The Worst Diet Advice I Ever Heard

We've all heard bad diet advice in our day. Heck, many of us went low carb because the ubiquitous low fat/high complex carb advice and the "just eat less and exercise more" advice turned out to be disastrously wrong for us. Then there are the laxative teas, the "drink only this lemon juice/maple syrup/cayenne pepper mixture for a week" crashes, that sort of thing. This sort of thing may take off five pounds before the family reunion, but is not the solution to genuine obesity.

But the most wrong-headed weight loss advice I ever heard came from, of all people, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, who I actually think is often pretty right-on. On this one, though, he really put his foot in it.

What did he say? That if you wanted to be thin, you needed to find a thin person and do what they were doing. If you took a thin person as your model, he said, and followed what they did, you'd get the results they were getting.

Robbins is famous for telling people to model others who are getting the results that they want, and in many situations it's actually good advice. But in this particular case, it's the worst advice you'll ever get. (Well, other than "That nice Mr. Madoff really seems to know what he's doing; why don't you invest your retirement fund with him?") Why is it horrible advice?

I've actually meant to write about this for a while, but I was reminded of it because I got a phone call yesterday from a guy I used to date back in the early '80s. (Yes, my children, I am that old.) He's the only old boyfriend I've actually stayed friends with. Why did chatting with Tom remind me of this advice of Tony Robbins'?

Because Tom is thin. Really thin. Tall and thin. He's six-foot-six, and when we were dating he weighed 150 pounds. He had a 29-30" waist and a 36" inseam, a 14" neck and a 36" sleeve. Now, that was when he was maybe 21; lots of people are thin at 21. But he's still like that. He's in his late 40s now, and if he's gained more than 5 pounds over the past 25 years, I'm surprised.

Should I do what Tom does? Are you out of your ever-livin' mind? Okay, yeah, Tom eats healthy, at least now, in his middle age. But when we were dating all those years ago, we'd go out for dinner to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. Tom would put down 5-6 heaping plates of food. We'd go back home, where he'd down an entire pint of Haagen-Dazs. An hour later, he'd be saying "Should we order a pizza?" When I've had Tom and his wife over for dinner, I've cooked for eight, figuring Tom would eat for four. I was right.

He's just skinny. His mom and dad were -- especially his dad, whom he very much resembles -- and so are his brother and sister. I used to joke that he had a shrew gene patched in, and needed to consume his own body weight in food every twelve hours, or he'd die.

Yes, Tom exercises; he has an especial interest in tai chi and martial arts. But that's not what makes him skinny. It's genetics. Just genetics. He was blessed with a very fast metabolism.

So what would happen if I took Tony Robbins' advice and did what Tom does? I'd be a size 20 again in no time, healthy food or not.

What Mr. Robbins overlooked was the degree to which body shape and size are, indeed, influenced by genetics. A far more useful thing for him to suggest would have been "Look for people who have been successful losing weight, improving their health, and maintaining the change, and do what they're doing." Because they're the ones that are modeling the change you want to manifest.

(While I was writing this, I though of this article I wrote for Lowcarbezine! years ago about my dogs. Sadly, the photos of my dogs appear to have drifted off into cyberspace, but the text still applies.)