I am credited with having made the following statement on an
internet newsgroup “Diet books tell you that you don’t have to
reduce calories to lose weight, and then trick you into doing it
anyway.” In this article, I want to look at some basic concepts
related to dieting, the myriad weight-loss diets that exist,
etc. Arguably the simplest diet of all is a rather basic ‘just
eat less’ approach to weight loss (or ‘just eat more’ approach
to weight gain). By making a conscious effort to eat less food
over the course of the day, folks reduce calories and lose
weight. There’s no magic, it’s simply food proportioning. Such
an approach to dieting isn’t fundamentally flawed and, when it
works, it works fine. At the next level of ‘complexity’ are what
we might term good food/bad food types of diets. Most people
seem to carry around the idea that some foods are good for them
while others are bad (in terms of bodyweight or health or what
have you) and diets in this category feed into that psychology.
Generally, a good f