I hereby resolve to eat only healthy stuff—like milkshakes and cookies
BURTON W. COLE, COLUMNIST
By Burton W. Cole
I don’t believe in lying.
Besides, the preparation for resolutions was killing me. Haven’t we all resolved at one time or another to go on an everlasting diet on Jan. 1? So what do we do on Dec. 31? Right — mash into our mouths all the stuff we’ve sworn not to ever eat again in our sleek, sexy bodies.
And come Jan. 1, we don’t eat any of those chocolate cakes with fudge frosting and doughnuts with extra glaze and blueberry pie with ice cream because of one important factor: We are far too sick. And that greenish body sagging up against the mirror won’t be mistaken for sexy even by a seasick elephant seal.
Once we do get to feeling better and can keep our resolutions down on the basis of resolve alone, those tried and true habits with seniority reclaim their turf, and the world settles back into a comfortable peace.
So, by skipping the resolution process altogether, I still end up at the same place but without all the trauma.
However, this year I am changing all that. My research has uncovered a resolution that I am pretty certain I can keep.
It turns out that cutting all that fat out of one’s diet isn’t healthy.
I missed the actual article but once I overheard some people talking about the benefits of fat. Just snippets of a conversation, but I was satisfied with the parts I heard. Based on the strength of that evidence alone, I am ready to put that low-fat yogurt back on the shelf and order a chocolate milkshake. Large.
I realize there are skeptics who take more convincing before going ahead and doing the right thing ... so, while drinking a Coke and popping a handful of Hershey’s Kisses, I flitted about Googe — the knower of all things — and found some enlightenment from Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole, co-authors of a book called “Intuitive Eating.”
Tribole said people use the words “fat free” as a license to inhale gobs more calories than ever before. She noted that fruits and vegetables have been fat free all along, but people still avoid them.
Resch chimed in that dieters will eat fat-free cakes and fat-free cookies and fat-free muffins and think they are eating well and will lose weight.
“They don’t look at the other additives and ingredients — the sugar and the salt,” she said.
The message is clear: We must skip fat-free stuff in favor of sensible eating, such as banana splits without all those additives that low-fat junk has. Plus, the banana is fat free naturally and, therefore, is healthy.
But here’s the clincher: In an old article titled “11 Nutritional Myths” in Muscle and Fitness Magazine, myth No. 2 is that all fat is bad. Wrong.
The human body must have certain fats to produce the hormones for normal fat metabolism. To quote the article: “That’s right, you need fat to burn fat.” Plus, other fatty acids improve glucose tolerance and enhance immune functions. Which, I take it, are good.
There was some other highly technical stuff in the article detailing in scientific terms with exactly which fats we need and why we should eat sensibly, but I didn’t read it. What was the point? I already learned all I needed to know — if I want to stay slim and trim while withstanding all attacks of diabetes, gout, bad credit scores and the common cold, I must make sure I am getting plenty of fat in my diet.
So, my resolution for the New Year is to eat healthy. It’s a big, fat resolution I’m sure I can stick to.
Sure, you can try to correct Burt’s thinking if you dare. He’s munching Oreos at burton.w.cole @gmail .com and on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.