Diet Dilemma

The English language is a tricky thing, where one word can convey different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. For example, the word diet. It can be used as a verb, as in “I’m going on a diet for the next six weeks to lose weight, and will then return to my normal atrocious eating habits and be totally surprised when I gain back all the weight.” It can also be used as a noun to describe the typical eating habits of a person or group of people, like “The typical Asian diet only contains about 2 teaspoons of soy a day.” See the difference?

When we use the word diet at the gym, we are using it in noun form. We’re not talking about temporary changes; we are talking about life long changes to what you eat in order to be more healthy and fit. Yes, we do food challenges where we ask you to cut out sugar, grains and/ or dairy for a month or two, but it’s not intended to be an exercise in willpower, it’s aimed at helping you make the first steps in life long dietary changes.

There is a reason why the diet and weight loss industry rakes in $58 billion dollars a year, they all but promise people results while they still “get to enjoy the foods the love!” Woo-hoo! But if these programs really worked, they would be hard pressed to find new clients after a while, right? The reality is, about 95% of people who go on a diet regain the weight they’ve lost within 1-5 years, programs like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig have a 97% failure rate. Even those who undergo bariatric surgery, like gastric bypass and lap-band procedures will experience a 30%-90% failure rate. Why is that?

While it’s easy to place blame on people for being weak, lazy and lacking self control, what if the heart of the problem is the supposed solution? Diets, in the verb sense, are temporary and usually unsustainable. Whether they are calorie restrictive or low-fat or likely both, people cannot maintain such extremes for the long term. Sure, they lose some weight, consider the diet a success and resume their old eating habits, which were never addressed by their diet in the first place and viola, they’re back to where they started. Programs that shift the focus to counting calories and points, or worse, send you food, don’t instil any decision making skills about food– once you’re off the program, you’re on your own. And if going back to your old eating habits brings back those unwanted pounds, those are the foods you need to stop eating.

Ultimately, long term success requires long term commitment to change; it takes a change in lifestyle and eating habits. The first step in that change is to start buying into the fact that there are no quick fixes, quality of food is just as important as exercise and if you can’t imagine your life without a certain food, chances are you’re addicted to it and need to seriously evaluate your attitude towards food.

More reading:

5 Weight Loss Tips for Cynical Bastards

Top 10 Nutritional Mistakes Women Make

Beware of “They”

As many of you know, I am currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Human Nutrition. This is a topic I am very interested in and care about deeply, other wise I would save myself the endless reading and caffeine IV drip I’ve recently had inserted. There’s a lot of minutia to memorize but, in the end, it will be well worth it. That being said, I don’t consider myself an expert in the matter. I am also not randomly pulling dietary advice and ideas out of thin air. I’m not hanging around the gym thinking to myself, “What should I tell people they shouldn’t eat that will make them miserable? I know, sugar! And grains and beans! Yeah! No beans–people will hate that idea! Mwahahaha!” No, I read the material written by people who are much smarter and have been doing research, or at least have been reading research much longer than myself. I read studies, books and blogs for ideas and information, and then rant about/ pass along that information to you guys.

So here’s the “deal,” I don’t expect anybody to make dramatic dietary and life changes just because I say so. That’s why I include links to studies and other blogs that I use for information, so that you can read the information and make your own decisions. Through my experiences in school and talking to people about nutrition, I hear a lot interesting advice from “they,” as in “They say eating too much protein is bad for your kidneys.” Or “They’ve done studies that show a high fat diet makes you fat.” Oh, they do, do they?

Here’s an example: Cherries – FDA Ban Natural Arthritis Cure

Now, this article in on the verge of hyperbole. You would think the FDA is sending out agents to make like George Washington and chop down cherry trees. Are cherries a wonder fruit? Will they relieve arthritis pain? I don’t know, and the author hasn’t provided any proof to substantiate a single claim in this article. However, people are going to read this and take it at face value.

So what is the point of all this? I want to help everybody fine-tune their BS-o-meter so that next time your friend/co-worker/sister in-law starts lecturing you about the benefits of whole grains, or the evils of bacon, you can recognize that just because “they say” this or that doesn’t make it true.

A few red flags to look for beyond “they say:”

“It has been shown…”– Really? Where and by whom? The manufacturer? An independent lab conducting a study?

“Studies prove/indicate…” Again, sources please! Also, studies can be flawed by poor construction or bias on the part of the researcher. I’m not saying you become a jackass skeptic, just keep in mind that a study isn’t always a smoking gun.

Claims that a fruit or herb cures a disease– If this really is a miracle fruit, then why isn’t everybody eating it? Because the FDA is keeping it secret? No, because it isn’t curing the disease, at least not in everybody. Also, there is a difference between treating a disease and treating the symptoms of a disease. If eating cherries helps relieve the inflammation of Rheumatoid arthritis, that’s great, but it’s not a cure.

Beyond Skinny-Fat

The Sugar challenge is officially over, wha-wha. Don’t worry though, another food challenge is on the horrizon.

We’ve heard back from some of you about your experiences with the challenge. Some people took a spin with sugary treats and felt the digestive repercussions of stomach pains. It just goes to show that you don’t always know what food is doing to your body until you step away from it for a while. Most of the time people are so use to feeling mildly crappy that they don’t realize it until they cut sugar (or grains) out of their lives for a month and then reintroduce it.

One person on the challenge lost 8 pounds! Hell yeah! If you didn’t lose weight, don’t be discouraged; all of this is relative. Though I highly suggest taking the challenge for another month an see what happens. Remember, you didn’t gain your extra weight overnight, don’t expect to lose all of it in a month.

Beyond Skinny-fat

If you haven’t already read about skinny-fatness on the WOD blog, check it out here.

Here’s the CrossFit Journal preview video of a model/former skinny-fat girl who didn’t shy away from lifting weights.

You can watch the entire video here.

Unfortunately, thin is often confused with healthy, which can be further from the truth. This mode of thinking is more prevalent among women, who shy away from weightlift and eat more than 1000 calories for fear of gaining weight or “bulking up.”

Stop the Presses!

I was working on the finishing touches for the next nutrition blog post when I came across the link to this video on Marks DailyApple.com and I scrapped that blog post immediately. It’s about 20 minutes long and well worth it!

I was overcome by two emotions watching this. On the one hand I was on the verge of tears because it is truly amazing that she was able to make such a dramatic transformation and on the other hand I was seething because every time she talked about the benefits of eating organic produce, grass fed meats, organ meats and fish oil, I heard the all too common skeptic retorts in my head. The ones that bitch about how expensive organic produce is, the self proclaimed food experts who say we need bread and whole grains and the Debbie Downers who warn against taking too much fish oil. Yep, organic produce can be expensive, buy what you can and get the rest from a conventional source or buy it frozen. Nobody needs grains, they are not a good source of fiber, you will not die without bread. Oh, and if don’t think you have a problem digesting grains, cut them out for a month and see what happens. As for fish oil, if you are eating fish regularly, keep doing what you’re doing. If not, find a good quality fish oil and start supplementing 2-4 grams a day. Eating too much of anything can be bad for you, this is not a profound statement.

How much more of a wake-up call do you need to start eating good quality food? Are you taking the “wait and see” approach to see if maybe you’ll dodge the bullet of diabetes, obesity, heart disease or Alzheimer’s Disease. By the way, if you think that these diseases exist in isolation from each other, think again.

I’m sorry if this post is taking a harsh tone, but I hear so many excuses as to why people can’t make positive changes in their diet. I love sugar too. And there are days when I eat too much of it– I’ll totally own up to that. I understand that it can be easier to buy fast food than to make dinner, or that eating an plate of vegetables usually isn’t appealing, but it sure as hell beats the alternative of chronic disease.

Start small if you have to, but do something! Don’t wait until you’re insulin resistant to start taking notice. And if you’re lean and eating like crap, you’re not off the hook. Just because you aren’t getting fat doesn’t mean you aren’t starving your body of vitamins and nutrients or doing major damage.

This is a collective call to arms, for everybody to put on their respective big boy and big girl pants and to start making changes.

The Final Few Days

The food challenge is winding down to the last few days and you survived! So what is your plan?

If you’ve been sugar-free for the last month, hopefully February 1st will be just another craving-free and sugar-free day. Hopefully, you have also experienced some positive results; more energy throughout the day, reduced cravings, clothes that fit better or even weight loss. If you haven’t lost all the weight you had hoped for, it’s okay, the challenge was only a month long. Most people gain 2-4 pounds a year in adulthood, it’s– not all going to fall off in a month. We all want to look better naked, I get it. However, keep in mind that you have all done tremendous things to improve your health by eliminating sugar, just give your body some time.

For those of you who are chomping at the bit to go to Cold Stone once February rolls around, go for it! If you have cut out the sugar for the last month, a trip to the ice cream shop, a soda or even a stack of pancakes will be an “experience” for sure. I’m not saying to go on an all day bender. But I also think it is important to revisit the extreme sugar highs you have previously been subjecting your body to on a daily basis for the last decade or so. For those of you that are extremely sugar sensitive, have your indulgence, but have your day’s meals planned out. If you are anything like me, once the sugar switch has been “flipped,” you will start justifying all sorts of questionable food choices if given the opportunity, like not having anything planned for dinner.

Anyone find themselves not able to cut out the sugar? This may have been an eye opening experience into how much sugar has become part of your life. You are not the only person to go through this be any means. Look at this as an opportunity to explore your feelings about food and why this challenge has been so hard.

More than anything, stay with the program, at least 80-90% of the time. We are all about the occasional cheat meal, huge emphasis on occasional. We’re talking once a week, assuming you are keeping the food clean the rest of the time! The point of this food challenge, and any challenge we have ever done is to get your health moving on a positive trajectory, not to suck all the enjoyment out of the food you eat.

It’s Okay, It’s Natural

“I eat lots of fruit, but it’s okay because it’s natural, my body knows what to do with it”

Do you know how many times I hear this? I used to believe it too.

I used to think that I was doing myself a favor by going to Jamba Juice after a WOD. You know, because it’s fruit and fruit is good for me; my body knows what to do with it.

Here’s the deal, our bodies do not have some mechanism to sort through the foods we eat and separate the “good” food from the “bad” food. There is no magical organ that turns the 37 grams of sugar in a 16 oz. “Fit n’ Fruitful” smoothie from Jamba Juice into energy that will be burned immediately, and turns the 39 grams of sugar from a 12 oz can of soda in to fat that will be placed around your midsection. At the end of the day, sugar is sugar is sugar. It doesn’t matter where it came from, all carbohydrates (with the exception of fiber) are converted into single unit sugars called monosaccharides that become blood sugar. When that blood sugar becomes too high, insulin is released to convert the sugar into energy and/or fat. Granted, fructose is digested differently that other sugars, but you get the general idea.

So here’s the real kicker, a 16 oz. Fit n’ Fruitful has 52 grams of carbohydrates total. So, minus the 6 grams of fiber, you’re pouring 46 grams of sugar down your gullet. Mmmm! Yes, yes, yes it has vitamin and minerals, but can you see how eating 11.5 teaspoons of sugar will negate any of those nutritional benefits? This isn’t just to pick on Jamba Juice, but to try and shoot a big ol’ hole through the notion that just because a food is “natural,” it won’t wreak havoc on your blood sugar levels. The same goes for whole fruit– to a slightly lower extent. Whole fruit takes longer to digest, which slows down the rate at which its sugar will be absorbed, but 1 cup of grapes still contains 15 grams of sugar. And, as much as it pains me to admit, a pomegranate contains 53 grams of carbohydrates, 39 of which are sugar!

If you have been participating in the food challenge and find that you still are experiencing sugar cravings despite the removal of sugary drinks and food, take a look at the amount of fruit you are still eating. It may be just enough to keep you fiending for sugar.

Butter Does NOT Make You Diabetic

Butter Does NOT Make You Diabetic

Paula Deen announced on Tuesday that she has Type 2 diabetes. Shocked? Neither am I. Here’s the big issue, Deen had been diagnosed three years ago and told no one. She didn’t disclose her condition to her fans, no “Hey ya’ll this burger I’m about to make with doughnuts as buns is likely contributing to me being a Type 2 diabetic, enjoy!” Nothing, not a peep. Granted, southern cooking is not known for being especially healthy, and she has manged to put an even more appalling spin on foods that will kill you sure enough anyway (Krispy Kreme bread pudding anyone?). However, her announcement is perfectly timed with her endorsement deal with a pharmaceutical company to promote their Type 2 diabetes medication. In addition, Deen’s sons have their own series in which they re-work her recipes to make them “healthier.” Look, everyone wins, yay!

Obviously I think Paula Deen was being disingenuous with her fan base. Sure, there are several factors that contribute to getting type 2 diabetes, like age and family history, but making a sweet potato recipe  intended to feed four people that calls for two cups of packed brown sugar is going exasperate the situation.

My big issue isn’t so much with Deen, but the reaction of the general media. Look up any article about the recent controversy and you will see the that Deen is know to “serve up high fat, high calorie dishes,” or is “known for her rich, fatty recipes.” And then there are the “I told-you-so’s” from people weighing in online with people  pointing to all the butter and heavy cream she uses in her recipes, yet no mention of the enormous amount of sugar, flour and bread she dumps into her food. Her Sweet Potato Balls, for example, calls for 2/3 brown sugar, 1/2 sugar and a large marshmallow for each ball. Add all the sugar in the recipe to the sugar found in the sweet potatoes and you have about 318 grams of sugar, not carbohydrates, but sugar in a recipe intended to feed 4-6 people, which breaks down to 80-53 grams of sugar per serving. And this is a side dish! Just image what the sugar/ carbohydrate count will look like at the end of dinner.

It is the dramatic and sustained spikes in blood sugar levels that leads to insulin resistance, pancreatic beta cell burnout and type 2 diabetes, not eating butter and fat. Fat doesn’t increase blood sugar levels, and actually helps to stabilize blood sugar levels in diabetics, in part because it slows the breakdown and absorption of carbohydrates and sugar.

Bottom line: Don’t stop using the butter, bacon fat and lard for cooking, do stop eating a pound of sugar (or any added sugar) at each meal if you are hoping to avoid getting type 2 diabetes.

Here’s more on fat and type 2 diabetes from Mark’s Daily Apple: Does a High-Fat Diet Cause Type 2 Diabetes?

Breaking Down Calories

We don’t get much questioning of our de-emphasis of calories. However, I’m guessing there is some opposition to our rationale so here is an explanation why counting calories or trying to create a calorie deficit is not the key to weight loss.

You have all heard that in order to lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume or
A change in body weight = calories in – calories out.

There are a couple of problems with this equation that we will explore. If you are more of a audio/visual learner, I strongly recommend watching the two videos below.

The first thing to understand about calories in versus calories out is what the equation is actually saying. This basically relates to the First Law of Thermodynamics/ conservation of energy. However, this equation only describes what is happening in regard to weight gain (or weight loss), but does nothing to explain it. Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat, has a great analogy for the “whole calories in versus calories out” equation. Let’s suppose we have a room full of people, more people enter the room but no one leaves. So the equation would be the population of the room = people in – people out. Pretty straight forward, right? The population of the room grows, since no one is leaving, but why? Why are people entering the room, and why is no one leaving? Who knows? This equation that is passed around as gospel of weight loss certainly doesn’t explain why some calories are stored as fat and others converted to muscle and some are used as energy. See how this doesn’t help to solve the mystery of a person’s expanding waistline?

What is more, the left side of the equation, the “Change in body weight” portion, is a measure of weight; pounds, kilograms, ounces, tons, you get the idea. The right side of the equation is measured in energy, specifically heat. A Calorie or kcal is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius. So what this equation is saying is that if you want to change the weight of something, more energy needs to leave it than enter it. We’re going to take a field trip back to high school math/science/chemistry real quick. Remember how in order to workout a problem correctly, all the units of the equation had to be the same? How do you convert weight to energy? You don’t, at least not in a simple algebraic equation like the one above. Really think about this for a minute. I’m sure you have heard that there is 3,500 calories in a pound of fat. But have you ever, ever heard the weight of an object being reported in energy? No.

If you are not convinced yet, consider this. There are people in the world who can eat anything they want, who aren’t very active and still don’t gain weight. Are they the exception to the Laws of Thermodynamics? No. Their bodies are just more efficient at using the energy they consume.  What about children? How come they grow instead of just turning into small, fat adults? Because their bodies use the energy they consume and turn it into more bone and muscle tissue, these actions are driven by hormones.

Hormones like  insulin, leptin and ghrelin seem to be the real predictors of weight gain or weight loss, just as hormones promote growth spurts in childhood . For example, maintaining a constant blood sugar prevents the release of insulin, which works to store excess sugar as fat. While insulin is in the blood stream, the body cannot preform lipolysis, the breakdown of fat for energy. In other words, if a person consumes a diet low in calories, but high in carbohydrates, which raises blood sugar they are likely to gain weight, or at least fat. Another hormone, leptin, sends a signal to the brain when we are full. High fructose corn syrup disrupts that signal to the brain, which leads to overeating.

The human body is a mind-numbingly complex organism that responds to nutrients, macronutrients and stimuli in its own unique way. Some people become fat on the same diet that would make or keep another person lean.

Instead of focusing on calories consumed and how many are being “burned” at the gym, a focus on eating high quality food, keeping a constant blood sugar and regulating hormones is much more effective strategy. Though it might seem more complex, it requires much less effort than incessantly counting and subtracting calories.

Half Way

Okay, a little less than half way, but who’s counting?

How is everyone feeling? More energy? Less mid-day sluggishness? For some, it can a week or two to feel “normal.” If you are used to eating lots of sugar and carbohydrates and then dramatically reduce that intake, your system, especially your brain, is going to freak out. It’s kind of like your body is detoxing, actually, it is detoxing.

So what do you do if you’re not doing well on the challenge?

First, don’t give up. You are not going to be awesome at everything all the time. To expect that is unrealistic and will set you up for disappointing yourself. For many of you, this sugar challenge is a huge departure from what you are used to. It is completely natural and normal to struggle with changing your food habits.

Second, don’t lose sight of the big picture. This challenge isn’t about just losing weight, or jumping through a few hoops for a month. This is about starting good food habits that will lay the foundation for a longer, happier, healthier life. If your food choices have improved even slightly, you are on the right track.

If you haven’t watched it already, this is the first part a very interesting lecture on willpower and why New Years resolutions fail.

How often do we fall into these thought patterns? Being aware of them is the first step in breaking them.

If you have found the last two weeks to be challenging, it’s okay. If you have been less than successful, you still have two weeks (and the rest of your life) to keep working at it.

Sweet Potato Latkes

These are a quick, easy, and look like they took more effort than they really did.

Sweet Potato Latkes

5 cups grated sweet potato

2 eggs

2 tablespoons onions, minced

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Sea salt and black pepper to taste.

Mix all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Heat a griddle or skillet over medium heat and melt a spoonful of coconut oil.  Take small handfulls of the potato mixture and drop onto the hot griddle or skillet and press down gently into little “cakes”.  Cook for 3-5 minutes on each side or until golden brown and crispy and the potatoes are done all the wat through. Top with fried eggs and bacon if you so desire. Makes 12 latkes.