Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Days on the Climate Neutral Diet!
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 09. 6.06
Dan Worth, an environmental lawyer and head of NAELS, went to Paris with his and found that switching trains on the metro was the equivalent of climbing 100 flights of stairs per day. They walked everywhere, (or between train stations) ate whatever they wanted, had a great time and lost ten pounds. He calls it the Climate Neutral Diet and he is really on to something- every calorie you burn on your bicycle or by walking comes off your waistline, and every mile you don't drive produces that much less CO2. Excess fat becomes the greenest fuel of all! Dan calculates that in America, in his work as an environmental lawyer, he pumps out a quarter ton of CO2 per week. In France, with an effective local and suburban rail network, he could move around easily by train and foot, consuming far less fuel. 30% of American adults- 60 million people- are considered obese. Imagine how much CO2 would be saved if that was converted to miles walked or biked. ::Huffington Post
North America now pays the price for creating a culture based on the illusion of freedom that gives you a car.
In the past (and someplace even today), city planners have design it for the cars, not the pedestrians. New house owner must pay a tax for the sidewalk. But everybody pay to build the roads. Many suburban quarters do not even have sidewalk as if city planners think that walking is a weird behavior (or maybe it is due to the fear that strangers might walk by our home).
For myself, I will love to live in a city built so we can move only around by foot, bicycles or trains. I live downtown and I walk everyday. I walk to do my shopping, to go to work and when I going out at night. Friends give me lifts; I take cabs, the subway. I use my car only when I need to go in the suburbs or if I need to buy something very large and heavy. So I feel good knowing I do not produce too much CO2. At least, in Canada we have a superb metro in Montreal and the go-trains for the Toronto area.
Lets be blunt, that sort of european model for North America is simply invalid. Outside of the Northeast metroplex corridor, the european model of transportation simply isnt going to work. North America is just too rural, and the population density too low for everyone to use public transportation outside of urban areas.
A focus on lower impact vehicles, or government policy to encourage people to move to the city from the suburbs (not likely!) would be the best for most of North america, while increasing mass transit infrastructure in urban and limited suburban areas.
If you lose 10 pounds in 10 days, you've mostly lost water, possibly with some lean body mass. It'll come back fast.
If you want healthy weight loss, you should be targeting 1-2 ponds per week. That's burning 500-1000 calories per day more than you take in. Your body can't metabolize stored fat much faster than that.
Assuming you burn the average 2000 Kcal / day... If you ate nothing at all and drank only water, it would take 17.5 days to lose 10 lbs. That's 2.5 weeks of malnutrition which would likely lead to a trip to the hostital where they'd wreck your "diet" with an IV. That or death. Wee!
(10 lbs * 3500 cal/lbs) / (2000 cal/day - 0 food) = 17.5 days
LALA LA LA LA I am soooooooooo fat...I just wanna lose weight
I think im going to go anorexic, i think thats the easiest way...no food, just water...maybe some grape fruit...
i wanna lose weight! but its not working! i exercise drink water ughh im about to just to be anorexic.