Eat Less, Exercise More?

Eat Less, Exercise More?


By Elizabeth Szlek

For The Rome Observer: September 20, 2010

This morning I read in my daily paper that Americans are getting fatter and fatter. Obesity and mere overweight are rampant. We are being told what to do, and it is quite simple: Eat less and exercise more! This sounds so simple, so good, and so easy.

Unfortunately, several things stand in the way of this advice working.

First: Human physiology.

Second: Our modern way of life.

Third: Our food supply.



If we look at these three factors, I think we can begin to understand why we are getting fatter and fatter, and perhaps, how we can begin to reverse this deadly trend.

A Look at Exercise

I mentioned that I spent my whole summer in the woods researching this topic, both for myself and for the sake of my mother, who turned 90 in July. Let me just say this: My mother went for visits to her cardiologist and nephrologists, and in both cases, they were astounded at her condition! She looks better than she has in a couple of years!

What are we doing to create a health(ier) 90-year-old? Well, the same thing you all should be doing to be healthier yourselves, and possibly to prevent your untimely deaths, or the development of diabetes, heart disease and other degenerative conditions: Eat better!

Exercise, is, of course, an important component of health. No one can argue that we need to move and work to use up the calories we consume. But, even in the case of a totally sedentary ninety-year-old, amazing progress can be made with diet alone.

Me, I bought a beautiful red bike and trucked around town all summer, so that was my contribution to exercise. In the fall, I have to clean up my huge overgrown garden, so that constitutes my exercise. During the winter, I repair to my cellar, where I multitask on my treadmill, studying the music I have to conduct as choir director. Then, more gardening in the spring. Not a bad system. I hate to “exercise”, but I have realized that I will either have to lead a monklike existence of total denial, or gain weight. I’m not ready for monkhood yet, so, exercise it is. This used to be taken care of automatically when I lived in Manhattan. I would walk for miles everywhere, because it was so interesting. In the ‘burbs, there is much less of interest for me and I get bored looking at manicured lawns. Back to the cellar.

What does Physiology Have To Do With It?

So, let’s consider human physiology. What is making so fat? One prime suspect is our diet, and by this, I really mean the “hidden” components of our diet, with the prime suspect being fructose. When I wrote about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) before, the public relations firm representing this industry kindly sent me a packet of information, pointing out how wrong I was about HFCS, and that it was just a misunderstood, regular old sugar. By the way, they are now calling it “corn sugar”, so as to obscure just what is in your food, so watch out for that. Anyway, it seems that HFCS is pretty much ignored by our hormone systems when we ingest it. Insulin gives it a free pass, as does leptin. Both these hormones regulate blood sugar levels, and insulin also signals the release of ghrelin, the hormone that tells you when you should stop eating, the satiety hormone.

Now just think, you ingest massive amounts of HFCS, and you don’t get the signal that you are satisfied, and you keep eating and eating. Meanwhile, the fructose is sent to your liver, where it is turned into fat. Fructose in beer is responsible for the characteristic “beer belly” that many develop when they overconsume beer. A beer belly is a precursor to a host of degenerative diseases. Now I look at these bellies and want to run over and warn these men to get to a nutritionist , fast!

HFCS is hidden in almost every processed food you can imagine. This leads us to the third leg of the obesity stool: Our food supply in America.

What is in There, Anyway?

All I can say is: Watch out! Unless you are shopping in the outer aisles of the supermarket, you are exposing yourselves to massive amounts of bad food ingredients.

HFCS is chief among them, when it comes to obesity. However, it doesn’t stop there. Aspartame, MSG, hydrogenated vegetable oils, genetically modified soy and corn, adulterated dairy products, loads of sugar in EVERYTHING, and many other deadly chemicals inhabit almost every box of food you buy. In addition to these bad things, what we really have is a LACK of good things.

By this I mean, our processed diets of today have taken shortcuts (for the sake of the industry), and are selling us foods that, in the past, were nourishing. Now, they are just fillers, and they are pretty much dead.

For example, pickles. I have made pickled products in the past, but never really understood what I was doing. It said, put the beets in a big jar and throw in some sugar and vinegar and thought I was making pickles. But I wasn’t. In order to make pickled beets, you need to ferment them. This is a process using lactobacillus bacteria. Now, it takes three days to make pickled beets, but they are actually GOOD for you, full of enzymes, and healthy. I make sourdough bread and homemade yogurt and cheeses, also fermented products full of beneficial enzymes. Processed foods are not made using the age-old methods. They are all actually “fast” food. And we all know how good THAT is for us. Are we all too busy to make food that is good for us?

There is a movement in the food world entitled “Slow Food”. It is concerned with producing food made the “old” way. It just so happens the old way is a better way. I went to visit a friend the other day, and he presented me with some raw milk, straight from the farm. I turned it into cultured buttermilk, cream cheese and whey, and homemade cottage cheese. Will I die from this daring move, since the milk was not pasteurized? We shall see. But if I don’t, it may mean that I am eating far better than others who must use dairy products which are stripped of much of their nourishment.

Perhaps “Eat Less, Exercise More!” isn’t the battle cry we need. Perhaps it should be simply, “Eat Nourishing Food!” I think that says it all…..



Elizabeth Szlek is a trained chef and has taught Healthy Cooking and nutrition. She is also the Director of The Door Counseling Center of Utica, NY. Questions and comments can be directed to her at (315) 768-8900 or at info@thedoorcounseling.com.