I was reading these books at about the same time in the late winter because I was feeling frustrated about food....feeling like every time I turned around there was something else saying this is bad for you, or that is an essential vitamin....and of course that is something we hear a lot. I wanted to know more for myself, so I started reading various things about nutrition and whatnot. The End of Overeating I had noticed constantly while working at the bookstore and it had also been recommended by a coworker there, which is how I ended up deciding to take that out. The Everything Nutrition Book I took out because I knew it would be the most efficient way to get the information I was looking for - the Everything and For Dummies series are really great - like starting with Wikipedia to get the basics of something, but with further depth and authority.
The End of Overeating was an interesting look at the rise of obesity, the inner workings of the food corporations, and the actual science of our thoughts about food. I was astonished to learn that consuming excessive amounts of sugar, salt and fat literally changes the pathways in your brain and thus the way that you even think about food. As our bodies don't need very much sugar, salt or fat (and the man-made types of all three are the major culprits in this) it doesn't take very much at all to be 'excessive.' I had also never thought of the food industry before in the same way I think of most corporations. But they still do all get together at big corporate conferences and discuss all they've learned and better ways to keep people buying. Or eating, as the case may be.
After reading that book I tried a test: the authour talks a lot about sugar addiction and compulsive eating - I wanted to just kind of casually see how long I could go without eating extra sugar. I have had some kind of extra sugary treat almost every single day since I first had that thought. I generally eat very well as a rule, but I just couldn't seem to not eat that cookie or donut or whatever. It amazed me. Still does, really, since I'm still saying 'let's not eat any sugar today' and still eating it. It really brought home a lot of the points made in the book, and has doubled my certainty that it is essential to let your mind control what you eat, rather than the other way around.
The Everything Nutrition Book was like a Human Diet 101. If you were from another planet and wanted to know what the dominant life form on Earth needs to eat to survive, this book would serve your purpose. I did end up skipping the chapter on minerals because I'm not planning on getting that crazy about my nutrition. I was more interested in what a proper serving of this or that should be (size-wise), how your body uses vitamins and whatnot. It was exactly what I needed and I also used the Canada Food Guide to get an idea of how many servings of fruit and veg, etc. I should be eating each day. It's amazing how much less of everything we really actually need.
I was doing great for a while, during and after the reading of these books. They were (are?) part of my plan to get in overall better health. I started running again and significantly improved my cardio; I was working out at home and discovered yoga (omg I love it) and had lost five pounds......but then I started this new job and have gained back those pounds by eating cookies at work all the time. The whole thing is not about losing weight but it was a really nice way to show that everything I was doing was working....and probably a really good lesson about how easy it is to drop the ball.
Phase II will commence shortly, with a renewed effort to eat better and a return to running/regular exercise/quitting smoking. Now that I've gone back to write about these books it's refreshed my memory a bit, even though it still feels like I read them forever ago.
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