Nutrition

We don’t say an awful lot about nutrition in the Younger books, but the advice we offer is pretty good. A little blunt, maybe, but pretty good. It is carefully put in Harry’s Rules: “QUIT EATING CRAP!” Excellent advice in a country where powerful forces are hard at work, around the clock, trying to persuade you to do just the opposite. And readers who have done the exercise and quit eating crap have had amazing success at losing weight, as well as getting fit and healthy. Nice. I have gotten thousands of passionate communications on the subject… it had a lot to do with my decision to write the new book.

In the new book, Thinner Next Year, we go into a lot more detail, but the core message is the same, if longer: Quit Eating Crap. Quit eating “dead food” in particular… food with a ton of calories and almost no nutrients. And don’t super-size yourself. The way we eat in this country – THE GREAT WESTERN DIET, with its heavy emphasis on refined flour, refined sugar, animal meats and solid fat – is insanity. And – after it makes us sluggish, ineffectual and funny looking – it makes us sick. In the end, it kills a huge number of us. One of the key revelations (to me, at least) is that “stored fat” – the pot or gut – is actually toxic. It is a font of inflammation and free radicals. It makes us sick. Gotta exercise like a lunatic. Exercise is still the great flywheel of the good life. But we gotta quit eating crap, too. We’ll be talking about that a lot. Advice, recipes… the works. Important stuff. Mildly interesting, too. Chris

Recent Blog Posts on Nutrition

• FITFOREVER: THE HEAVY TIMBERS (0) July 6, 2020
  Congratulations. You are embarking on a regimen  that will change your life in astonishing and wonderful ways. Let’s talk about that for a minute, up front… set the darned old hook and get you committed. Then we’ll talk about the hard part in the next blog – about what you have to do. Don’t worry: ...
• FROZEN SURPRISE (0) June 5, 2018
  Here is a big surprise (to me anyway) from the TUFTS Health and Nutrition newsletter: Frozen fruits and veg are as good – and often better – for you than fresh. That’s because a) freezing works very well and b) fruit and veg are often picked too early (for travel purposes) and are on the ...
• Glycemic Index: Another Nutrition Myth (0) November 2, 2017
  It’s hard to stay serious about nutrition alerts because they flip around so wildly. The most famous was the “food pyramid” of the early ’90’s which was stood more or less on its head a decade later. In our Thinnner This Year I wrote that “we wander in a dark wood when it comes to nutrition…” because ...
• What To Eat (0) February 28, 2017
  Just back from important talk at Merrill Lynch office in Princeton, which turns out to be just north of Atlanta. Not an amusing drive. But super talk and v v pleased with the self. Finally back to NYC, park rental car on 43 and Lex and start to think of self-congratulatory lunch someplace. Good news: not that ...
• SUGAR LAWS (4) December 4, 2016
  One of the things that drives you absolutely nuts, if you are sensitive at all to the way America eats and drinks, is regular colas, sports drinks and hyper sweetened coffee. They are sugar bombs, pure and simple, and just God-awful for us. And yet, of course, they are driven by vast commercial forces and ...
• UGLY VEG for THANKSGIVING (0) October 12, 2016
  This beauty, sitting on our front stoop, is a Hubbard Squash. Dunno who Hubbard was but he made a damn fine squash. Ugly, you know, but the tastiest of all squashes. No one cooks em cause it looks so hard. It is only somewhat hard. The great trick is to buy a huge ricer. Then ...
• MIKE BLOOMBERG’S NEW YORK; BIG GUYS ON OUR SIDE (0) December 16, 2015
  One of the great shifts, in our lifetime, has been away from confidence in government to something like a horror of government, at least in some quarters.  I was a Wall Street guy all my life and thus a bit more conservative than many. I thought significant anti-government change made sense. BUT the pendulum has swung too ...
• BIFF ROCKS! AN ASPEN RETREAT TRIUMPH (0) July 5, 2015
  A while back, we had an improbable-looking guy named “Biff” come to an Aspen Club/YNY Retreat. Improbable because he was at least fifty pounds over weight, he had a huge beer belly and he did not to look to be in good shape. Lovely guy and everyone leaned in to help him but it did ...
• THE BLUEBERRY CURE (0) May 8, 2015
  There is yet another Tuft’s study reporting that blueberries are terrific. “Blueberries are rich in polyphenols and anthocyanins…” SEE! I TOLD YOU! Eat your damn blueberries, you little fool. They’re amazing for you. And they make your lips blue, for kissing. Which is a nice change. Chris
• A Fortnightly Post (0) September 6, 2014
      LIFE IS AN ENDURANCE EVENT: TRAIN FOR IT. WITH A TRAINER IF YOU CAN.   I hate working with a trainer. Hate spending the money… hate the pressure… hate being told what to do. So I mostly don’t do it. Know what that makes me? It makes me A DOPE, that’s what.   Hate to say it, but it’s ...