|
Share the article on
this page with a friend.
Click
here.
|
|
| 
Click here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.
Dr. Bridell's Diet Update
By The Mysterious Dr. Bridell
Editor's Note: Thousands of Meridian Readers lost ten thousands of pounds by following "Dr. Bridell's logical and poetic and fully guaranteed diet."
 The good Doctor updates us occasionally on his/her revolutionary plan for losing and for stabilizing. Remember that you can look at the Bridell Archives here on Meridian and that you can now buy the full Bridell Diet book by clicking here.
Eat Slow as you Eat Half!
As many of you Dr. Bridell followers know, the Bridell diet is built around eating HALF; but it is also built around eating SLOWLY!
The Bridell promise is that if you discipline yourself to eat only half at each meal, and if you eat with small bites, setting your fork down between bites, and sipping, savoring, and smelling your food, you will get more enjoyment out of each meal, even as you get half as many calories (and fat, and carbs, and everything else.)
Several reader/followers have written in saying how hard it is to reduce the size of bites and to take longer to chew and swallow them. Naturally it is hard! You are breaking a lifetime habit of gulping, gorging, guzzling, and gluttonizing! But it's a habit that, once you change it, will be looked back on with good riddance!
Let me review the logic and the purpose behind eating slowly:
Remember the Bridell premise that as you cut to half the QUANTITY of food you eat, your appetite will gradually change, accepting that it is going to get less, and thus start to crave not MORE, but BETTER food. The job of your appetite is to get you to eat enough to give your body the nutrients it needs, and if you are eating junk food in large quantities, the appetite gets the nutrients it demands in with all the extra fat and grease and other stuff. But when you limit quantity to half, and when your appetite finally realizes that you MEAN IT, it resorts to the only other thing it can do to get its required nutrients: It starts craving more QUALITY rather than more QUANTITY. Healthy food starts to look better to you, and junk food looks worse.
Now, think about eating slower.....about smelling and savoring and sipping your meals. The small bites, the awareness of taste, the enjoyment of food, the awareness of texture and the excitement on your palette all start going up. Like anything that you pay more attention to, you begin to train your taste, to make it sharper, and in the process, you are conditioning your appetite, making it more discerning and more appreciative of what is really good.
Like training a horse by the careful use of the reigns and the bridle, you begin not only to control your appetite, but to make it work beautifully with you, and the ride you get starts to become wonderful.
Lots of your letters have asked "How do I know what food is really good......there is so much complexity about carbs and fats and fibers and anti-oxidants and everything else.....how do I simplify it all? The answer is simple. You just eat slowly, with small bites, and with space between the bites (putting your fork down). And as you do, if the food tastes better and better, it is good food. If it tastes worse as you eat it slower (you become aware of the greasy aftertaste, you start tasting the excess salt, the textures begin to bother you) you know that it is bad food.
It really is all about the bridle. The bridle is eating half, and eating it slowly. As you do, your appetite will, gradually, become your asset and your helper instead of your enemy and your plague.
Return
to Top of Article
© 1999-2009
Meridian Magazine. All Rights Reserved
|
|
| About the Author: |
The Mysterious Dr Bridell
“Dr Bridell” is a pseudonym — both the "Dr" and the "Bridell." I’m not a doctor. I’m not a dietitian either, or an exercise therapist or anything else that would give me even the remotest of the usual "credentials" for writing about the usual kind of diet. What I am is basically a practical person who is interested mostly in results. I’m also a writer who keeps noticing that diet books are always on the best-seller list. (And most of them promise far more than they can deliver and never reach the emotional and spiritual causes of our physical problems.)
I don’t know a thing about calories or fat grams or metabolism or antioxidants or even proteins or carbohydrates. In a way this ignorance is bliss. I don’t get confused about why the experts keep changing their minds about what is really good or bad for you. But I do know — absolutely — a couple of important things: 1. I know a way almost anyone can lose weight, for sure, for real, and keep it off and be healthier and actually enjoy the process; 2. I know that there is a direct, unbreakable connection between human happiness and the control of human appetites — and I don’t just mean the appetite for food.
Just how sure am I about this? Well, as you noticed in the first column, I’m sure enough to guarantee it. You try this diet and if it doesn’t work, I want to know about it, and I will think of a way to reward you for your (my) failure. But that won't happen, because I know this stuff works. I know it by experience, and I know it because it is based on principles that work — on spiritual principles that never fail. And as you will see in future weeks, my diet is about much more than physical food and losing physical weight.
What I like about the subject of dieting is that it’s current, it’s present, it’s about the now, about our daily habits and routines, about what you’re going to eat today and tonight. You can start trying things right now. As you do, and as you have results, and thoughts, and comments, and ideas, and questions, write to me by clicking here (drbridell@meridianmagazine.com).
|
| Related
Resources |
| |
| What
do you think? |
| |
Format
for Print
Click Here |
To easily share the article on this page with friends and family, please
Click here.
|
|
 |
|
