THE FIX IS IN
Dr. Yoni Freedhoff discusses book on why diets fail and how to make them work.
Dr. Yoni Freedhoff has a guilty pleasure.
The Ottawa-based advocate for healthy eating and good lifestyle choices just can’t pass up a bag of zesty cheese Doritos.
In fact, he’s got a passion for a wide range of savoury snacks. But, really, he says, what’s wrong with that? Nothing, he adds, as long as the consumption of such foodstuffs is balanced by otherwise good food habits and exercise. He also loves to smoke foods in his Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker.
The 42-year-old Freedhoff actually does know what he is talking about. He runs a prominent family medicine practice with a focus on nutrition and weight management. He is certified by the American Board of Obesity Medicine. His blog Weighty Matters is approaching six million page views.
Over the years, Freedhoff has learned a lot about the management of the human body, what it takes in and what it puts out, and he has come to a conclusion.
Succinctly put, most people are trying to balance their weight with diets that are failing. Those programs are failing, Freedhoff says, because they punish the people who try them out and leave those individuals with “post-traumatic diet disorder.”
They make the odd indulgence verboten and, as a result, Freedhoff says, they fail.
“We’ve got to get ourselves as a society (past) thinking that we need to suffer to succeed with weight management. By definition it dooms people to longterm failure.
“It’s the common thread that ties dieting failure together that people do diets that are miserable. Even small miseries, over time, amplify,” he said. Food should be a pleasure. It forms the oldest social network for the human species. Eating is the secondmost important thing we do after breathing, he says. If you are trying to diet, don’t go into a supermarket hungry.
Freedhoff has finally put down his thoughts on what makes a healthy diet into a book that hit stores this week.
The book is called The Diet Fix and it offers a 10-day regimen that he suggests would lead to longterm weight management.
What Freedhoff fears is that what many in the health-care system are coping with now will become a tidal wave of obesityrelated diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancers, all related to poor diet and a lack of exercise, and all treatable and preventable with some good oldfashioned common sense.
Freedhoff hasn’t always practised what he now preaches. As a university student, he indulged in junk food. He skipped homecooked meals. But when he married and children started arriving, a decision was made to get straight.
Now he exercises five days a week. And his family sits down together to an evening meal.
This was the kind of family meal that he was used to when he was growing up in the 1980s in Toronto. It was commonplace then, but it is not now. Instead, families today eat out way too much, he says, instead of making it a rare treat. “Just being Tuesday is not an occasion,” he says.
“I don’t think that people have changed,” Freedhoff says. “I don’t think we’ve had an epic loss of willpower in society. What has changed is the world around us.”
He notes changes in media, especially in advertising, have put billions of dollars toward selling food. The food makers are also developing enticing treats.
Another development is the use of food as a way to pacify children or satisfy colleagues at a work meeting.
He’s seen this in his own life. When his eight-year-old joined a book club, the child was greeted with candy. At summer camp, the first night’s icebreaker was bring your favourite junk food to a party. Fundraising efforts even by hospitals use food to entice donations.
“We use food to replace creativity in society now,” he says. This will be the subject of his next book.
To navigate this food environment takes skill, and that’s what the book is about, Freedhoff says. He also wants to help stop people from trying diet after stupid diet.
“We are taught that if you want something badly enough, you can make it happen. Think about the TV show The Biggest Loser. It really epitomizes this message that scales don’t measure weight, they measure self-esteem, effort, happiness. Scales measure how much a person weighs and nothing else.”
With weight management, people should not strive for perfection, he says. Personal best is just fine.
The real measure of a successful weight-management program is not how much you take off in a short period of time, but how much you keep off over many years, he says.
Freedhoff, who was born in Toronto, started his university career studying English but after a year switched to science. That took him to medical school, from which he graduated in 1999.
He then started his residency in Ottawa, where he has settled. He began his practice in Ottawa in 2004. It was then a more traditional practice. Over his first year or year-and-a-half, he came up with a concept called “best weight.”
That philosophy, which entailed individual personal targets, started him thinking about writing his ideas down. He started a blog in 2005 on the advice of a friend who said he was opinionated.
His first book, published in 2007, was a co-authored handbook for clinicians to help patients struggling with weight. It was made freely available from the Canadian Obesity Network.
In 2009, he started to write a companion book for patients and in one weekend wrote 30,000 words. He got an agent the next year and over the next few years he finished The Diet Fix and eventually found a publisher.
Freedhoff says we are still stuck in a world that believes personal responsibility is the only way to solve the obesity epidemic and the massive cost it is levying on society.
He believes that regulation of how food is sold is necessary. Such things as listing calories on menu boards matter, he says. Good labelling is vital so consumers will know what they are eating. Food advertising should not target children. Better nutrition education should be part of the school system.
Freedhoff does not believe that obese people should be treated differently by the health-care system. He says the cost of health care means that government has to change the environment in which bad diet decisions are made.
Freedhoff believes that good medicine means advocating for patients against what he perceives is wrong. That has led him to write and speak and be quoted in the media.
“I feel it’s part of my obligation to society to speak up.”
The goal of this book is to convince the world that there is no “right” weight.
The focus needs to be living the healthiest life the person can enjoy and not following diet zealotry.