Can You Really Eat ‘Everything In Moderation’ by Dana Carpender

Here’s a thought I had just the other day, regarding popular attitudes about dieting, and how they influence long-term success:

One of the criticisms frequently thrown at low carbing is “Oh, you just gain back all the weight when you go off that diet.” Not to put too fine a point on it, er-DUH! You think that happens with any kind of diet? Maybe? You think the problem is that people go on a diet with the idea already in the back of their minds that they’re going to lose their weight and then go off the diet? Of course they do. This is why the regain rate for weight lost is well over 90%.

People pay lip service to the idea that they need to make long-term lifestyle changes, but go into it with the image already in their minds of that golden day when they can go back to eating “the good stuff.”

Another common criticism of low carb diets is “Any diet that calls for you to give up whole categories of food is a fad diet.” For some reason this accusation is never thrown at low fat diets, nor is it leveled at vegetarianism. No, no, it’s just giving up concentrated carbs that is “faddy.”

The right way, the proper way, the officially sanctioned way to lose weight is to eat a “balanced diet,” (a term for which there is no scientific definition, by the way), but to eat less. Oh, you’re supposed to eat “healthy foods” – you know, lean meat and skinless poultry, whole grains, fat free dairy, all that – for the very most part. But you’re also supposed to have a “treat” now and then – you know, some of Mom’s homemade cookies, or the dessert when you’re out to dinner, or some chips now and then. After all, it’s not healthy to deny yourself. Everything in moderation. Just control your portions.

It does not seem to sink in that this approach is virtually useless over the long haul. But why? I had a thought about this the other day:

If you are a food addict, a person who eats compulsively, it is virtually certain that you are actually addicted to carbs – nobody binges on hard boiled eggs. If, like me, you’re a person for whom eating carbs is like eating hungry pills, moderation is problematic at best. If, like me, you have been at a place where you regularly stole to support a pathological sugar habit – yes, I did this – moderation looks like an even worse bet. And knowing what I now know about the addictive properties of wheat – I talked about this in my podcast about Dr. William Davis’s book Wheat Belly – moderation, for those of us who are susceptible to addiction, becomes a dim prospect indeed.

So here’s my question: Where are the “everything in moderation” folks when we start talking about other addictions? About alcoholism? About tobacco? Where are the people saying “Oh, it’s unhealthy to deny yourself. You should be able to have just one or two beers on Saturday night.” No one who is serious about treating alcoholism says this. Where are the people saying, “Oh, c’mon, you can have two or three cigarettes a week. It’s unhealthy to be too rigid.” Everyone knows that’s insanity – if you’ve finally broken a pack-a-day habit, you’d better not have a single puff, or you’ll be cozying right back up to Joe the Camel in no time.

It’s commonly acknowledged that one of the reasons that losing weight permanently is even harder than quitting smoking or getting sober is because you can’t quit eating entirely – you have to learn how to eat in a way that lets you maintain a healthy weight. This is true, as far as it goes – but it doesn’t go far enough. The point that’s been missing all along is that it’s the “everything in moderation” attitude that makes it so damned hard. You *can* quit the foods that trigger your addiction completely, and you should. It is no more “unhealthy” or “faddy” to completely give up sugar or wheat or cold cereal or any other food that sets off uncontrollable cravings and binge eating than it is to completely give up cigarettes or whisky.

And it is no more “sensible” or “moderate” to insist that recovering addicts have to learn to consume the substance of their addictions moderately than it is to suggest that a recovering heroin addict should be able to have just a little Vicodin on the weekends. It’s worse than futile; it’s downright destructive.

© 2011 by Dana Carpender. Used by permission of the author. What do you think? Please send Dana your comments to Dana Carpender.