inability to lose weight as weakness. That’s ignorance. No psychologically healthy person’s
willpower is strong enough to overrule the body’s innate drive to survive.
Nutrient-poor, low-fat diets generally consist of the same foods as nutrient-poor, low-calorie
diets—and the same deprivation. The fat is removed and simply replaced with sugar or other
chemicals. People on most low-fat weight-loss programs are as hungry or craving-driven as those
on low-cal, low-carb and other weight-loss-only diets, because they’re still eating nutrient-poor
foods.
NOTE: “Low carb” is another version of this “purposely eating less,” counterproductive starvation,
which carries all the above issues plus the destructiveness of the high-protein aspect it’s often
paired with. See Diet Trap #
Diet Trap #3: Believing “Moderation in Everything”
This trap is particularly effective at snaring the unwary eater. It’s regularly passed off as a core
dieting principle. However “moderation in everything” is not a successful way for you to eat unless
you are striving for extra weight, disease and early death.
"A little bit of coffee is only a little bit toxic and results in only a little
bit of increased blood pressure, and thus is responsible for only a
little bit of an increase in stroke probability. A little bit of refined
flour is likely to be the cause of only a little bit of excess body fat,
and is therefore only a little bit aesthetically displeasing, and is only
associated with a little bit of an increase in all-cause mortality. A
little bit of alcohol only kills a little bit of the brain with each use,
only slightly reducing cognitive capacities, and results in only a
small increased risk of death from liver disease or hemorrhagic
stroke."- Alan Goldhamer, D.C., and Doug Lisle, Ph.D.,
co-authors of The Pleasure Trap
During the last century, the concept of eating a moderate amount of food from each of the (so-
called) Four Food Groups was created and promoted to the American public for economic reasons.
Members of powerful special-interest groups (the dairy and cattle industries) were working from
misleading research about calcium and protein needs. This concept has continued to be accepted
largely because of the success of the government’s Four Food Groups nutrition training and the
food industry’s marketing practices.
This “principle,” packaged into the Four Food Groups model, is still the basis of how schools are
training our children today, and it continues to form the basis for what most Americans believe
about nutrition, despite the fact that thousands of studies have shown that consumption of a
“balanced diet” based on the Four Food Groups will do nothing for you—except make you fat and
more likely to die of heart disease, cancer or stroke.