Dumb Diets vs Eating Smart

There is something about the word ‘diet’ that makes me want to rush down to the nearest bakery and stuff myself on delicious pastries. In my mind ‘diet’ means eat less and die. I know that’s not true, but every time I have tried a new diet I’ve always ended up putting on more weight, as I seem to go out of my way to cheat on the diet and eat more of the wrong things. Rather like storing up food supplies for when you know there are going to be shortages later on. If you want to lose weight then you must at all costs avoid the word ‘diet’ which has too many connotations of short term gain and long term failure. It’s all about having the right mindset. What you need to look at is developing a sustainable food regime, a life style that you can live with day by day, month by month, year by year. Falling into the cycle of quick diets that lose a lot of water weight in the first two weeks, only to put it back on in a fit of chocolate ice cream mania the third week has to end. Starving our bodies does not work either. Focusing on our body and weight distracts us from living our life to the fullest. We have to change from living in order to eat to eating in order to live. That’s not as easy as it sounds because we have to give up so many bad habits which we have assimilated into our lifestyle. We have to change some of our beliefs about how our bodies work.

Jeremy Sherr has been a natural health practitioner for over thirty years and in that time, seen tens of thousands of patients. From his patients he learned that calorie counting does not work, it is not a long term solution to sustain weight loss. The reason for this is that just like people, not all calories are created equal. The majority of the fad diets don’t work for the majority of people either. Binge-eating, constipation, headaches, fatigue, low blood sugar and nausea are some of the more unpleasant side-effects of those diets. Many of Jeremy’s patients found that the most successful diet is the combination diet and its variations. This new way of organising your meals may seem difficult at first, but it soon becomes second nature and easy to live with. While many dieticians advocate a ‘balanced diet’ containing all the essential ingredients for life, the issue is not actually balance but harmony. Let’s put it this way: Balance is not healthy, it is a juggling act. We may balance play time with work time by busting our ass for 10 hours a day and then relaxing, or by working hard for 11 months and then lying on the beach desperately trying to ‘chill,’ before having to head back to the office. These are just opposites that need to be integrated rather than played against each other. What we need to learn to do is to play while we work and work while we play. The same goes for foods.

Not all foods work together. In fact they actually antagonise each other, fighting for a totally different form of enzyme and PH level in our stomach in order to digest. And when we lump them in there together like a sack of chalk and cheese, our digestion just cannot handle it. The food sits undigested in our systems, weighing heavy and finally turning into fat. We need to allow our systems the opportunity to digest foods that work together, each at its own time and pace, and with the digestive process that suits it. However, in saying this, one has to remain cognizant of the fact that our busy lives do play a major role in how and what we eat. When we juggle all that makes up our busy lives, cooking often lands on the back burner. We grab what we can, when we can, and that’s how fast foods take over our lives. So how do we overcome this problem? The key is to eat smart. Take the best out of a variety of different diets, including the combination or Hay Diet, and mould them into an easy to manage eating plan that suits you and your way of life. If it’s too hard and complicated, you’ll give up. It’s human nature to file anything too difficult to deal with in the ‘too-hard basket.’

Lord knows I’ve tried many diets over the years. There was the one where you had to boil vegetables to make soup, and that was all you ate for 2 weeks. I can remember blowing up by the second day and suffering such flatulence, I was almost too scared to venture out in public. Then there was the diet which required me to eat only protein. That was all well and good until I got so constipated, my stomach became as hard as a rock and I had to go to laxatives for a little relief. Then there was a banana diet which meant I couldn’t look at a banana for over a year. Some diets tell you to shun food like red meat, eggs and fatty fish. If you do that then you’re missing out on essential nutrients. Chicken and white fish are not only low in fat, but they are also low in iron. A shortage of iron leads to fatigue and anemia. Following a diet where you are told to cut out milk and cheese to reduce your fat intake is another big mistake. Dairy products are the best sources of calcium which is needed to build strong bones. Choosing the fat-free and low-fat options will ensure you get the calcium without adding a lot of fat. You don’t have to be a nutritional genius to work out that these dumb fad diets which cut out essential nutrients and fuel from your diet are no good for you. These dumb diets are also known as ‘crash’ diets and promise you huge losses in a relatively short time. Some of them are made up of ‘magic’ potions and powders that come in a kit form, disgusting stuff you have to drink instead of eating a decent meal. This isn’t practical, definitely not good for you, and sets you up to fail so that it ruins your self-esteem. Personally, I think these dumb ‘crash’ diets should come with a health hazard warning like they put on cigarette packets.

The problem I have is when I get told I can’t eat something, then I want it, I need it, I have to have it. Then I eat it so quickly because I feel guilty, that I don’t taste it properly, so I have to have more. If I have a bad day then I turn to food for comfort. This is what makes me an emotional eater and what leads me to overeat. Now, if I took the time to enjoy what I was eating, really savored it and played with it in my mouth, became passionate about the food, then I wouldn’t need to eat so much. I’d feel sated much quicker. If I ate regular small meals, then my blood sugar wouldn’t drop to make me binge eat when I get home after work. All these things affect how much we consume in a day. So should you give up coffee, chocolate and wine? The answer is a resounding NO. You need to integrate these vices into your life in a way that will benefit you. If you give them up, you’ll just want them even more.

So, how do you know if you are a dumb dieter rather than a sensible eater? How do you know if you are obsessed about your weight and food in general?

1. When you are permanently on diet and buy each new diet book that comes out, pursue each new weight-loss theory and try each new weight-loss product.

2. When you are totally pre-occupied with counting calories, obsess about food, eating or dieting.

3. When you get stressed when invited out for dinner or lunch because you are on diet.

4. When you berate yourself constantly from desiring a forbidden food which is on your banned list.

5. When you eat for the sake of eating, rather than because you are hungry.

6. When you starve yourself as punishment for a binge-attack.

7. When you use laxatives or vomiting to purge yourself after eating.

8. When you obsess about exercising to work off all the bad food you’ve eaten.

9. When you weigh yourself at every opportunity to see how much weight you’ve lost since the last time you weighed yourself.

10. When you bore your friends by constantly talking about dieting and weight-loss.

The news isn’t all bad. There are steps you can take to develop a better relationship between food and your body. When you walk into the kitchen ask yourself why you are there. Are you needing food because you are hungry or because you need comfort? Or maybe, you are just lusting after something you know is in the fridge, but you aren’t actually hungry. When you eat a meal, stop when you feel full, rather than finishing what is on your plate or going for seconds and feeling so uncomfortably stuffed you can’t move. Avoid punishing yourself by starving yourself after having a bad day where you ate everything that had a wrapper that rustled. Make sure you have something for breakfast every day and most importantly – set yourself realistic goals. Don’t plan on losing 10kg in 2 weeks, it ain’t going to happen. Yo-yo dieting plays hell with your metabolism so don’t do it.

Remember, despite what some ‘diet gurus’ might say, the only way to lose weight effectively is to take in less than what you burn. It’s as simple as that. So before you work out any eating plan, these are easy ways to start bringing out a change in your eating habits and lifestyle.

1. Eat 5-6 times a day. Skipping meals might make you binge-eat at night. Starving your body also makes it hold on to fat, so you’ll put on weight!

2. Eat off a side-plate, that will help you to reduce your portion-size and you will fool your brain by making it think you are still eating a full plate of food.

3. Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day. Not 8 glasses of coke zero or 8 glasses of beer. 8 glasses of water, and not flavoured water either! Drink before you eat a meal; drink after you’ve had a meal.

4. Eat a snack before you go shopping. You’ll be less inclined to buy luxury food you don’t really need.

5. Sleep 7 ½ hours a night. Sleep ranks right there with eating smart and exercise to help with weight loss.

6. Do your bit for the planet and make Mondays meat-free. Half of all the maize grown goes to feed lots to fatten cattle. Methane gas emissions do impact on the greenhouse effect and sheep and cattle emit a lot of methane gas! If a Monday doesn’t suit you, pick another day that works better in your busy life and stick to it.

7. Business lunches, after work cocktails, cake and coffee mornings, all need to be managed properly otherwise your clothes are going to become uncomfortably tight.

8. Plan ahead, write down your meals for the week ahead and work out what ingredients you are going to need. When shopping, try and stick to your shopping list and avoid impulse buying.

9. Buy easy, healthy snacks to keep in your desk drawer at work so that you can avoid visiting the office canteen or little shop on the corner.

10. Choose quick-cooking methods for when you work late, like stir-fries or using a grilling machine. This way you won’t be tempted to order in take-out or stop at a drive-thru on your way home.

11. Try and spend some time outside each day. You need sunlight to get Vitamin D, sunlight through a glass window doesn’t count.

12. Write down whatever passes between your lips in a food diary. Research has found that people who keep a food diary lose twice as much weight as those who don’t.

13. Pencil in some exercise time each day. You don’t have to try and fit in a 2 hour visit to a gym, rather try and accumulate short bouts of exercise throughout the day. Like, power-walking to the bathroom, using the stairs instead of the lift or some of the 5 minute exercises you can do at your desk listed elsewhere in this book.

14. Try and eat dinner earlier to allow the food time to digest before you go to sleep. When you’ve finished eating dinner, brush your teeth. This will stop you from having seconds for the sake of having them.

15. Wherever possible, try and eat organic natural foods like in the Paleo Diet. This is the diet where you have to try and eat like your cavemen ancestors did. This means staying far away from processed foods.

16. Find out your blood type and eat the foods recommended for your blood type. Many people swear by this, and seriously, what do you have to lose?

17. Have a big deepfreeze where you can freeze meals for times when you are too busy or not in the mood to cook. Some of these meals can be taken to work for lunchtimes as well.

18. Try and vary what you eat. Many fad diets fail because the menu is boring. You feel if you have to consume another hard-boiled egg you’d rather be fat.

19. Try and combine foods that have the same digestion time. Eat fruits before your main meal that contains protein.

20. Chew your food to a liquefied pulp before you swallow. This aids in digestion.

'Food combining' refers to the combination of foods which are compatible with each other in terms of digestive chemistry. It’s based on the theory that different foods require different digestion times. You want to eat foods that taken together enhance digestion rather than retard digestion. The theory is that if any food is left undigested it will be left as a fat deposit. This is something you want to avoid.

Dr. Herbert Shelton is the person credited with ‘food combining.’ He placed food into 3 categories: proteins, carbohydrates (Starches, fruit, sugars) and neutral. Protein foods require a highly acidic environment for digestion while carbohydrates and fats require a more alkaline medium. Starches and proteins when eaten in combination compromise the digestive process. For example, fruit takes only 30 minutes to digest. Protein can take 6-8 hours. So when the two are eaten together, then the fruit is forced to lie in the stomach fermenting and decomposing while it waits for the slower protein. This leads to indigestion, bloating, gas, abdominal discomfort, and poor absorption of nutrients. Really, we should eat dessert half an hour before we eat our main meal. When having steak and salad, we should eat the steak first and then the salad, not both together. Dr. Herbert Shelton suggested we only eat one protein each meal, and don’t eat carbohydrates with protein, don’t eat fruit with protein and don’t eat starch with fruit. For many of us this is not practical. The first rule of any diet is that it must work for you. What we need to aim for is using some of these combination principles as part of a healthy eating regimen that combines some other sound eating practices out there.

A sample eating plan (Choose one option for each meal from your blood type)

The diet plan will be in the book, Redesign Yourself.

Meetings or social interactions where food is included should not be a source of stress for you. There are always healthy options on every restaurant’s menu. For example, at a breakfast meeting you can elect to have poached egg on rye/health bread, grilled tomato, cappuccino and fresh fruit juice. A business lunch can consist of sushi, or grilled fish/chicken with a baked potato, or a Greek salad. A dinner date can be a 200g steak with steamed vegetables and a glass of wine. After-work drinks can be a glass of wine or a shot of vodka with sprite zero or orange juice.

If you’re menopausal, then your diet should consist of tofu, miso, soy sauce, dried apricots, chickpeas, lentils, rice, oats, barley, fish, sage, fennel, parsley, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, alfalfa, mung beans, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, apples, pears and sunshine. Try and avoid excessive amounts of coffee, tea, hot drinks, caffeinated drinks and spicy foods. Great homeopathic remedies are Agnus castus for hot flushes, Dong Quai for hot flushes and vaginal dryness, Black Cohosh for mood swings, night sweats and vaginal dryness.

If you want to boost your sex life the eat celery to boost your libido; soy beans and legumes to enhance your erectile function; fatty fish and eggs to increase the sensitivity to your nerve endings; water and soy products to improve natural lubrication; oysters to boost the sperm count; and almonds to advance your sexual appetite. Processed foods and foods high in sugar and fat DESTROY your sex life.

There are some foods out there which have many benefits and it would be good to include them in your diet. Cranberry juice helps with bladder infections. White button mushrooms boost your immune system. Mangoes and kiwi fruit are rich in vitamin c, beta carotene and antioxidants, and they are great at protecting your eyes from the sun. Red meat, chicken, fish, eggs and cheese contain vitamin B12 which improves your memory and stops brain shrinkage. Spinach, broccoli and fresh asparagus contain vitamin B6 which is also good for your memory. If you eat broccoli steamed for no more than 4 minutes three to five times a week, then it will help your body to absorb its cancer-fighting properties. Seafood is high in Omega 3 oils and serotonin which makes you feel happier. A shortage of serotonin in your diet makes you moody, lowers your sex drive, makes you moody and gives you a craving for sweet things. Serotonin also regulates your sleep. Pomegranate juice is high in folic acid, vitamin A + E, is also a potent antioxidant which makes it perfect for pregnant women. Pears are also often a neglected fruit. They are a good source of fibre, vitamin B2, copper, potassium and are high in pectin which lowers cholesterol levels and tones the intestines. If you’re feeling lethargic and uncreative, then try blending broccoli, celery, carrot, peeled cucumber and apple to create an interesting juice. One glass of that and you will feel like someone turned a light on in your head.

Foods to avoid at all costs are processed foods which contain transfats and other strange preservatives to extend their shelf-life, pastries, cakes and deep-fried foods. Contrary to what you might think, these are not comfort foods. These foods actually cause depression, and of course, then you need to eat more of them in the mistaken belief that it will make you feel happier.

Food is not something we should mindlessly stuff down our throats. What we eat requires careful thought and planning. Dumb diets should be discarded and ways to eat smart should be researched. Remember, what suits one person might not suit another, we are all unique after all. Websites you might find useful are www.thecarrot.com; www.fitreach.com; www.mynetdiary.com; www.everydiet.org/blood-type-diet, www.longevity-and-antiaging-secrets.com/food-combining, www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/food-combining. At the end of the day, you have to choose a food regimen which suits your lifestyle, and you have to remember to allocate exercise time each day, even if it is only 30 minutes. Changing your diet is not enough to sustain weight-loss, you need to burn calories as well.

This is an exerpt from Redesigning yourself for the multi-tasking generation by Cindy Vine and Jeremy Sherr.