Guidelines, schmidelines

Here's an interesting article about the new US dietary guidelines.

Though I'm not really qualified to comment because I haven't actually READ the new guidelines completely through, I'm with her. If you try to follow these guidelines to the letter, it won't exactly develop a healthy relationship with food.

Of course, I'm someone who's taken over 2 years to lose just 40 lbs, so what do I know? But I've also kept 30 of those lbs off in those two years (the number on the scale has started going down again, too), and I've NEVER eaten 9-13 servings of vegetables a day OR worked out 60-90 minutes for more than two days in a row. Hell, for most of those two years, I didn't work out more than 2 days in a row at all. While I eat much better than I did 30 lbs ago, I don't sweat the occasional trip to McDonald's or the odd half-pint of Ben & Jerry's. In fact, I had a McMuffin just this morning (running late again), and we all know about the ice cream at midnight last week. Now, sure, if I did these things every day, I would gain the weight back. But so far and however slowly, "All things in moderation" has worked for me.

But I guess you could say that what the guidelines are trying to do is define "moderation" for hundreds of different foods/nutrients for millions of unique individuals. You've gotta draw the lines somewhere. I just think the 2005 guidelines may be drawing them in the wrong places, and maybe with a broader stroke than I'd like.