Smart People Don’t Diet

Being on a diet is a miserable experience for most people, and it rarely leads to the desired goal of shedding fat. In fact, studies show that dieters often gain weight rather than lose it because most diets� intensity, restrictions, and short duration are ill-equipped to produce long-term effects. In Smart People Don�t Diet, Dr. Charlotte N. Markey offers a refreshingly different approach to weight management.

Based on more than 100 years of research by scientists, doctors, nutritionists, and psychologists, Dr. Markey�s plan addresses the underlying causes of weight gain and offers proven strategies for healthful, lasting weight management, including advice on how to eat well, lose weight, and keep it off. The gimmicks don�t work, but Dr. Markey�s reasonable, accessible advice will help you get�and stay�healthy.


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Two out of Five Stars

One of the best-kept secrets of healthy weight loss and management is to come to terms with the habits that don’t facilitate health and gradually change them. 

Smart People Don’t Diet by Charlotte Markey

She doesn’t encourage calorie counting, but she does want us to be cognizant of what and how we eat initially. For example, she suggests we reduce our liquid calorie intake by 200 if we drink our calories in the form of juice, soda, alcohol, and coffee. In the short term, the result is negligible. Reducing your intake of daily soda by one can amounts to a weight loss of .04 pounds in one day. Over the course of one year, however, reducing your daily soda intake by one can is a 15 pound weight loss. Not bad!

Tips like this set the book apart and effectively make the argument that long term weight loss is about making a permanent lifestyle change.

When I educate parents and children about healthy eating, I refer to these “junky foods” as “sometimes foods”; it is okay to have them sometimes. In contrast, healthy foods (e.g. fruits and vegetables) are “everyday foods” because we should eat them every day. Our bodies are like cars in that cars need gas to work; our bodies need everyday foods to work, and, although the may be delicious, “sometimes foods” don’t fill up the tank. 

Smart People Don’t Diet by Charlotte Markey

At this point, the book was a solid 3.5 stars, which is generous for me, as those of you familiar with my book reviews already know. Then she hung a hard left into IDon’tKnowMyAudience-Town.

I assumed chapter 10, The Big Picture, was a conclusion chapter that wrapped everything up in a neat package. It wasn’t. It was a chapter on health policy, the obesity epidemic, and the cost it puts on our economy.

The obesity epidemic one can ostensibly blame on the vast majority of the people reading this book? That obesity epidemic?

Here are some facts to chew on when you think of reaching for that second serving of pie. Around the world, it is estimated that at least 2.8 million adults die each year as a result of being overweight or obese. [source] In addition, 65 percent of the global population resides in countries where obesity kills more people than malnourishment. 

[…]

When I think of the serious–even deadly–health consequences of overeating (and under-exercising) and the growing majority of people who will suffer the consequences, I feel a wide range of emotions: frustrated that people don’t take better care of themselves, upset that people don’t seem to realize the problems they may be setting themselves up for, mad that medical professionals and politicians are doing more to protect vulnerable citizens, sad to think of the human suffering that will ensue, and even amazed that food has become such a big physical and psychological problem for so many people. 

Smart People Don’t Diet by Charlotte Markey