Are you obsessive compulsive about your diet?

I have mentioned Brad Pilon before and have interviewed him on this blog. Brad's main area of interest is intermittent fasting, but his interest in that grew out of his work in the sports/bodybuilding nutrition industry. It also prompted an interest in all the little rules that people build around their eating habits..

In this little Book - The Dirty Dozen - Brad talks about what he calls the DIRTY DOZEN - 12 major pop culture rules of supposed ‘healthy eating’, and how they can be examples of obsessive compulsive eating.

Some of the most dramatic examples of Obsessive Compulsive Eating (OCE) came from my friends and me back in our bodybuilding days. In fact, I believe that the bizarre eating habits endorsed by bodybuilders and fitness competitors are what drives the recommendations on healthy eating and weight loss in today’s popular itness and nutrition culture.

Being in the heart of the bodybuilding supplement industry (I used to work in Research and Development), I could see that a healthy eating or weight loss trend usually hit the mainstream about 5 years AFTER it hit the bodybuilding and fitness industry.

I was shocked to realize that such a small, obscure group of people could be driving
he trends in the entire food and healthy eating industry but they really were. I guess as long as you have 6‐pack abs and some muscle people will listen to you no matter how ridiculous and far‐fetched your ideas about food and nutrition might be.

So the average person is left with nutrition advice that is the semi‐watered down version of what was popular in the bodybuilding and fitness industry 5 years ago.

The unfortunate part of all of this is that what works for a bodybuilder most likely
does not work for the average person for two reasons.

1) Bodybuilders live a lifestyle in that involves rotating between being off season
(overweight) and on season (dangerously lean)

2) The majority of bodybuilders or fitness athletes will never admit that ANY of their
results are coming from the abuse of illegal performance enhancing drugs.

No wonder people are so messed up over food and how to eat ‘healthy’.

It is a good book to challenge some popular dogma...for example what is the evidence for

1. Eating multiple small meals every day – even if it doesn’t fit your schedule

2. Drinking Green Tea to help burn fat

3. Drinking 8‐10 glasses of water every day