Notes on "The Park Avenue Diet Show: September Song"; September 12, 2010

This week’s show, entitled “September Song”, heralded the arrival of the Fall Season. We tend to think of such landmarks in our datebooks in terms of school, the theatre season, autumn foliage, or something more personal. I’m a bit more monochromatic: for me, it’s all about health, mine and yours.

Every season, and in fact every day, is a good opportunity to reevaluate your health status. Don’t forget that I follow the World Health Organization definition of health: “Physical, mental, and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease.” As the author of The Park Avenue Diet, I focus on image which I define as an amalgamation of seven different components of appearance and behavior. One of these is weight.

For the last forty years, The Dark Ages of Dieting, people have mistakenly gravitated towards weight loss programs that exist in a vacuum. Namely, they only address food choices as if all of the other components of image somehow improve by themselves (interpersonal skills, skin, hair, clothing, self-confidence). I do not blame the well-meaning and well-deserving American people for believing this utterly illogical hogwash. Pick up any supermarket tabloid or “health magazine” and you will see pseudo-science at its worst.

Now for some real science: here are a few articles from the bibliography of The Park Avenue Diet. At the most recent convention of The American College of Physicians, researchers asked that no more studies be done comparing the various mass-market “diets” since none has a success rate over ten percent. It is a thorough waste of time to see whether “low carb” or “macrobiotic” foods produce better results since experimental subjects do not follow either program consistently or successfully.

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/293/1/43

http://cardiology.jwatch.org/cgi/content/citation/2005/211/6

http://www.annals.org/content/142/1/56.abstract

http://www.annals.org/content/147/1/41.abstract

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(04)16986-9/abstract

The above articles, as well as a monograph by the British Medical Journal, all result in the same scenario. The attrition rate (people who drop out of a study) is almost ninety percent no matter which article you read. This leads researchers to believe that weight loss in itself no matter what’s on the menu is not a sufficient reward.

Put another way, dropping a few pounds and staying the same in other ways is at best a tenuous state of affairs. This accounts for the fact that yo-yo dieting, temporary and ineffective attempts to be thinner, is the prevailing practice. As a result the overweight and obese percentages of our population are growing daily, and this unbelievably unhealthy practice is now being foisted on the next generation. The implications of this disastrous scenario are medical, social, and worst of all financial.

The Park Avenue Diet provides a truly comprehensive program for improving one’s physical, mental, and social health. As such it is realistic, holistic, and quite enjoyable. One measures success here by an improved lifestyle and better worldly opportunities, not merely poundage. In times such as these, only realistic solutions to our challenging problems should be discussed. It is time to emerge from The Dark Ages of Dieting into a physical, mental, and social renaissance.