Eat4Today

Just today, I’m not going to eat between meals and I’m not going to take seconds. And I’ll weigh myself & use the tools and guidance from The Hacker’s Diet to help me reach (and keep) my goal.

One of the ladies who comes to Eat4Today live mentioned that she likes to pick up and read free government pamphlets when she goes to health fairs. And I actually listened the second time she mentioned it. That’s when I started poking around the government sites looking for documents that would be of interest as handouts to the Eat4Today group at the library.

It was a fun experience. I didn’t fill out the online or paper order forms. Instead I called and the operators were very, very kind to me. They told me about several documents I hadn’t noticed. Everything they sent was free — including a couple of things that are pretty pricey according to the info at the back of the books.

So I’ve been reading them. And some of these booklets are surprisingly interesting. The one pictured here, Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005 is available as PDF as well as print at HealthierUS.gov. For a book with less than 80 pages it packs a lot of information (and I think that a lot of the other pamphlets I’ve been looking at are exerpts from this one.)

There’s a companion publication to this document, A Healthier You - Based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans which is like a privately published Diet Book — it’s got weight-management theory (they like the DASH system) and menus and recipes and worksheets and checklists.

I love the fact that these documents are available online as well as in print. It’s really inspired me to drag these publications around with me for the last couple of weeks. But it’s much handier to look stuff up online when I’m looking for something specific. Also, while it’s fun to see the new stuff at Borders or Barnes & Noble, it’s really cool to find all this stuff available for free, just for the asking.

I’m looking for new inspiration each of these 117 days until New Years. I lucked out with these documents — I think they’re “keepers.” But the real benefit is that the search itself seems to help. It’s keeping me focused on my commitment, it adds to my knowledge base and (maybe most importantly) it’s keeping me out of trouble.