Lewis Meline: I realized after a while there’s too many things out there. The supplements were coming on faster than I could collect the research.
David Brower: Right.
Lewis Meline: What people really need to do, they need to know the truth about what do you need to know about physiology? What do you need to know about dieting? What do you need to know about nutrition? That’s what I put in the book. First, as I introduce things, I point out these diet programs and supplements are really bogus. I can give you a little bit on that and what you really need to know. I go through the physiology, nutrition, things that you need to know, and it’s written for a layman.
David Brower: Good.
Lewis Meline: There’s no medical terms in there. It’s written for anybody who would be interested in learning this information. It’s basic stuff. It’s real easy to understand. There’s nothing scientific or anything about this. You don’t have to know chemistry or physiology or anything to do this. It’s very simple. There’s a few facts you need to know so that you’re not deceived by all of the fallacies and lies that these people are throwing at you. Then it’ll help you understand a little bit better what you’re body’s trying to do. This is basic stuff. Like I say, anybody can understand it.
David Brower: Good.
Lewis Meline: I get to that. Now you know this. You got all this great knowledge. Now what are you going to do with it? First thing you need to understand is why do people fail at their dieting programs? First off, when you go see a physician or something, they have no idea how to counsel you on dieting. With the obesity crisis the way it is and it keeps escalating, and to have all these surgical approaches, and all these medications, hunger suppressants and stuff, and now they’re trying to say, “You know what? It’s genetics. If you’re fat, it’s because you have bad genes. We’re sorry and we’re trying to figure out a way to help you.” No. They’re just putting a Band-Aid on it because they haven’t figured out what the real reason is. The real reason is eating is a habit. It’s like smoking or drinking or whatever your habit is. Eating is a habit. So you have to learn to deal with that habit.
Lewis Meline: You have to eat. You don’t have to smoke. You don’t have to snack or eat candy or drink beer or anything like that. You don’t have to do those things, but you have to eat. How do you go about eating the way you are now that you understand it, that you’re working with … Dealing with a habit. How do you go about breaking this habit and developing new eating habits? What can you eat? First off, you can eat anything that’s healthy. What’s healthy? That’s the other thing. People say, “Eat healthy food.” You say, “Okay, great. What’s healthy food?” I tell you that. Basically, there’s five food groups. You have your vegetable group, your cereals and grains group, fruits, your meat and protein group, and dairy. Then the thing that destroys nutrition food is the processed.
Lewis Meline: If you’re eating cold cereal … They used to say that if you eat the box cold cereal, you’d get more nutrition than eating the cereal itself. That’s almost true. This has been so highly processed that any nutrition that they’ve contained, they’ve taken out. They add some stuff back to compensate for that, but it doesn’t really. If you’re to eat cereal grains and stuff like that, eat whole grains. Rolled oats. What’s been processed about that? They run it under a roller and they cook it up and eat it. Vegetables. How many vegetables are there? There’s dozens of vegetables and different types. You can eat all of those fresh. Fruits. There’s all kinds of fruit. You can eat all that fresh. You don’t have to have any processing whatsoever. Meats, things like that. There’s all kinds of stuff that you can eat that is unprocessed or minimally processed.
Lewis Meline: The reason they have these five food groups is years ago, nutritionists grouped them together by their nutritional commonality. The vegetables all have a similar nutritional basis since there’s good fruits and so on. Some things that we call fruits or vegetables, like tomatoes, a tomato is technically a fruit. Nutritionally and culinarily it is treated as a vegetable. It really should belong in the vegetable group nutritionally. Same with the fruits. They all have a nutritional commonality. If you just eat the least processed foods in these five food groups in proper amounts … You say, “What’s proper amounts?”
Lewis Meline: Years ago, the nutritionists came up with these food pyramids.
David Brower: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. I remember the food pyramid from when I was a kid.
Lewis Meline: The food pyramid’s a great idea because what’s on the bottom of the pyramid is the food group that you should eat from the most. The original pyramids had cereal grains on the bottom. We can get most of our calories and things came from wheat products, cereal grains. Now people don’t need as many calories and things as they used to. We’re not working as hard as we were and needing those calories. The newer pyramids reverse that. They put vegetables on the bottom and then cereal grains and fruits and the meats and they have dairies on the top. What that’s saying is most of your diet’s being comprised of vegetables. That’s not saying we should be vegetarians. That’s not it at all. It just means that most of our nutrition comes from vegetables so that’s where we should be concentrating the bulk of our intake, and then fruits and so forth.
Lewis Meline: Then they come up with … They say, “That’s not good enough. It’s hard for people to understand.” I don’t know what’s hard to understand about that, but they come out with my plate. They have this picture of a plate and they draw some little areas on there, and say, “This area’s vegetables and this area’s fruits.
David Brower: Oh yeah. I’ve seen that. Yeah.
Lewis Meline: That’s somebody’s idea. I guess if you’re doing something long enough, you figure that you need to change something to show that you’re doing something. I don’t see where my plate’s any better than the old pyramids.
David Brower: Just a flat version of the pyramid.
Lewis Meline: Exactly. I don’t even thing it’s as good because showing those areas on the plate, it doesn’t really relate as much as this pyramid. Really show you where you have to really cut down as you go up the chain. That is what people need to concentrate on. I’m talking about all this in the book. I talk about the food pyramids and the different food groups. I don’t talk specifically about the nutrition. “You’re going to need this B vitamin and vitamin A and this stuff from this group.” It doesn’t matter. They come out with these things and say, “You’ve got to take this vitamin or something.” If you eat these five food groups, you’re going to get everything that they’re talking about.
Lewis Meline: The flip side of this is you’re not eating all five of these groups. Maybe you should be taking some supplements like a multivitamin or something. If you had to say is there one supplement out there that isn’t useless and you might say that’s multivitamins if you’re eating very poorly. The problem with multivitamins and after I’ve had a few discussions about this with some people, they’re kind of like, “Oh, wow.” They were relying on multivitamins to fill in gaps. First off, how do you know what you’re short? Which vitamins are you short, if you’re short any? If you are, first off, you can’t really know that information. When you look at the multivitamins, they all have different combinations of vitamins and minerals, amounts in there. Which one do you take? Which ones can fill a gap? I don’t know what gaps I’m filling and so I’m going to pick this one. Does that do the job or not? You don’t know.
Lewis Meline: The best thing is not relying on multivitamins or anything like that to fill in the gaps. Just learn to eat well. It’s not that hard. It’s not that expensive. People say, “Whoa. I can’t afford fresh fruits and vegetables.” Look at price you’re paying for potato chips and stuff like that.
David Brower: Absolutely.
Lewis Meline: Take that money and go apply it to fresh fruits and vegetables and things like that. You can’t afford not to. It’s cheaper overall, I think. When you buy junk food like potato chips, I can sit down and eat a whole bag of potato chips and still be hungry.
David Brower: Right.
Lewis Meline: What did I do for myself? I talk a little bit about this. I spell it a little bit more deeply in the book. You’ve eaten a huge ton of calories, a deficit of nutrition, and I’m still hungry.
David Brower: You’re not satisfied at all.
Lewis Meline: No. That’s true with a lot of the snack foods and stuff, which is what people are relying on. It’s easy. Reach in the cupboard and grab a bag of chips and munch on them or whatever. Cookies or cake or ice cream or whatever your choice is. You’re really depleting yourself nutritionally and excess of calories. Those things are expensive.
David Brower: Yeah.
Lewis Meline: This not something you’re going to do right away. If you’re eating very poorly, you’re not going to eat this wonderful nutritionally balanced diet tomorrow. It takes weeks, months. It might even take you two or three years of trying this out and changing things. You have to really get yourself to the point where you want to be. So what? If it takes you two or three years to be eating really nutritionally healthy, you’re going to do that for the rest of your life. This is a quest that is lifelong. It’s not something you’re going to do for six months or a year. This is the rest of your life. All these different foods that you crave, you’re not going to drop those overnight. Some of those favorite foods you may not have to get rid of at all. Maybe you just cut way back on the portion and then substitute enough nutritional foods in there to keep your nutrition where it should be, and you can afford to eat a few of those foods.
Lewis Meline: There’s a million ways to prepare food and diet plans and stuff that incorporate the food groups, the proper amounts with minimal processing that are healthy. There’s no way to come up with a diet. I don’t give you a diet plan. Say, “This is what you need to eat.” No. There’s a million ways to do that. I can’t even begin to describe a few of them. The one I did tell you is once you know what the food groups are and how you need to eat from those food groups, and then I talk about the habits of eating and how are you to deal with that habit. Then I throw in some ideas of how you can go about incorporating changes into your diet and learning to eat healthy. You take it from there. You work it as fast or slow as you want, you learn to eat the foods that you like that are healthy, and you’ll get there. Don’t be in a big hurry. You spent years and years getting fat and out of shape. You’re not going to reverse that in a month or two.
David Brower: You’ve got to … It’s got to be … I imagine it’s … Well, I don’t imagine. I know from personal experience. It’s really hard when you’re in this immediate gratification, microwave kind of society because everything else around you is going 110 miles an hour and to be able to grasp and commit to a true and pure lifestyle change in one area of your life is really a challenge for some folks.
Lewis Meline: Yeah. I know very few people who can just make radical changes to anything and maintain it, regardless of what it is. The gradual changes will work. They’ll work for anybody. It’s kind of the same thing. Maybe I learned this gradual change things a little bit more when I started exercising, because it’s the same thing with exercise. You see these people go to the gym and they make these New Year’s resolutions. Every year it happens the same at the gym. After New Year’s, there’s this big influx of people. It takes about two, three weeks, and they’re gone. The gym’s back to its normal habitation. What happens to those people? This is another thing I talk about in the book. [inaudible 00:10:46]
Lewis Meline: I went to it by dumb luck, but when I started exercising way back when, I did it very slowly. I did it because this is my circumstances. I eased into it. It wasn’t so stressful they’re chasing me away, but it was satisfying enough that I thought, “There is some benefit to this.” I kept going and going. If you do that, these slow changes, you go from nothing being a couch potato to within a few months of being an intense exerciser. It’s the same way with your diet. You can’t go from eating this horribly poor diet, just all of a sudden change and eat this wonderfully nutritious diet. You just work your way into it slowly so that you hardly even notice the changes. You know you’re doing something because you’re changing your diet and the way you eat and stuff, but you don’t even hardly notice it because you haven’t made any radical changes. You’re consciously making these little slow adjustments and changes, eliminating things, adding things, and you develop new habits as you do that. Now these new habits are going to be hard to break as your old habits were.
David Brower: A friend of mine is a nutritionist and she uses the word mindful a lot. Being mindful of what you’re doing with exercise, being mindful of what you’re doing with nutritious foods. Rather than beating yourself up and going, “I got to do this by the 14th of August,” you just be mindful of everything every day and let it evolve organically, I think.
Lewis Meline: I think she’s right in that we make conscious choices every day. It’s not that you get up in the morning, you blindly go out in the kitchen and eat whatever. You think about it. You say, “What do I feel like this morning? I’m going to have a bagel or I’m going to have a sweet roll” or whatever it is that you’re going to have. You think about it. What you learn to do is you learn to think about, “I’m going to have this … No, I’m not. I think I’m going to substitute this for that today.” You develop new habits of things so that the first thing you think of is nutritious things rather than the junk food.
Lewis Meline: She’s right. We think about this stuff all of the time, but we think, “Oh, man. Do I have to think about that?” You’re already thinking about it. You just get yourself to think about good stuff. Being consciously aware of what you’re doing is important, but the flip side of that is you can be consciously aware that, “Yeah. I need to make some changes in my diet.” The flip side of that you need to do what? You have to change in your diet.
David Brower: I was interviewing a motivational speaker, world class ski instructor, about several things just this morning actually. He said what he has used is the what if concept, meaning ask yourself what if I don’t do this what’s going to happen? What if I do do this, what’s going to happen? Just those two little options have really helped him steer a course that he didn’t know he could go on.
Lewis Meline: I think a lot of those things help certain people and other people it doesn’t have much of an effect on. You can think about it, “What do I want to do and how’s it going to affect me,” but will you do it? I don’t even push it that far. If you make your goal, say, “Within the next three years, I want to lose 50 pounds and I want to be eating healthy.” Then you slowly … You start making adjustments to it. You have to think about it every day and you’re not in a big hurry, but you probably find out that you’re going to switch a lot faster than you think. If you don’t put any time pressure on yourself, that’s not the stress in and of itself. You’re not putting a time limit on it. Losing weight. People want to lose …
Lewis Meline: I was looking at an ad this morning about this woman who said she came up with this diet, discovered the secret that she lost 50 pounds in a month or something. It’s just ridiculous. You might lose 50 pounds like that, but you might die in the process.
David Brower: Or gain 60 the next month.
Lewis Meline: Yeah. It’s ridiculous, these things that are out there. Just slow and steady and knowing what your goal is. I think the biggest thing people are missing is they need to understand the basic physiology, the basic nutritional facts that they need to know, and it’s not that much. Once you see what the basics are, you can say, “Wow. I can understand that. It’s very simple.” Then when people throw this stuff out there at you, you’re not tempted to pursue it. They’re at so great … Even now, I read these people on the ads and I say, “Wow. I wish that were true. That’s great. Great advertisement.” Then you come back to reality and say, “No. This is a fallacy.”
David Brower: Absolutely. I’m fascinated by this, which is why I let it go on twice as long as I normally do, because I’m going to turn this podcast into a two part podcast because it’s so interesting and so fascinating and so informative, the journey that you have been on and obviously helping others to go on with your book. Tell folks how they can get ahold of that.
Lewis Meline: The book is available on Amazon. It’s either paperback or it’s on Kindle. Either format. I have a website that’s www.healthfiascorevealed.com. It’s H-E-A-L-T-H F-I-A-S-C-O R-E-V-E-A-L-E-D .com. There’s contact information on there. My email’s on there. You can email me or give me a message, I’ll send you a book or whatever.
David Brower: You’ve got a blog on there. You’ve got blog posts. Podcasts. All kinds of information to help people get informed along with your book.
Lewis Meline: I’m adding more … Add more to the blogs and working on getting a vlog going. I think vlogs are easier for people to get into. It’s hard, I think, for people, they’re so busy, to sit down and take 10 minutes and read a blog or educate themselves that way. A short video, I think, would be very helpful. I’m working on putting together a bunch of vlog information and stuff too.
David Brower: Good for you. Doc, thank you so much. We’ve been visiting with Dr. Lewis Meline from Spokane. His book is Lies Exposed: The Truth About Diet, Supplements, Weight Loss, and Exercise. Really enjoyed this last 40 minutes, Doc. Thanks so much for all of the research and all of the work you’ve done. I’m sure you’ve helped tons of people through your practice as well.
Lewis Meline: I hope so. That’s my goal, is give people the truth so they can go out there and do something real for themselves.
David Brower: That’s the payoff. Thank you, again. Dr. Lewis Meline.
Lewis Meline: Thank you.
David Brower: You bet. You’ve been listening to your 20 Minute Podcast with David Brower. Be sure to follow us on Facebook at Facebook.com/your20minutepodcast, and again, be sure to go to healthfiascorevealed.com, and pick up that book from Dr. Meline. Have a great day, everybody.