BY ABBY FOX
Greg Ladas, who graduated 24 years ago from East Greenwich High School, and has successfully worked his way in the financial services world, as a senior consultant for a company called LeapFrog Sytems, still loves it when he gets to veg out.
After a hard day at the office, or after a business trip, Ladas said, he just wants to sit on the couch and watch TV like anybody else.
So it was natural for him to name the diet he came up with, and the complementary book, “The Couch Potato Diet,” based on the idea that you can lose weight and be healthier without turning your life upside down. It became available on Tuesday, April 14.
Last Wednesday, Ladas discussed his diet book and dished out advice about becoming financially stable, to entrepreneurship students at the high school. You don’t have to change your life, he advised: work within your routines, find healthy alternatives to fattening foods like pizza and pasta, and save your money wisely. And, if you have a good idea, he said, make it yours, and know how to sell yourself. (Not surprisingly, he’s already copyrighted the “Couch Potato Diet.”)
“I never thought I’d be an author,” he said. “But I’m hoping that if I can help another dad like me, that’s a direct impact, and that’s why I wrote the book.” Ladas is a father of two boys: Will, 9, and Ted, 6, who attend Meadowbrook Farms Elementary.
Ladas graduated in 1985, the year before famous actress Debra Messing, and he knew her through the musicals they did together, like “Grease” and “Annie.” If you don’t get lucky, like Messing, he said, by following your dreams and becoming famous, the next best thing is to have your life in order – or as his presentation phrased it, “Follow your dreams, but have a backup plan.”
Money
“The earlier you invest in money, the more it can grow over time,” he said. “I wish I had known that, when I was younger.” Young people can take advantage of web sites like rudder.com to set up a budget, he said, and if they don’t want to go to that trouble, at least “you really need to have good credit, to buy almost everything that matters,” he said. And as someone still remembered for the 1967 station wagon he drove around during high school, he suggested, “Buy only what you need, early in life.”
Like his financial advice, Ladas’ health advice in his book is down-to-earth useful. He categorizes his diet into simple chapters: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snacks, Exercise, and finally, “Other Helpful Hints.”
The book is honest. Ladas says that in the days when he was performing high school plays with Messing, he was 180 pounds, then widened to 240 pounds by his mid-30s, earning him the nickname of “chubster.”
The Couch Potato Diet “is a very important distinction from the trendy diets of the day,” he writes. “Other diets try to change your eating habits or supply the food for you. However, what happens when you go back to old ways? You get fat again.”
Ladas gives a book talk at Borders at the Providence Place Mall on May 23. His information is on thecouchpotatodiet.net |
