The Pen and Paper Diet By Michael Dow
June 26, 2008 by Dexie Wharton
Filed under Women's Health
Michael Dow released a book this May called The Pen and Paper Diet. It promises to help you lose weight by eating all you want. Really? How? Well let’s find out what comes with book from the website:
- A discussion to show you the common sense and logic that this diet is based upon (people with educational backgrounds ranging from a high school dropout (non-GED) to an MD have understood and grasped the concepts in this book).
- A personal example of how to keep track of your calorie consumption.
- A discussion on the stages that you will progress through by using this diet.
- Worksheets/Tables that will help you find your estimated calorie requirement based on scientific research. [The basic edition (US$14.95) has worksheets that require you to add or subtract twice and multiply once to determine your estimated calorie requirement. The Expanded edition (US$39.95) was intended for health professionals and has the math already performed. It lists estimated calorie requirements for individuals from age 19 to 84 and is over 450 pages.]
- An appendix that lists the calorie info for the majority of foods and drinks you should come into contact with to assist you in tracking calories.***contains calorie information for pork products***
Sounds interesting huh? Basically, it’s a management book which is pretty much tracking down what you eat. Educating yourself of the daily calories intake and hopefully adding much needed exercise. The latter needs to be part of any “diet” IMO.
Buy The Pen and Paper Diet at Lulu store for $14.95 if you’re interested.
(Image : Lulu)
This author is recommending this diet for people with eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa. Thus, he shows his complete ignorance in the psychology and basics of eating disorders.
Mr. Dow,
We who suffer from eating disorders DO count our calories. That is something we do to an obsessive, dangerous, panic-stricken event. But eating disorders are not about food, or calories, or the number on the scale. It’s about control and fears. We fear taking up too much space, we feel guilt because we do not believe we deserve the food, we lack the ability to understand and manage our feelings and anxiety. So we deprive ourselves of food because that is something we can control. We fill ourselves up with food until we feel like we’re going to die of the pain. And then we hate ourselves. And then we purge. We empty the food but in reality we are emptying the feelings.
In eating disorder treatment, which I have been through for my ED-NOS, the first rule is no calorie talk, no numbers, no food talk. Eating disorders are not about food so please do not encourage our obsession over food.
Because of your encouragement of the use of this diet for eating disorder sufferers, there are thousands of young women who have access to this material through the internet and pro-ana communities. Singlehandedly, you have handed them another aspect of control over their intake and output, and taken them another step away from recovery. You’ll say it is their choice but unless you have been in the warped, distorted mind of an eating disorder sufferer, you cannot understand that we are not in control in the least.
So I beg you to stop calling this a diet for anorexics and bulimics. We do not need diets, we need help and love and encouragement and for our scales and nutrition labels to be thrown out the window. Please.
Sincerely,
Katie
21yr Eating Disorder Sufferer