I have reached that point in life (a few years back, actually) where some changes to my diet are called for. My sawbones hasn't made an issue of it -- she's gaining faster than I am, actually -- but my denials to the scale and mirror ring increasingly hollow. So, during my last bookstore visit, I wandered over to the nutrition shelf. A couple of thoughts:
1) So many choices! Or ... ? Five meals a day? Three meals, plus two snacks? Rice and fish? Just rice? Just fish? Pay attention to the glyceymic index, or ignore it and just eat yer meat? How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?
There are all sorts of "revolutionary" diets, of course, but this approach strike me as counter-intuitive. First of all, my temperament is revolution-averse. Secondly, most of my food is already prepared by my own hand, so I know what's going into me, and what I ought to cut back on. I like my wheat (bread, pasta) a little too much, and I'm at the age where "alcohol in moderation" (not always my strong suit, as you might have guessed) could stand to be moderated even further. Brown rice, fresh produce, legumes are already present and accounted for (my background is Diet For A Small Planet, or, more accurately, More With Less). A little more water, a little more meat and I'd probably be doing what I should. So no radical, unsustainable changes, in other words.
2) What's with all the books?! Is there any diet in the world that can't be summed up in a page or two? As for recipes, I can personally vouch that I am unlikely to adopt any more than two or three in a given book. That's right: two or three. Fifty pages of kamut and peanut-butter recipes are worse than useless: they're a waste of the writer's and my time.
So place your bets now and ask me in six months if I've shed so much as an ounce. I promise I'll tell the truth.