Drop Dead Healthy by A. Jacobs (books to read to increase intelligence .TXT) 📕

“Total abstention from refined carbs and sweets—losing your sweet tooth—may be ultimately easier than trying to eat them in moderation.” But Taubes has young kids, so that won’t be happening in his life. Nor mine.

Consider dried mangoes. My kids are allowed to eat a couple of slices after lunch. But I’m addicted to them as well, polishing off as many as twenty in a day.

Dried mangoes have the veneer of healthiness—which is why I originally chose them as our treat of choice. But really, they’re just Snickers that happen to grow on trees. Those mango slices are delivering sixty grams of sugar to my blood each day—the equivalent of fifteen teaspoons of white sugar.

My willpower is failing me here. I’ve tried several strategies to kick this mango habit. I put them as far away from eye level as possible, tucking them behind a tray on the top shelf. Guess what? I found them.

I repackaged the mango slices, dropping each of them in its own individual wallet-size plastic bag. The strategy worked for a while. I felt guilty about unzipping fifteen bags to have fifteen portions a day. But it became too time-consuming to prepare, not to mention plastic-bag-consuming.

Sometimes, before padding out to the kitchen, I’d look at the digitally aged picture of Old A.J. Should I do this to him? Well, I think he’d forgive me. I’ve found Old A.J. is better for motivating me to take action—go to the gym, hop on the treadmill, have a cucumber—than he is at stopping my vices.

The other day, though, I had a breakthrough. I listened to a segment on the great science show Radiolab about bad habits. It featured an interview with Thomas Schelling—the Nobel Prize–winning economist who came up with now-self-vs.-future-self concept of egonomics.

He talked about an antismoking strategy that sounded intriguing. Perhaps I could apply it to my sugar habit.

When Julie got home, I asked her for a favor.

“If I have another dried mango this month, I want you to donate a thousand dollars of my money to the American Nazi Party.”

“The Nazi Party? Why not Oxfam?”

“That’s not enough of a disincentive. I want something that will make me sick to my stomach.”

“Ah, right,” said Julie.

She quickly got into the spirit. She filled out a check to the Nazi Party, signed it, and wrote “Courtesy of A.J. Jacobs” in the memo space. She waved it in front of me. “Don’t eat any of those dried mangoes—as delicious they may be.”

This is what’s known as an “Odysseus Contract.” In the Odyssey, our crafty hero demanded that his sailors tie him to the mast so that he wouldn’t take a dive off the starboard side when he heard the alluring singing of the Sirens. You shouldn’t trust your future self. Prepare for his or her weaknesses.

Thank God for Odysseus. Because let me tell you: This strategy is one of the most effective I’ve ever encountered. I haven’t eaten a dried mango in two weeks.

I still open the cabinet, and see those slices, and get a few drops of Pavlovian saliva. But there’s no way I’m going to put one in my mouth. It’s like a switch has been flipped. I can’t even conceive of eating one. The repercussions are too horrible. I’m not going to pay for a bunch of new swastika flags and jackboot laces.

It’s as if I were dating a woman and discovered she was my long-lost sister. The thought of kissing her repulses.

It’s been two weeks, and I haven’t eaten a single slice. I’m a hero.

The no-sugar diet is ridiculously hard to sustain, and sustain it I won’t. But just two weeks of sugar fasting improved how I felt. I had more energy, fewer aches and pains, and better workouts. As always, the placebo effect shouldn’t be discounted. But I’ve become more antisugar as a result of this mini-experiment.

I’m a weak man, so after the two weeks were over, I started using a sugar substitute called stevia. Sugar haters say it’s a crutch, and may raise insulin resistance. But most believe that, as far as sugar substitutes go, stevia is the healthiest. You can buy stevia in leaf form, or as little packets of powder. It has a vanilla taste, so I’m enjoying some vanilla-infused steel-cut oatmeal, and broccoli puree that tastes a bit like ice cream.

In my final act of defiance against King Sugar, I decide to try to cut sweet talk from my language as well. I shouldn’t glorify sugar’s taste by calling Julie by my usual pet name, “sweetie.” Calling her “savory” didn’t sound so romantic, so I settled on “pumpkin,” even though it’s kind of starchy. She approved.

Checkup: Month 16

     Weight: 157 (dropped to 154 when eating raw food)

     Miles walked while writing this book: 1012 (broke the grand mark)

     Meals this month with bok choy: 12

     Meals with bok choy 1968–2009: 0

     Most steps in a single day: 21,340 (walking to Tribeca, plus a lot of housecleaning)

This month, I joined my mom and dad for their respective workouts. Research shows that spending time with the family is healthy, assuming you don’t despise your family, which, thankfully, I don’t.

My mom took me to her Pilates studio, with its collection of machines made of leather, wood, and cables. They look as if they were jointly designed by Eric Roberts in Star 80 and Tomás de Torquemada. They have vaguely threatening names like “The Reformer.”

The workout itself wasn’t too scary, though. “We get to run while lying down,” my mom told me. I had to agree that’s a pretty good deal.

My dad’s workout was more traditional: treadmill trotting and strength training at a gym near his midtown office.

I never imagined I’d be working out with my parents. Mostly because, when I was growing up, my parents weren’t exercise enthusiasts. They emphasized intellect. My dad spent his free time reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica and writing law books. (He holds the record for the most footnotes in a law review article: 4,824.)

Athletics just weren’t high on the agenda. It’s only now,