good food choices and try to skip the convenience foods. Once you break your sugar – fat – salt tooth, you won’t miss it one bit.
If you don’t like trying to find all the segments of this series, you can locate the links to them here and they will return you the exact spot on the socyberty.com site.
quazen.com articles by this writer can be found here
socyberty.com articles can be located here
relijournal.com articles are here
picable.com photographic images are here
Liked it
