This is the time of year we all vow to lose weight, exercise more often, contribute more to our 401(k).
Truth is, most of the time we won’t do any of it, and we know it.
But we give ourselves points for trying.
Who wants to start the game knowing it can’t be won? As Gloria Steinem once said, “The truth will set you free. But first, it will (tick) you off.”
Which is why there was a lot of nervous laughter in the room when a 100-pound, 89-year-old woman laid waste to the diet myth last week:
“Americans are looking for magic,” she said. “They’re looking for a magic bullet. There ain’t none!”
The only way to lose weight is to eat less and always eat a balanced diet. The message comes from Hermien Lee, a nutritionist affectionately known as the “Food Nazi.” For 60 years she’s been advising the Hollywood elite about their eating habits. She doesn’t mince words:
“You’re getting boxy and not foxy, if you know what I mean,” she said to me before her speech at a recent WomanSage “I Resolve” health and fitness conference.
“You eat too many carbohydrates and too much fat and not enough protein.” Balance my diet and exercise, she said.
Then she asked me to feel her thighs. Hard as rocks. “I hate marshmallow fat, all fluffy,” she said.
Lee still works seven days a week, seeing clients in Beverly Hills from about 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. She goes to bed at 10:30 and is up at 4 a.m. “I have lots of energy, and that’s because I eat right,” she says.
But she wasn’t always perfect. Lee admits she once weighed 170 pounds. In losing the weight, she decided sugar is her food enemy, so she tries to eliminate it from her diet.
“I only allow myself sugar once a year, on my birthday, for 12 hours. I eat a whole cake,” she said.
Her secret really isn’t a secret at all. She prescribes a well-balanced, low-fat, low-carbohydrate diet to clients such as Ann-Margret, Sandy Duncan, Robert Wagner and Joan Lunden.
“There’s only one sure way to lose weight,” she said to me. “Keep your mouth shut.”
And here’s another: Plan your day the night before, she said. “It’s much easier then to follow through.”
There are no bad foods, she said. There are, however, some foods that are better than others.
“Vegetables are very important. We don’t even know the extent of the benefits we get from vegetables,” she said.
She’s a realist. People are going to eat every day, she said. And “food is the only place we go where nobody can control us. So find yourself a different amusement park if you want to lose weight.”
Easier said than done, naturally, which is why Lee’s clients come to her weekly for counseling and a pep talk. They learn a lot about themselves and their relationships with food.
She’s had arguments with clients who were in denial, she said. She insists on small portions, observing that most of us eat more than we need to maintain energy and balance.
But she will let you have a glass of wine. One glass of wine a day.
And that glass counts as two slices of bread because of the high carbohydrate content in wine.
You want two glasses?
“If you’re willing to wear it, eat it,” Lee said.
You need another word of advice?
“Remember, first bite, you’ve lost the fight,” she added.
Ah, Lee is so right. And so is Gloria Steinem.
