Coming out of blog retirement, Freakonomics, and weight loss results

OK, everyone, get out your copy of the Sept 11th NY Times Sunday magazine section and turn to page 22.

Don't happen to have it around? No problem. Let me walk you through it.

Written by the brilliant economist Steven Levitt (author of Freakonomics, last year's fabulous middlebrow beach read) it tells the story of a 52 year old psych professor named Seth Roberts who, finding himself overweight, underslept, and with a bad case of acne, decides to do a little self-improvement. Armed with theories that his friends see as "scientific" (largely on the strength of Adams academic credentials in psychology) but that the rest of the world might call "meshuga", he discovers that if he skips breakfast, stands on his feet for 8 hours and drinks canola oil, fructose, and water, he'll lose weight.

And you thought Billy Bob Thornton's orange diet was weird?

So what, you might ask, was it about this story that forced me out of blog retirement? Other than my friend, journalist Connie Bennett's annoying early morning phone call bringing it to my attention on a Sunday morning normally spent relaxing on the patio in beautiful Southern California weather reading Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat?

Well, it illustrates one of my favorite uber-themes: the complexity of life, or, as some bad (are there any other kind?) James Patterson novel might put it (always in italics, of course, and always with the mandatory explanation point) "nothing is as it seems!"

See, the problem isn't self-experimentation. Virtually every healer worth his crystals tries out practices on himself first before expounding them to a (sometimes gullible) public. And the healing arts — along with music — have a long and honorable oral tradition. The ranks of even the more accepted, Western forms of healing — like psychotherapy and medicine — are riddled with people who entered the profession, honorably, to solve their own problems first. Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, my go-to guy for fibromyalgia, has fibromyalgia. Dr. Richard Bernstein, everybody's go-to guy for diabetes, has diabetes. Every personal trainer I know has tried out his routines on himself, and most nutritionists try out their own supplements and food plans. Dr. Jean Piaget developed his seminal child development theories in part by rolling a ball under the couch and watching his 2 year old nephew's response. Some of the greatest discoveries in the healing arts — and I suspect in the physical sciences — were discovered by unfettered intellectual piddling, just thinking, trying, doing, riffing, experimenting, often in one’s own basement and on one's own body.

Nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, everything right about it.

Here's where it gets funky. Or, at the very least, filable under "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Roberts, being an academic, tries to give his inner Billy Bob an intellectual framework. He talks about the human body having a set-point weight (which is a theory that's been around for years, usually trotted out to bolster whatever argument you're trying to make.) He hypothesizes metabolic slowdown during times of famine (which is accurate — when less money is coming in, you slash your budget, and when less food is coming in, your body cuts its metabolic costs and slows down.) He also offers a really interesting hyptothesis that should definitely be tested, namely, that highly seasoned and flavored food creates a desire for more food. (We actually do know from experiements that people eat more food the more varied and diverse the offerings are — think buffet tables on a cruise ship!)

Now the trouble begins.

He figures he can cut his appetite and trick his brain's desire for more food by taking in some canola oil and fructose at regular intervals. And by skipping breakfast. It seems to work. Voilla, he loses some weight. Now he has a diet. Fast forward to the inevitable book deal: He's calling it "The Shangri-La Diet."

Enter the leitmotif of my intellectual life: Politics — and nutrition — make strange bedfellows.

See this Roberts guy is not a bad guy. And self-experimentation is not a bad thing, especially in the spirit of self-improvement. Even making up a cockamamie theory to explain why something you are doing is working doesn't make you a bad person — numerologists and blood type dieters do it all the time. Some of it may even turn out to be true. That's not the issue.

The issue is two-fold.

Number one: When we look only at results in one dimension of life, we are asking for trouble. Take weight loss. In the 80's I was personally friends with at least 6 gorgeous models from a major New York Agency who were keeping their weight at runway standards using a brilliant, "scientifically" devised diet of asprin and cocaine for breakfast followed by two asparagus spears for lunch, more coke (not the kind you drink) and a light salad for dinner. Worked like a charm. That is, if the only measurement you were using for success was weight loss. "But drugs are illegal!" you gasp. Fine. Here's another way to accomplish weight loss, courteousy of one of my early professors, Dr. Daniel Kosich, who used to say "You want a sure-fire way to get 'em to lose weight? Lock 'em in a closet for 30 days with a tube for water." Or, I would add, put 'em on Survivor. If you just use weight loss as the only measurement for success, you not only miss the boat, you don't even get a life raft.

Number two: I've made it my own personal mission to restate this point as often and as loudly and as frequently as I can, at least till they throw me out of the bar or until a critical mass of diet book buyers finally "gets" it: No one plan works for everyone! Not low-carb, not high-carb. Not calorie counting, not vegan, not fasting, not high-protein, not orange food, not canola and fructose. We are metabolically and biochemically unique. It is the ultimate vanity to think that because you have discovered something that may work for your particular metabolism at this particular time that it is a universal principle that everyone who wants the same results should do. We don't give the same workout routines to everyone — marathoners respond differently to training than Mr. Olympias. We don't give the same medicine to everyone. We don't all date the same person. We don't all respond to the same ads on Match.com. We don't all like Freakonomics for our beach read.

And we all respond differently to weight loss programs.

Not only that, we all respond differently at different times in our lives. In Asian traditions, a diet that may correct excess or heat may be used for a while and then when balance is attained, a different program may be instituted. I've seen variations of this principle a zillion times, with overly caffeinated, stressed out adrenaline junkies responding well to a highly alkaline, vegan-type detoxification diet for the short term, only to move more to the center for maintenance. Even a basketball player may spend a lot of time on one particular drill just to correct a weakness in his game, and then go back to regular team drills after the problem has been corrected. You just can't get away from individualization, comforting as it is to simply escape into a formula suitable for large type headlines on a supermarket tabloid.

And now a footnote. Regarding Dr. Roberts personal choices for his weight loss program: Fructose may indeed have a low glycemic index which seems to be why he — a non-nutritionist — chose it as his sugar water of choice. But it is arguably the most damaging sugar in the world. It creates insulin resistance by another pathway, and it raises triglycerides more than any other sugar. (Put fructose and insulin resistance or fructose and triglycerides into PubMED if you want to check for yourself). And canola oil, a very highly processed and crummy oil whose success is a triumph of marketing over science, is hardly the oil I'd choose to take the edge of my appetite. But the ill effects of neither of these badly chosen substances will show up on Dr. Roberts' bathroom scale.

Well, anyway. Now that I'm out of blog retirement, I guess I'll have to tell you about my Kathy Griffin moment.

Stay tuned.