I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on pre-food pyramid eating habits.  Or, I should say, recommendations and portion sizes, etc.  I’ve been on Weight Watchers since December and have lost four pounds.  That’s it.  I’m not saying that it is a bad program.  I think the basic premise is okay.  I’m just saying that something isn’t clicking for me.

After my father passed away from heart problems and I endured a lengthy illness, I decided to embrace a healthy lifestyle and promptly gained 60 pounds–despite “eating right and exercising.”  About a month ago, having been trained as a researcher, I started using those skills to examine the evidence about what is considered healthy and discovered that research that doesn’t fall into the official U.S. government position has trouble getting funded and doesn’t make the front page of the news.  After being knocked over with a feather at the thought that scholarly contrarian medical research isn’t even discussed (I am appropriately suspicious of quack information that is on the web, but that isn’t what I’m talking about here),  it made sense to me.  I let my own findings of my own research slip quietly away because my results were opposite of what the then-president of the American Psychological Association found on the same topic–but my research wasn’t life or death stuff, either, and I was a brand new scholar.  The fact of the matter is, there is really no consensus on what constitutes healthy eating.  The food pyramid is pretty much based on politics rather than science.

So, I dug out some of my vintage diet and exercise books and have decided to eat like my grandmother instead of “eating healthy” by today’s standards.  I started last week and lost 2.5 pounds.  There are a few assumptions and “rules”:

1. My grandmother grew most of her food in her Victory Garden–my eat like my grandmother incorporates lots of fruits and vegetables

2. Almost all of the pre-pyramid “reducing diets” limited starches and refined/processed foods–I realized last week that I had gained a lot of weight after I switched to a high-starchy foods diet.  I am not eliminating the starchy foods, just limiting them.

3. No foods “invented” after 1965ish will be eaten.  That eliminates “frankenfood” (not that I was eating them anyway)

4. Despite the recommendation from “The New 1949 Edition Eat and Get Slim,” I will not suppress my appetite by smoking.

Bonnie Prudden

5. I will walk or use the exercises from “How to Keep Slender and Fit After Thirty (1961, Bonnie Prudden),” ” Royal Canadian Air force Exercise Plans for Physical Fitness (1962),” and “Debbie Drake’s Easy Way to a Perfect Figure and Glowing Health (1961).”

6. Eat three meals per day plus mid-afternoon light snack

7. Eat only when hungry (no preventive eating)

News flash! Great minds think alike, edition!

MRW reader Roxanne is doing something similar!  I just discovered that Roxanne has started a blog called “Shapely Weight from 1958.” Her approach is different than mine (she has much more formal plan than I do) but it will be fun to compare notes, so to speak as we both progress on our journeys.

I must confess that I am just a tad jealous of her diet book and I’m going to see if I can find one for myself, even though my plan is to see if I can lose weight by simply adopting eating habits from 60 years ago.

If this works, I will soon(ish) look like Debbie Drake.  Watching her clip (below), I have to wonder if those bullet bras would be more effective in reducing bounce than today’s sports bras…