Sunday, December 6, 2009

Time Article: How Celebrity Chefs are Losing Weight

A friend just forwarded a Time Magazine article on chefs and weight loss.  Model Diets: How Celebrity Chefs are Losing Weight opens with some comments from Alton Brown.  It sounds like he's gone off the health nut deep end a bit.  Instead of eating healthier, he's eliminating foods since he views it as a habit and obviously a pretty bad habit.  "You don't cut back on heroin, you don't cut back on smoking; you either quit or you don't," says Brown, who now snacks incessantly on avocados, sardines and almonds, having given up almost everything bad for him. "I decided there were foods I was just not going to have. I've probably had three tons of French fries in my life. I don't need any more French fries."  The irony is that I just made his GE chips and fish the other day while reading his latest book!  When I see this type of all or nothing attitude from people, I wonder if there's an underlying self-control issue.  It's the reverse of saying, 'hey I'm overweight already, why not eat a lot more fries?'  A lot of people have commented on how AB hasn't been looking too healthy after the big weight drop, which has to make you question how 'healthy' the process was and how far it's going to go.  Makes you wonder what kind of foods we'll see on Good Eats from now on.

The other thing that stood out in the article was the mention that Alton is thinking about writing a book about how he lost 50 pounds.  The hair stood up on the back of my neck and images of Rachel Ray popped into my head.  Could a talk show be in AB's future?!

4 comments:

Jen said...

I agree that AB looked almost sickly when we met him in October...

Danamite said...

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks he doesn't look healthy. I thought he was much more handsome when he had a little more meat on him. You may be onto something with the theory that he's gone extreme due to self-control issues. What's that they say about never trusting a thin chef?

Beth said...

I think he looks fine now. He does look a little gaunt in the face, but he is much better off for not carrying the weight in his abdomen.

BTW, one person's "underlying self-control issue" is another person's "brain chemistry issue." For some people sugar is just very hard to moderate.

As far as Good Eats goes, if the Xmas special is any indication, he's not going to go Ellie Krieger on us!

Anonymous said...

As someone who works in the weight loss biz, I have to say "self-control' is a variable thing. Some people can't do "a taste" or "occasional". Understanding your own limitations is a true gift...

Love this blog, by the way. Been an Alton fan from the start of his show and remember thinking "this is a very odd show, but I like it!"