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Doctor's talk supplements his book on healthy living

He stresses eating natural foods and doing the right kind and amount of exercise.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published February 24, 2007

SPRING HILL - Here, according to Dr. K. Steven Whiting, is how to be healthy, fit and well:

1. Eat the right kind of food.

2. Do the right kind of exercise.

3. Take the right kind of dietary supplements.

Whiting is founder and director of the Institute of Nutritional Science in San Diego. He has a new book out called Healthy Living Made Easy.

He's here in Hernando County to hawk the product. He gave two-hour talks the last couple evenings at Barbara Avery's Curves down from the Pit Boss Bar-B-Q in the Timber Hills Plaza on U.S. 19. An interactive presentation called "Conquering the Complications of Weight Loss" is set for this afternoon at 2. Then he will sign some books.

On Thursday, the Curves was packed with a gaggle of ladies and a few guys, too, sitting in rows of plastic folding chairs. There was a yellow sign on the front desk telling everybody the club's members had lost 5,218.5 pounds and 9,190 inches. A poster on the opposite wall had a picture of a big pair of jeans and a collective call to arms: BYE-BYE FAT PANTS.

Whiting, 57, has Elvis-black hair and was wearing a wild tie and a bright yellow shirt. He stood up and looked out at the members of his audience and gave them tips and made them laugh.

He laid out what he calls the "triad or trilogy" of healthy living - diet, exercise and supplements.

Some of his tips:

Shop the "periphery" of the grocery store - the produce area, the meat case, the parts with the yogurt and the eggs. Most of the stuff in the aisles in the middle, he said, is about as nutritious as the box it comes in.

Cook your own food.

Love banana splits? Fine. Have one. Just not every day.

The best fat? Olive oil.

Eat butter and not margarine.

Vegetables aren't supposed to come out of a tin can or a frozen box.

Egg Beaters? Not so much. "How can a fake egg possibly be better than a real egg?" Whiting asked. "I want the real thing, baby, or I don't want it all."

Look at the list of ingredients. "If you can't pronounce half the words, it's probably not good for you," he said. "The food industry is not your friend. They're not interested in making you well."

Money, he said. All about money.

See all those limbs and joints on your body? Move them.

But start slowly. Don't do too much too soon. "We are a society of immediate gratification," he said. "We want to get into that suit or that dress, and we want to do it in three weeks." That's not a reasonable goal. Neither is perfection.

Three times a week, 30 minutes at a time - that, Whiting said, is enough.

"A lot of people feel they have to make radical changes," he said. "You don't. You don't have to be good. You just have to be better.

"And nobody has to eat tofu and hearts of romaine all the time."

Probably, though, at least some of the time.

And he recommends Full Spectrum Nutrition supplements.

All of this is important stuff, and big bucks, too, in this country, where the typical diet is fatty, doughy, salty and excessively sweet - a ton of everything except, of course, much of anything that's close to good for us.

Living healthy?

It's easy.

Except when it starts to get hard.

Michael Pollan had a cover story about this last month for the magazine in the Sunday New York Times. His first sentence was memorable in its simplicity: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Then he wrote another 10,000 words.

Whiting's top market is the ever-increasing baby boomer population. He comes to Florida a lot. This is the first stop of his current swing through the Sunshine State, and he goes next week to Punta Gorda, Jupiter and West Palm Beach, and he also will be back in May.

The book came out earlier this month. It costs $19.95 and can be bought on Amazon.com or from the Institute of Nutritional Science's Web site at healthyinformation.com or here at Curves in the Timber Hills Plaza. Healthy Living Made Easy, with the subtitle "The Only Things You Need To Know About Diet, Exercise and Supplements," is 325 pages long.

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified February 23, 2007, 21:03:09]