Mounting evidence suggests that the richer and more diverse the community of microbes in your gut the lower your risk of disease. Diet is key to maintaining diversity and was strikingly demonstrated when an undergrad student went on a McDonalds diet for ten days and after just four days experienced a significant drop in the number of beneficial microbes.

Similar results have been demonstrated in a number of larger human and animal studies.

Your gut microbiome is a vast community of trillions of bacteria that has a major influence on your metabolism, immune system and mood. These bacteria and fungi inhabit every nook and cranny of your gastrointestinal tract, with most of this 1kg to 2kg microbe organ sited in your colon (the main bit of your large intestine).

We tend to see the biggest diet-related shifts in microbes in people who are unhealthy with a low-diversity unstable microbiome. What we didnt know is whether a healthy stable gut microbiome could be improved in just a few days. The chance to test this in an unusual way came when my colleague Jeff Leach invited me on a field trip to Tanzania, where he has been living and working among the Hadza, one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer groups in all of Africa.

My microbiome is pretty healthy nowadays and, among the first hundred samples we tested as part of the MapMyGut project, I had the best gut diversity our best overall measure of gut health, reflecting the number and richness of different species. High diversity is associated with a low risk of obesity and many diseases. The Hadza have a diversity that is one of the richest on the planet.

The research plan was devised by Jeff who suggested I should have an intensive three days of eating like a hunter gatherer during my stay at his research camp. I would measure my gut microbes before heading to Tanzania, during my stay with the Hadza, and after my return to the UK. I was also not allowed to wash or use alcohol swabs and I was expected to hunt and forage with the Hadza as much as possible including coming in contact with the odd Hadza baby and baboon poo lying about.

To help us record the trip I was accompanied by Dan Saladino, the intrepid presenter and producer of BBC Radio 4s The Food Programme, who was preparing a Hadza microbe special.

After a long tiring flight to Mount Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania, we stayed overnight in Arusha, a city in the north of the country. Before setting off the next morning, I produced my baseline poo sample.

After an eight-hour journey in a Land Rover over bumpy tracks, we arrived. Jeff beckoned us to the top of a huge rock to witness the most amazing sunset over Lake Eyasi. Here, within a stones throw of the famous fossil site of Olduvai Gorge and with the stunning plains of the Serengeti in the distance, Jeff explained that we were never going to be closer to home as a member of the genus Homo, than where we were standing at that moment.

The Hadza seek out the same animals and plants that humans have hunted and gathered for millions of years. Importantly, the human-microbe tango that played out here for aeons probably shaped aspects of our immune system and made us who we are today. The significance of being in Hadza-land was not lost on me.

Unlike the Hadza, who sleep around the fire or in grass huts, I was given a tent and told to zip it up tight as there were scorpions and snakes about. I had to be careful where I stepped if I needed a nocturnal pee. After an interesting but restless nights sleep, a large pile of baobab pods had been collected for my breakfast.

The baobab fruit is the staple of the Hadza diet, packed with vitamins, fat in the seeds, and, of course, significant amounts of fibre. We were surrounded by baobab trees stretching in the distance as far as I could see. Baobab fruit have a hard coconut-like shell that cracks easily to reveal a chalky flesh around a large, fat-rich seed. The high levels of vitamin C provided an unexpected citrus tang.

The Hadza mixed the chalky bits with water and whisked it vigorously for two to three minutes with a stick until it was a thick, milky porridge that was filteredsomewhatinto a mug for my breakfast. It was surprisingly pleasant and refreshing. As I wasnt sure what else I would be eating on my first day, I drank two mugs and suddenly felt very full.

My next snacks were the wild berries on many of the trees surrounding the camp the commonest were small Kongorobi berries. These refreshing and slightly sweet berries have 20 times the fibre and polyphenols compared with cultivated berriespowerful fuel for my gut microbiome. I had a late lunch of a few high-fibre tubers dug up with a sharp stick by the female foragers and tossed on the fire. These were more effort to eat like tough, earthy celery. I didnt go for seconds or feel hungry, probably because of my high-fibre breakfast. No one seemed concerned about dinner.

A few hours later we were asked to join a hunting party to track down porcupinea rare delicacy. Even Jeff hadnt tasted this creature in his four years of field work.

Two 20kg nocturnal porcupines had been tracked to their tunnel system in a termite mound. After several hours of digging and tunnelingcarefully avoiding the razor-sharp spinestwo porcupines were eventually speared and thrown to the surface. A fire was lit. The spines, skin and valuable organs were expertly dissected and the heart, lung and liver cooked and eaten straight away.

The rest of the fatty carcass was taken back to camp for communal eating. It tasted much like suckling pig. We had a similar menu the next two days, with the main dishes including hyraxa strange furry guinea-pig-like hoofed animal, weighing about 4kga relative of the elephant, of all creatures.

Harvested high from a baobab tree, our dessert was the best golden orange honey I could ever imaginewith the bonus of honeycomb full of fat and protein from the larvae. The combination of fat and sugars made our dessert the most energy-dense food found anywhere in nature and may have competed with fire in terms of its evolutionary importance.

In Hadza-land nothing is wasted or killed unnecessarily, but they eat an amazing variety of plant and animal species (around 600, most of which are birds) compared with us in the West. My other lasting impression was how little time they spent getting food. It appeared as though it took just a few hours a dayas simple as going round a large supermarket. Any direction you walked there was foodabove, on and below ground.

Twenty-four hours later Dan and I were back in London, him with his precious audio tapes and me with my cherished poo samples. After producing a few more, I sent them to the lab for testing.

The results showed clear differences between my starting sample and after three days of my forager diet. The good news was my gut microbal diversity increased a stunning 20%, including some totally novel African microbes, such as those of the phylum Synergistetes.

The bad news was, after a few days, my gut microbes had virtually returned to where they were before the trip. But we had learnt something important. However good your diet and gut health, it is not nearly as good as our ancestors. Everyone should make the effort to improve their gut health by re-wilding their diet and lifestyle. Being more adventurous in your normal cuisine plus reconnecting with nature and its associated microbial life, may be what we all need.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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I went on a hunter-gatherer diet to improve my gut healthand it worked - Quartz

By now, you know fat isn't as bad as everyone once thought. But we're guessing you still think twice before cooking with butter and indulging in a little cheese. Sound about right? Then the ketogenic diet will blow your mind. Simply called "keto" by its army of devoted followers, the plan revolves around eating lots of fats and not a lot of carbs. It's closely related to the Atkins diet but differs in that it limits your protein intake and calls for sticking to very low amounts of carbs the whole time you're on the diet, versus just during the introductory phase.

Following a traditional Western diet means the body sources its fuel from glucose found in carbohydrates. The ketogenic diet takes an entirely different approach. "You're taking carbohydrates out of the equation, and the body kind of pauses and says, 'Okay, I don't have any sugar. What am I supposed to run off of?'" says Pamela Nisevich Bede, R.D., a dietitian with EAS Sports Nutrition.

The answer? Fat. Or, more specifically, ketone bodies, which are substances the body produces when it sources energy from fat rather than glucose. The keto diet is high in fat, low in carbs, and includes only a moderate amount of protein (because the body ends up converting excess protein to carbohydrates, Bede says).

When we say high in fat, we mean it. The diet calls for sourcing 75 percent of your calories from fat, with 20 percent from protein, and 5 percent from carbohydrates. Exactly how many grams you should get depends on your energy needs (online calculators can help you figure it out), but most people will want to take in no more than 50 grams of carbs, Bede says.

To put things into perspective, one sweet potato has about 26 grams of carbs. "Usually 50 to 65 percent of our calories come from carbohydrates, so it's a complete shift," Bede says.

Follow the diet for a few days and your body will enter ketosis, which means it'll start to burn fat rather than glucose. You can measure your ketone levels with a blood-prick meter or urine ketone strips, both of which are easy to find on Amazon. Bede notes that while you might find your body has reached ketosis within three days, it'll take between three and five weeks to fully adapt.

Most people only track their ketone levels in the beginning of the diet. After that, you'll likely get used to what it feels like. "This is one of those diets that if you cheat, you absolutely know it, you absolutely feel the ill effects," Bede says. Cheating on the diet can make you feel tired, almost like you're hungover from too many carbs. "Nutrition experts speculate that there could be a hyperinsulinemic response to the carbohydrate influx," Bede says. "That is, when reintroducing a huge influx of carbs into the system, you experience a huge spike and then sugar crash."

You don't necessarily need to put a strict limit on the number of calories you take in, but you do want to make sure no more than 5 percent of them come from carbs and that 75 percent come from fat. Bede suggests using an app like Lose It! to keep track.

A day on the diet could include Bulletproof coffee for breakfast; a taco bowl made up of ground beef, sour cream, coconut oil, cheese, salsa, olives, and a bell pepper for lunch; and steak topped with onions, mushrooms, and spinach sauted in butter and coconut oil for dinner.

Carbs attract water, so drastically cutting back on carbs makes you shed loads of water weight initially, Bede says. That weight loss will continue, mostly because you'll be less hungry thanks to satiating fats and because you'll reach for whole foods rather than unhealthy snacks that aren't keto approved.

Following the diet can help your gym efforts, too. One study published in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism found women on a ketogenic diet while resistance training lost more body fat than those who ate normally. Bede says the diet can be especially helpful for endurance athletes with sensitive stomachs who have trouble digesting sugary gels and sports drinks.

It's also been shown to have health benefits outside of fitness and weight loss. One study published in the journal Neurocase found maintaining ketosis for a few years helped stabilize the mood of patients with bipolar disorder, even more effectively than medication. Another study published in the journal Epilepsy & Behavior found the diet can help adults with epilepsy, though the researchers noted the study participants had trouble sticking to it.

The initial loss of water weight can lead to dehydration, which leads to what's known as the keto flu. "That's when the headaches come. That's when the fatigue comes. That's where that loss of concentration comes," Bede says. To counter it, Bede recommends making sure you're hydrated and loading up on electrolytes via beef broth, chicken broth, electrolyte tablets, or Pedialyte.

You also may be unusually hangry when you first commit to this way of eating. A study published in the International Journal of Obesity found the hungry feelings can last for the first three weeks on the diet. Feeling tired and hungry as you're adjusting may also make your workouts feel a little bit harder, Bede warns.

There are also some suggestions the diet could harm your kidneys if you follow it long term, says Taylor C. Wallace, Ph.D., CFS, FACN, a food scientist and nutrition expert. Most of the long-term studies have been done on epileptic kids. While following the diet drastically reduces the number of seizures they have, many end up developing kidney stones because of the added stress the diet puts on the kidneys, Wallace says. Research suggests that happens because high levels of ketones can lead to dehydration and urine that's high in calcium, low in citrate, and with a low pH, all of which contribute to kidney stones. Still, Wallace adds that it could be worth the risk for someone who is morbidly obese and already experiencing loads of added stress on their organs.

Finally, the diet's fat-heavy aspect can have negative health consequences if dieters load up on too many trans and saturated fats. Wallace says it's easy to do. "People will go to McDonald's and get a triple cheeseburger, take the bun off, and eat that," he says. "[The diet] drives more unhealthy fat intake versus healthy fat just by the limited number of options of food you have." Taking in too many bad fats can increase LDL cholesterol levels, which could lead to atherosclerosis (the buildup of fats and cholesterol in the arteries), says Sean P. Heffron M.D., M.S., M.Sc., an instructor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center.

If you're a planner and willing to take the time to meal prep, it could be worthwhile. "I can't iterate enough that you've got to have a plan," Bede says. "You can't wake up Monday morning and say, 'Today's the day.' I would really research it ahead of time."

Wallace says there's no reason to be overly concerned about the potential health risks if you'll only be on the diet for a number of weeks. "You can lose a lot of weight fast on it if you adhere to it for two weeks," he says. "I don't recommend doing it for long term, like six months, but I think doing it short term is perfectly fine." Ease yourself off the diet by gradually adding carbs back in so you can avoid that carb crash as your body adjusts.

Research and anecdotal evidence suggest the diet can be an effective way to shed fat and positively impact your health, but it hasn't been studied long term yet. "We don't quite know what will happen if you follow keto for 20 years," Bede says.

There's also no getting around the rigidness. "The diet is pretty hard to follow because it's a complete shift from what you're used to," Bede says. It's difficult both for practical reasons (such as finding something to eat while out for dinner or at the airport) and psychological reasons (coming to terms with the idea that an extra serving of cheese is A-OK).

Bede also says the diet's not for the instant gratification seeker. "You have to give your body time to find the alternate fuel source and adapt," she says. "Don't give it a week and give up."

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Everything You Should Know About the Keto Diet - Shape Magazine

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MUSKEGON, Mich-- If you've been working to shed off those excess pounds, you're in luck.

There is a top-ranked diet program here in West Michigan that may be an option for you. For the second year in a row, Mercy Health's Weight Management program has been named number one for best fast weight diet by U.S World and News Report.

Organizers say whether you have 200 lbs to lose or 20, this program can help. It helped Breck Adkins. He started the program in October 2015 and has lost and kept off more than 70 lbs.

Until recently, Adkins never seemed to mind that he was "living large."

"Growing up in the south everything is deeply fried, every family event is centered around food," Adkins said.

After Adkins saw a photographed image of himself, his weight began weighing heavy on his heart.

"I didn't even recognize myself so I knew at that moment I had to do something because I was on a path not to be around to watch my grandson grow up," Adkins said.

At 320 lbs, Adkins decided it was time to make a change. He found a solution in Mercy Health with operations supervisor Carrie Kelly.

"A lot of people that come to us theyve tried a lot of things before and they don't know what to do they're sick of making decisions for themselves and we offer structured plans that tell them exactly what they need to do to make it easy for them and we help them get to their weightless goals," Kelly said.

The program involves a structured weight-loss plan, long-term weight management, fitness classes and nutritious low-calorie HMR meal replacements.

Mercy Health has a multi-phase approach. Kelly says they want you to be successful with your weight loss and they want to help you keep it off forever.

Today, Adkins eats clean and works out four days a week. He says this program is the best decision he ever made.

"If you're struggling with weight if you're get up in the morning and ache you know you need to do something but you don't know what you've tried this, tried that, whatever fad diet comes along next, come to the seminar see if it's a fit for you," Adkins said.

To see if this program is right for you, give Mercy Health a call at 231-672-4325.

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Mercy Health diet program ranked #1 best fast weight diet second year in a row - Fox17

DEAR MAYO CLINIC: My husband had a cough for months and eventually was diagnosed with laryngopharyngeal reflux. What is the best option for treatment? He is still constantly coughing and clearing his throat despite regularly taking omeprazole and antacids.

The medications you mention are standard treatment options often recommended for adults who have laryngopharyngeal reflux, or LPR. But, along with taking medications, if he hasn't already done so, your husband also should consider making diet and lifestyle changes to ease his laryngopharyngeal reflux symptoms. Several complimentary therapies may help, too.

Laryngopharyngeal reflux is a form of gastroesophageal reflux disease. Laryngopharyngeal reflux happens when stomach acid and other contents of the stomach flow all the way up the esophagus, into the back of the throat and, in some cases, into the back of the nasal passages. Frequent coughing and throat clearing are common symptoms. People with laryngopharyngeal reflux may feel as if they have something stuck in their throat. Laryngopharyngeal reflux can cause hoarseness and other voice problems, too.

Medications usually can reduce the symptoms of laryngopharyngeal reflux significantly. A class of drugs called proton pump inhibitors are typically the most effective. They work by decreasing the amount of acid the stomach produces. Omeprazole is a type of proton pump inhibitor.

Antacids and medications called histamine antagonists -- which also decrease stomach acid -- can be used to treat laryngopharyngeal reflux, as well. Medications that increase the movements or contractions of the stomach and bowels, sometimes called pro-motility drugs, may be recommended for people with laryngopharyngeal reflux.

Along with using medication, there are other steps your husband can take to help control laryngopharyngeal reflux. One of the most important is eating a diet that is low in acid. Research has shown that this type of diet often can reduce laryngopharyngeal reflux symptoms.

Examples of low-acid foods are melons, green leafy vegetables, celery and bananas. Foods that people with laryngopharyngeal reflux should avoid include spicy, fried and fatty foods; citrus fruits; tomatoes; chocolate; peppermint; cheese; and garlic. Foods that contain caffeine, carbonated beverages and alcohol also can worsen symptoms.

For people with laryngopharyngeal reflux, it helps to eat the largest meal of the day at midday or in the morning, rather than in the evening, and to avoid eating within three hours of bedtime. Don't rush through meals. Take time to eat slowly, without distractions.

Other lifestyle changes that can make a difference for someone with laryngopharyngeal reflux include not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, and reducing and managing stress in healthy ways.

Several complimentary therapies also may be useful in managing laryngopharyngeal reflux. For example, some studies suggest that acupuncture -- a therapy that involves inserting extremely thin needles through the skin at strategic points on the body -- can reduce symptoms.

Taking a probiotic dietary supplement that contains good bacteria similar to bacteria already in your body may ease some symptoms, too. But they aren't for everyone, and different supplements contain different types of probiotics. Before your husband takes a probiotic, he should ask his health care provider about the kind and amount that's right for him.

Finally, voice therapy can be used to treat the effects of laryngopharyngeal reflux. Research has shown that people who take a proton pump inhibitor and participate in voice therapy show faster symptom improvement than people who only take medication.

Encourage your husband to talk to his health care provider about his persistent laryngopharyngeal reflux symptoms. They can discuss additional treatment options and lifestyle changes. In many cases, laryngopharyngeal reflux can be managed successfully. -- Amy Rutt, D.O., Otorhinolaryngology, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Fla.

Mayo Clinic Q & A is an educational resource and doesn't replace regular medical care. Email a question to MayoClinicQ&A@mayo.edu. For more information, visit http://www.mayoclinic.org.

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Diet and lifestyle changes should ease symptoms of laryngopharyngeal reflux - Post-Bulletin

It reads like the script of a dream: the City of Lightblinks beneath you as you sit atopthe Eiffel Tower, awaiting the next course prepared byone of the world's great chefs.

This is scheduled to happen to President Donald Trump, and for him it could be a nightmare.

New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Habermanotherwise known as the "reporter Trump can't quit"pointed out on Twitter Monday that thescheduled dinner between Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron "doesn't sound at all like a meal POTUS will enjoy."

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There are myriad reasons Trump might not love it. First: he and Macron aren't exactly chummy (unlike the French president and his new BFF, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau). Trump openly pulled for Macron's campaign opponent,far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, and he withdrew the U.S. from the landmark Paris climate agreement. (The dinner, reportedly, could be used by the French leader to push his counterpart to reconsider that decision.)

But Trump might also hate the actual dinner itself, the literal food on the table at the swanky Eiffel Tower restaurant that will reportedly be closed to the public during the meal Thursday. The Local France,citing the French magazine Paris Match,wrote that the meal prepared by renowned chefAlain Ducasseat theThe Jules Verne restaurant will be a tasting menu that typically costs some $260 (and that's before drinks). The Local wrote that lobster and caviar would likely appear on the table, while The Washington Post added that the exact meal was not yet known but the tasting menu typically features things like"caviar-laden golden potatoes from Noirmoutier...and pan-seared raspberries and apricots, doused in homemade almond ice cream."

That could prove a challenge for Trump, who has a diet perhaps more typical of a middle-school lunchroom than a billionaire's boardroom. The morebasic the food, the better: Staples of the Trump diet include steak charred to a crisp doused in ketchup, a steady stream of Diet Coke and, at least on the campaign trail, heaps and heaps of fast foodMcDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken, especially. Outside of that, he enjoys meat loaf (so much so he once forced New Jersey GovernorChris Christie to order it) and some of the meals made by his first lady, Melania Trump. "She has a lot of imagination," he once told The New York Times."She makes spaghetti and meat sauce."

Even if Trump finds a way through the fancy mealin Saudi Arabia, for instance, thethe menu was adjustedto ensure he would have his beloved steak and ketchupthe setting itself might bother him. It's previously been suggested Trump doesn't like steep stepsbecause he often traverses them quite carefully, and he awkwardly clutched the hand of British Prime Minister Teresa May while walking down a slope. He also declined to take a cable car inMasada, Israel.

Videos showing the elevator rideto The Jules Vernewhich features panoramic views of Paris from the Eiffel Towerdepict a wide-open look at the ascent to the restaurant's stunning location. That might awake Trump's reported fears.But, then again, his favorite place in the worldis on the 26th floor of a New York City tower bearing his nameso, maybe not.

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Donald Trump's Odd Diet Could Be Tested at Macron Dinner Featuring Lobster, Caviar - Newsweek

I polish off a homemade gluten-free pizza with special no-garlic, no-onion tomato sauce piled high with loads of fresh mozzarella, and I'm full. But I reach into the fridge and grab a pint of Talenti gelato (sea salt caramel, if you were wondering). My husband gives me a strange look as I plop onto the couch with a spoon. "I'm overloading on lactose today," I say.

This is the reintroduction phase of my elimination diet, designed to provoke gastrointestinal symptoms, and for two days I get to devour one food grouping at a time before returning to a very basic and restrictive diet. Then I repeat the process with a different food group. I'm trying to figure out what's been causing my constant nausea, stomach cramps, and diarrhea. (Seriously, why do so many women have stomach issues?) After seeing two gastroenterologists and a nutritionist, I landed in the hands of a registered dietitian at Columbia University who recommended I try the low FODMAP diet, first developed by Australian researchers in 2005 and the only clinically proven diet for treating symptoms of IBS. The plan minimizes FODMAPs (fermentable, oligo-, di-, and mono-saccharides and polyols), which are types of carbohydrates that, for some people, are poorly absorbed by the small intestine, causing gas, bloating, and other tummy troubles.

When I first met with Sabrina, my dietitian, I started crying in her office when I described months of weird stomach issues that had been ramping up. Were it not for my total desperation, I would have never considered doing a strict diet like the one she was advising, which eliminated many of my go-to foods.

I had come into my first appointment armed with two weeks of food logs. She grabbed a red pen, circling all the FODMAPs I had eaten. Avocado toast (noooooo!). Brussels sprouts. Hummus. Asparagus. Apples. (What ever happened to "an apple a day"?) The red ink went on and on.

But I dove right in, cutting out gluten, most dairy, legumes, most alcohol save wine and gin, gum and mints (artificial sweeteners can be a big trigger for GI issues), tons of tasty, healthy fruits and veggies, and additives like inulin, chicory root, agave, and honey. And it sucked. I felt tired, cranky, and so hungry.

Here's the thing about elimination diets: They're not meant to last forever, so there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. That tunnel just seems really, really long. For four weeks, I stuck to the plan, which required I prep most meals myself, since it was nearly impossible to find restaurants that could be completely accommodating. The options for grab-and-go food were even more difficult. I mastered reading nutrition labels with a keen eye for hidden ingredients (who knew some deli turkey had milk in it?), and I hunted down all of the packaged foods that would be safe for me to eat, a huge challenge.

Committing to the diet meant extra time in the kitchen, lots of repeated dishes, bowing out of boozy brunch, and constant anxiety at every meal. It certainly wasn't trendy or sexy, but I did it and I was feeling 98 percent better than I had beforeyes! But then came the reintroduction phase which was essentially designed to make me feel worse again. Talk about a roller coaster. Just when you're starting to feel good, you're forced to add foods back in with the sole purpose of causing your body distress in an effort to pinpoint a trigger for symptoms. But trying to make yourself feel sick is a total mind f*ck, with each bite like consuming a giant stress cookie, and I was a Cookie Monster. (Related: Why do you lose your appetite when you're stressed?)

Some of the food groupings didn't bother me at all when I reintroduced them. Others left me with an upset stomach again. Then on some days in between the reintroductions, when I was back to the basic elimination diet, I still felt like crap. The good thing though, was that I felt light years better than when I first started feeling sick, with more good days than bad.

I still don't have all the answers, but I'm working with my doctor and nutritionist to figure out a combination of dietary modifications and a special antibiotic that will keep my stomach from hating me. I've come away with a new appreciation for what people with food allergies and sensitivities have to go throughalways being the person who asks a million questions at restaurants, skipping out on dinners with friends because they can't find something to eat, and looking sadly at the cupcakes laid out for office birthdays and baby showers (though maybe that last one isn't the worst thing in the world). And while I wouldn't recommend that anyone go on an elimination diet unless medically necessary and under the supervision of a doctor or food pro, I'm grateful that it helped me get back to feeling my best and thinking more mindfully about what I'm putting into my body.

Read more here:
What It's Really Like to Be On an Elimination Diet - Shape Magazine

Now that Im 15 pounds over weight Im trying something new: Its called counting calories and its been one big eye-opener. Calories are those things that we burn in order to stay alive. And if we take in more than we use, well you know, we gain weight.

Forever I believed watching my fat intake was the way to go. Fat has more calories than carbs or protein so that made sense to me. But apparently (as my sympathetic, well meaning physician says) Ive matured and that thing inside my crepey body called metabolism has slowed to a snails pace. Therefore for the past five years Ive been beating a dead horse on a spit.

Then one day while I was chowing down on a chopped vegetable salad with one teaspoon of fat-free salad dressing, a co-worker told me she stopped eating bread and rice and lost 55 pounds in three months. Holy baguette! And you exercised, right, I asked her? I hoped she would say yes; to my surprise, she said no. This revelation piqued my interest more than the last diet I tried (with absolute abandon), which included bacon, butter and all the junk food I could pass through my gut.

Now, I have to admit, bread, and rice are up there on my list of dietary needs. I can make a meal of toasted french bread and herb-laced olive oil. I mean, think about it; the most important foods in the world are staple foods.

According to WorldAtlas.com, the overwhelming majority of global staple foods are grains. Corn, rice, and wheat together make up 51 percent of the worlds caloric intake. So is this the reason I continue to struggle and she is now Miss Skinny Minny?

Getting back to calories, I have a Fitbit that can measure calorie intake just by typing in the food. Its a little time consuming but uncomplicated. The problem Ive run into is it has been brought to my attention just how often I eat and how much I eat. In fact, its astounding what one is able to consume in one day.

Since I started counting those little grams of energy Ive been able to reduce the total caloric amount by 400. Thats right, 400 calories. That sounds like a lot doesnt it? Well, all I had to do was throw out my chocolate. Seems a bag at the office, a bag on the den couch and a bag in the night stand provided easy pickins. Ive lost four pounds in three weeks.

But Ive decided to go a step further and try my co-workers plan.

This challenge might prove harder said than done. Who doesnt like a creamy peanut butter sandwich (or two) and a plate of Crazy Tuna sushi - back-to-back?

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In my book, diet spells disaster/ Points on the curve - Kingstree News