Category: eating

diets · eating

In defense of (some) white foods (some of the time)

Sam B3 Comments

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Photo of two things I love, baguettes and bikes, from the blog Lovely Objects.

I’ve been thinking about white bread this week in Spain. It’s a local staple. And as a vegetarian I’m relying on it more than I usually do for daily sustenance. Aside from wishing for more choice, it’s not all bad.

While there is nothing I like better (in the bread department) than thick dark bread, milled with nuts and seeds (maybe even some fruit too), I know that not everyone feels the same way. I’m a parent and so I know that most kids, mine included, prefer the white stuff. Sometimes I like it too.

I know for sure I did as I kid. I even wrote a piece about it for Philosophers on Holiday (back when they were a printed zine, mailed to your home or office ) called “Ode to Hotel Toast.”

When I was a kid I only encountered commercially prepared white bread in hotels, though I didn’t know that. I just thought hotels made exceptionally good toast. The piece talks about Wonder bread, and how someone I know from Newfoundland called it “fog bread.” All fluff, no substance. “But it makes a right good piece of toast.”

In recent years, those who aspire to healthy eating turned away from white bread as part of our anti carb, healthy lifestyles. Between the paleo people and the low carbers more generally, it can feel like you might as well just eat spoonfuls of sugar out of the jar as pick up a slice of white bread.

There are even no white food diets.

I’ve had my doubts. The French don’t get fat. (National stereotype, I know. They also don’t eat much and they smoke.) Look at those lovely crusty white baguettes and croissants they eat everyday. My kids loved to eat with the French family next door. “They don’t have to eat whole wheat bread,” they reported back.

These days I eat all kinds of bread but often I’ve felt guilty about the white stuff.

So I was happy to read this month that there are some health benefits to white bread

See White bread good for gut bacteria.

“When people try to eat healthier, they usually skip the white bread and go for whole grains. Yet it seems as if white bread may not be as bad for you as once thought. Scientists have found that white bread actually encourages the growth of beneficial gut bacteria, which could mean that choosing this type of bread isn’t completely unhealthy.”

That’s bread. But what about rice?

“Somewhere along the line, a terrible rumor began: White rice is bad, and brown rice is good. We’re not sure who started it, but Ryan Andrews, R.D., director of education for Precision Nutrition, is here to explain the confusion.”

See Is brown rice really the healthiest?

And then there’s the arsenic problem. See The New York Times, The Trouble with Rice. It turns out that there are high levels of arsenic in rice, ten times higher in brown rice than white.

Can’t we be white bread/white rice moderates? No food is evil, after all, not even white bread.

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diets · eating · fat · fitness · weight loss

Questions and quibbles about impossible weight loss

Sam B11 Comments

The impossibility of long term weight loss success was in the news again last week and it made its way into this blog despite our view that body weight and fitness aren’t connected in the way many people think. Certainly I’ve been fat and fit and thin and woefully out of shape. In my life they’ve been different things, thinness and fitness.

Read last week’s posts for my analysis of why doctors mislead patients about the reality of weight loss, and in particular, about the reality of maintaining it, and my thoughts about what weight loss unicorns, those rare people who do keep the weight off, have in common. Tracy also blogged about her ongoing experiences with Precision Nutrition’s Lean Eating for Women program and how the “news” that long term weight is close to impossible made her feel.

My weight loss story:

I thought I was a fat kid. Looking back, I think I was a pretty normal-sized kid who thought she was fat. I joined Weight Watchers in grade six, read about that here, and began a period of getting skinny and looking good all the while living on coffee and cigarettes. I was in horrible shape but I was a teenager and I looked great. It was the 70s. What can I say?

Enter feminism and university, the 80s, punk aesthetic, and an avowed rejection of mainstream beauty standards. I got a sort of gentle mohawk and dyed my hair pink and purple. I wore a lot of black. I also gained weight. By the start of grad school I weighed 235 lbs. When I stepped on the scale and saw that number, I was shocked. I was having a hard time finding clothes that fit. No wonder, I thought. I was a solid size 16 but clothes that size were in regular stores. The next stop would have been plus-size fashion and it felt like enough was enough. I took up weight lifting, added some cardio, quit smoking, pretty much quit eating, and in the course of an academic year lost 80 lbs. I was twenty-four.

I haven’t kept clothes from either high school or skinny me grad school with two exceptions. Can you guess? Probably you can. I kept my prom dress and my wedding dress, neither which even fit my kids as Halloween costumes. They looked impossibly tiny. Finally, a couple of years ago, I send both to a thrift store/charity shop. Enjoy some other/not me skinny person!

By the time I was 34, I had a PhD, three children, an academic job, tenure and had regained all weight I’d lost in grad school. It was the late 90s.

Coming up to 40, I became department chair, took up running, hired a personal trainer and made it back to 165 lbs. Lower than that never tempted me. I was a size 10. Though technically still overweight, I could feel my ribs and my hip bones and I felt skinny. Certainly I had skinny face!

Now with the fittest by 50 challenge coming to a close, I’m thinking again about weight. I’m not back to my highest weight but I wasn’t able maintain 165 either. I’m about halfway in between these days.

As a very active but larger person (or fat, whatever) with a pretty good health and fitness profile I wonder lots about weight, size, destiny and biology and here are some questions that I’d like to ask an obesity researcher if we had a long flight together to chat. (I’m thinking about that because I’m writing this on a flight between Toronto and Los Angeles.)

My weight loss questions:

1. What’s better in terms of losing weight and keeping it off, slow weight loss or fast weight loss? The common sense view is that it’s better do it slowly, that too restrictive a diet sends your body into starvation mode. But commonsense isn’t always right and though I like the common-sense view, recent research casts some doubt on it.

But see 4 days, 11 pounds in the New York Times.

Losing weight is simple: Ingest fewer calories than your body burns. But how best to do that is unclear. Most experts advise small reductions in calories or increases in exercise to remove weight slowly and sensibly, but many people quit that type of program in the face of glacial progress. A new study, published in March in The Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, suggests that minimal calories and maximal exercise can significantly reduce body fat in just four days — and the loss lasts for months. The catch, of course, is that those four days are pretty grueling.

In a study, on men, of course, a group of test subjects worked out a lot (8 hours a day) and ate next to nothing (just 360 calories a day) but 4 days. Of course, they lost a lot of weight but what got the researchers attention was that it stayed away.

More surprising, the men did not immediately put the weight back on after the study ended. “We thought they would overeat and regain the weight lost,” Dr. Calbet says. Instead, when the volunteers returned a month later, most had lost another two pounds of fat. And a year after the experiment, they were still down five pounds, mostly in lost body fat.

See also Seven Dangerous Myths about Weight Loss.

“There’s no reason to think that slow, gradual weight loss is better over the long-term compared to losing lots of weight fast. A pooled analysis of randomized clinical trials that compared rapid weight loss and slow weight loss (or, to be more precise, extreme diets and less grueling ones) found that though the extreme diets resulted in the loss of 66% more weight (16% of body weight versus 10% for the regular diets), there was no difference at the end of a year.”

That’s reporting on research in “Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity,” by Krista Casazza et al, New Engl J Med 2013; 368:446-454, January 31, 2013.

2. The commonsense view also says it’s really bad to regain weight. So bad that you ought never have lost in first place. You’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of yoyo dieting and ruining your metabolism. But how true is that? How bad is regaining weight if it happens slowly, over time? Yes, it’s depressing and demoralizing but is it bad from a health point of view?

This question has bothered me so much that I’ve set out to find out answers. I’ve looked through Google scholar and started reading way outside my field of research expertise. No clear answers emerged. If you’re reading and you’re an obesity researcher and you know the answer, please email me.

My experience is that of regaining weight over the course of years, not months. Did my health benefit from those years at a lower weight? The weight crept back on for sure but kind of the rate of a pound a month, or less.

Suppose I only do the complete up down cycle three times my life, would i really ir have been better off at a consistent but high weight? That doesn’t seem obviously true to me.

Suppose too that my low weight keeps changing, getting higher, first 155, then 165, and maybe next time 175. And my high weight on the up cycle gets lower. First 235, then 225, now 200. Maybe eventually it’ll settle somewhere in the middle as the ball’s bounce diminishes.

I think that on my optimistic days!

3. What counts as success? Suppose I only ever regain half the weight I lost. Is that success or failure?

Yoni Freedhoff commented on the blog saying there were lots of unicorns in a study he’d written about.

“There sure were a boatload of unicorns 8 years after the Look AHEAD trial began – even among those with the most minimal of interventions: http://www.weightymatters.ca/2014/06/more-on-almost-impossible-feat-of.html”

I trundled off to look at it and saw was measuring something different. Writing about the study on his blog Freedhoff says, “It’s quite heartening to see that after 8 years, for 35% of the DSE control group, 3 1-hour group talks a year were sufficient to help fuel a sustained weight loss of 5 percent or more of their presenting weight, and for 17% of them, enough to fuel and sustain a greater than 10 percent loss. “

There are at least two different ways to measure long term weight loss success. We can focus on those who maintain a goal weight or on those who maintain a weight loss of just five or ten percent of their starting weight. By that more easygoing measure, I’m in, I’m a success story. Lots more people are in even if we don’t typically think of only losing 5-10 percent of your body weight, a weight loss success story.

Call the people who meet standard 1, getting to goal and staying there, the unicorns. They are rare. Far more common are people who meet standard 2, exotic but not unfamiliar. Call them the weight loss alpacas. I’m a weight loss alpaca! (I’ve got a soft spot for alpacas.)

Animals and mythical creatures aside, the point here is a serious one. Let’s think about success a bit differently. There are tremendous health benefits that come with some pretty small weight losses. Even bariatric surgeons are starting to think in terms of small differences in weight instead of unsustainable weight loss miracles.

Rethinking success is part of Freedhoff’s pitch too. He writes, “What I’m getting at is that I think what makes maintaining weight loss seem “almost impossible” are the goal posts society has generally set to measure success. No doubt, if the goal set is losing every last ounce of weight that some stupid chart says you’re supposed to lose then the descriptor “almost impossible” may well be fair. On the other hand, if the goal is to cultivate the healthiest life that you can honestly enjoy, subtotal losses, often with significant concomitant health improvements, are definitely within your reach. “

4. Is all obesity alike? Catherine Womack and I have chatted about whether there are medically significant different kinds of obesity (her suggestion). You know that there’s conceptual cleaning up to be done, of the sorts philosophers love, when medical researchers start talking about “thin fat” people and metabolically healthy obese people. It seems clear that these weight categories aren’t doing the work we need them to do. “Thin fat person?” What the heck is that? Oh you mean a metabolically unhealthy thin person. Then why not say so and leave weight out of the picture?

There’s far too much running together of various health problems with various numbers on the scale, with seemingly little awareness about the ways in which the two might be linked (or not).

So, lots of questions. I’ll keep reading and thinking. But for now, back to fitness!

 

 

body image · diets · eating · health · motivation · weight loss

“Healthy stuff is still healthy, it just doesn’t make you thin”

Tracy I6 Comments

Yesterday Sam posted about the CBC report with latest “news” about obesity research: “Obesity research confirms, longterm weight-loss almost impossible.”  This is hardly news. We’ve said this many times.  It’s one of the most controversial claims you can make that’s fully supported by research.

I responded last summer with the post “If Diets Don’t Work, Then What?”   There I promoted the benefits, mostly in terms of mental health, of the intuitive eating approach.  I didn’t lose weight when I embraced intuitive eating. But I did lose a debilitating obsession with food and weight.  That more than made up for it.

And yet, after a year of intuitive eating, I still chose to pursue the Precision Nutrition Lean Eating Program for Women. Knowing what I know, it may seem like an odd choice. Why, when all the advertising surrounding the program is about body transformation, would I want to do it? I blogged about it in the post “Why I’m trying PN “Lean Eating” after a year of intuitive eating.”  There, I said my main reason had to do with tweaking my nutritional habits:

One of the principles of Intuitive Eating–the last principle, in fact, because it is so loaded for so many chronic dieters–is “Honor your health with gentle nutrition.”  I don’t want to exaggerate. It’s not as if I’m living on junk food and soda pop or anything like that.  But I do feel as if I’ve not quite mastered nutrition since I became vegan just over three years ago. And while I’ve been focusing on a more intuitive approach to eating, nutrition hasn’t been the main guiding principle in my choices.

And truth be told, I’m ready for a change.  From what Sam has told me about the Lean Eating program and from everything I’ve read, it’s not a diet and it can be compatible with an intuitive eating approach to food. So let’s just say that this year, I’m honoring my health with the re-introduction of gentle nutrition.  Nothing extreme will work for me.

And so far, it’s been doing that really well.  What I didn’t know ahead of time is just how compatible with intuitive eating the PN approach in the Lean Eating program actually is. If you could just embrace the two “anchor habits” of eating slowly and stopping at 80% full, you would be a fairly successful intuitive eater. And a whole lot more comfortable after meals.

So I’m engaging in some healthy behaviors and developing some healthy habits. And since they do ask for weight and measurements on a regular basis, I can report that I have dropped a few pounds along the way. But I am not deluding myself this time. The real test of any program is not to be found by comparing the “before” with the “immediately after.” Not at all. Check back a year after. Or two years after. What about five years after?

As Sam reported yesterday, PN doesn’t track that sort of thing at all. No follow-up means no data to report.  With the stats for any program as they are, it’s not surprising no one wants to track the long term results. And the fact that lots of people do PN multiple times is evidence that despite its focus on healthy habits, the results are not likely to be sustainable for the majority of people.  If they were, they would be more enthusiastic about follow-ups and reporting the longer term outcomes for their clients.

The quote from the CBC article that I liked the most, is the one that I put in the title today. Pyschologist Traci Mann, who ran an eating lab at the University of Minnesota for 20 years, says: “Healthy stuff is still healthy, it just doesn’t make you thin.”

As Sam did yesterday, I’m concerned about people who put thinness as their primary goal for engaging in activity or for making balanced nutritional choices.  That’s not the only reason to make those choices. As the research shows, it’s not even a good reason.

I do wonder whether I will keep these “healthy habits” over time.  Does the weight come back on inevitably, or is it because habits slide? “Researchers are divided about why weight gain seems to be irreversible, probably a combination of biological and social forces. ‘The fundamental reason,’ [obesity researcher Tim] Caulfield says, ‘is that we are very efficient biological machines. We evolved not to lose weight. We evolved to keep on as much weight as we possibly can.'”

Okay, so as Sam asked yesterday: liberating or depressing?  For me, it’s helping me a lot to keep any weight loss that I might be experiencing in PN LE in perspective. Thankfully it’s not my primary goal, and even more thankfully the weighing and measuring has not fostered a new obsession. In fact, I have found myself quite capable of adopting the recommended attitude of “get ’em and forget ’em” towards the weekly updates.

I used to feel more hopeful about a different outcome, namely a change not in weight but in body composition. But now I think that aspirations of that nature are just another breeding ground for false hope.

When I reflect on what has been most amazing so far about the “fittest by 50 challenge” that Sam and I are on, for me it comes down to two things:

1. becoming adept at intuitive eating, to the point where I no longer obsess about food.  I repeat: I NO LONGER OBSESS ABOUT FOOD!

2. how much I am enjoying the activities I’m pursuing these days. I’m all geared up for my first triathlon of the season on the weekend and I couldn’t be more excited.  Weight loss and even body composition just aren’t factoring into that picture.

I also have an expanded conception of health that includes my mental health.  I feel more grounded, more at peace with who I am, much healthier in my relationship and attitude towards food, activity, and my body.  I’ve still got a bit of a way to go with respect to body image, but I am further than I was last summer when I wrote this post.

I too fall into the “liberating” camp.  Knowing the facts should also liberate us from stigmatizing fat bodies and making moralized judgments about body fat (on ourselves and others). In moral philosophy we have this principle that says “ought implies can.” It means that you can’t be under an obligation to do anything that is impossible.  If we say you “ought to” then it means you should be able to.

And the stats on long term maintenance of lost weight don’t support the “can.” Therefore, they call seriously into question the “ought.”

At the same time, that doesn’t mean we need to give up on making choices that make us feel better. But making thinness the primary motive is a set-up for feeling much, much worse.

 

 

body image · diets · eating · fitness · health · weight loss

Well intentioned lies, doctors, and the diet industry: If weight loss is impossible, then what?

Sam B9 Comments

Recently the CBC repeated news many of us know to be true, that significant long term weight loss is so difficult, so rare, that it counts as near impossible.  I thought the piece was pretty well-researched and well-argued and while I have quibbles and questions here and there, frankly I sometimes I find news of this sort a relief. I’m going to write a part two with quibbles and questions but for now, let’s take this news at face value.

You can find this news depressing or liberating. Personally I’m opting for the latter and I’ll say more about why later.

See Research confirms long term weight loss almost impossible.

As incredible as it sounds, that’s what the evidence is showing. For psychologist Traci Mann, who has spent 20 years running an eating lab at the University of Minnesota, the evidence is clear. “It couldn’t be easier to see,” she says. “Long-term weight loss happens to only the smallest minority of people.”

We all think we know someone in that rare group. They become the legends — the friend of a friend, the brother-in-law, the neighbour — the ones who really did it.

But if we check back after five or 10 years, there’s a good chance they will have put the weight back on. Only about five per cent of people who try to lose weight ultimately succeed, according to the research. Those people are the outliers, but we cling to their stories as proof that losing weight is possible.

“Those kinds of stories really keep the myth alive,” says University of Alberta professor Tim Caulfield, who researches and writes about health misconceptions. “You have this confirmation bias going on where people point to these very specific examples as if it’s proof. But in fact those are really exceptions.”

Our biology taunts us, by making short-term weight loss fairly easy. But the weight creeps back, usually after about a year, and it keeps coming back until the original weight is regained or worse.

This has been tested in randomized controlled trials where people have been separated into groups and given intense exercise and nutrition counselling.

Even in those highly controlled experimental settings, the results show only minor sustained weight loss.

So that’s the “news,” scare quotes because it’s not new news.

See The Fat Trap, the New York Times in 2011, or The Obesity Era in Aeon Magazine in 2013. (The obesity era article raises the puzzle of fat animals, as humans aren’t the only animals getting bigger. See also I’m not fat, I’m fluffy: The puzzle of animal obesity.)

My favourite though is Gina Kolata’s 2007 book Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss–and the Myths and Realities of Dieting. She’s a terrific writer and I highly recommend her book. Kolata is another New York Times science reporter and so this isn’t exactly fringe stuff.

So let’s get back to supposing this gloomy/liberating view is right. Two things immediately follow.

First, doctors shouldn’t prescribe weight loss to overweight/obese patients, especially not without mentioning the long term likely effect. Would we recommend any other treatment with these odds of success? Medical professionals should spend more time emphasizing weight maintenance. Second, especially if you’re a normal weight or overweight person, the last thing you should try to do is lose weight. That looks like a clear fast train to getting fatter.

Here’s the more interesting question, if doctors know this, why don’t they act on it? Here is my guess at an answer. Doctors hate problems they can’t solve. I saw that when they were dealing with a family member with incurable illness. They want to hold out hope.

So that’s part of it. Doctors are also human and reason as everyone does. The simple mathematical model of “eat less, move more” seems obviously true. Weight loss looks like just simple math plus will power. How could it go wrong?

Finally, doctors also know that healthy eating does matter and so too does exercise. Indeed a recent study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that  for women and heart health exercise matters more than any other factor including obesity. (See Study: Exercise Trumps Body Weight When It Comes To Women and Heart Health.) Doctors fear that without the promise of weight loss, no one would be motivated to eat well and stay physically active. As the article about the impossibility of weight loss says, “Health experts are also afraid people will abandon all efforts to exercise and eat a nutritious diet — behaviour that is important for health and longevity — even if it doesn’t result in much weight loss.”

But I worry that this reasoning gets it exactly wrong. People aren’t idiots. Tell them to exercise and eat well in order to lose weight. What happens if they don’t lose weight? They’ll quit exercising and quit eating well. That’s because you told them to do it to lose weight. And clearly it wasn’t working so why stick with it?

Also, think about the thin people. They need to eat well and exercise too. But if weight loss is given as the main reason to do so, why would they? They’re already thin after all. See How equating being fat with being out of shape hurts thin people too.

Moving past doctors, what about the weight loss industry? Weight loss companies are ethically bankrupt–see my past post on Weight Watchers, I hate you Weight Watchers–and ought to be shunned. They’re in business to sell the impossible dream. If you fail, it’s your fault. Weight Watchers always says that people who attend the meetings lose weight. That’s because those who don’t lose weight sensibly make the decision to quit.

Is there another way? What about companies like Precision Nutrition (see my take on them Precision Nutrition’s Lean Eating Program: A Year in Review) and dietary approaches like Intuitive Eating?

We haven’t tried Go Kaleo’s approach but it also seems to fall into this category. As a commentator on our Facebook page put it, “Her idea seems to be that our focus on ridiculously low calories when dieting pushes people toward a complete lack of ability to see how many calories they’re actually eating (If not all the way into Binge Eating Disorder) See https://gokaleo.com/stop-dieting/.”

These approaches focus on process and habits rather than results. It’s all about the journey.

Okay, but what about results? Does focusing on the process get you where you want to go?

My suspicion, and it’s just a suspicion, is that these approaches don’t fare much better in terms of weight results but that they do help people have a better, healthier relationship with their food and bodies.

Why the suspicion?

First, they don’t track results. Since I left Precision Nutrition’s Lean Eating program there’s been no follow up to find out how weight maintenance is going. I’ve gained weight back but they don’t know that I suspect they don’t want to know that. When I did the program I met lots of people doing it a second, third, or fourth time. Each said, “This time, I’ll do it right.” But that reminded me a bit of Weight Watchers with its high rate of recidivism.

Second, if they had good news in terms of weight loss results they’d share it. Loudly and from the rooftops. Not a single weight loss company shares honest to goodness statistics about their results. You can assume, I think, pretty safely that if there was good news, we’d all hear about it.

Ragen Chastain of Dances With Fat puts it pretty bluntly talking about the CBC piece:

“If you read the comments on the article, which I don’t recommend, you’ll see that many people subscribe to the magical power of semantics. If you attempt intentional weight loss, but instead of dieting you call it a lifestyle change, they claim you won’t gain your weight back. This is the second to the last stop on the denial train, at the final stop people just close their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears, and scream LALALA! “

So why do I find all this liberating rather than depressing?

It removes an impossible goal.

You can move because it feels good and it’s good for you. You can eat because it tastes good, helps fuel your activity, and makes you happy and  healthy.

You can join Tracy in stepping off the scale.

You can love your body the way it is now.

Now go play! Enjoy!

Image: Misty grassy spot in a forest Jonas Nilsson Lee, Unsplash

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My desert island grocery list

Sam B11 Comments

Tracy’s goodbye letter to chocolate made me wonder about my favourite foods. Dark chocolate is one for sure. But what other foods do I love? They have to stand the test of time, leap out at me from menus, and I’d pack them for a stay on a desert island.

With those criteria in mind, and in no particular order, here’s my top twenty five:

1. Dark chocolate with sea salt, or just plain dark chocolate

2. Coffee

3. Macadamia nuts

4. Almonds

5. Hummus

6. Mangoes

7. Avocado

8. Spinach

9. Smoked tofu/tempeh

10. Ice cream

11. Blueberries

12. Raspberries

13. Sourdough bread

14. Greek yogurt

15. Asparagus

16. Black beans

17. Sweet potato french fries

18. Poached eggs

19. Bananas

20. Oatmeal

21. Pears

22. Gouda

23. Red peppers

24. Black licorice

25. Toffees

What’s on your list?

What are your favourite foods?

And excuse me. I’m hungry now. Off to buy groceries.

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Dear Chocolate, I Don’t Love You Anymore

Tracy I12 Comments

Dear Chocolate,

There’s no easy way for me to put this: I just don’t love you anymore. It’s nothing that you did. Not at all.

We used to spend a lot of time together.  I used to get together with you every day. You had that special place in the kitchen, handy, accessible, always there for me. I could feel my mouth watering when I pulled back that gold wrapper on the 70% cocoa dark chocolate bar at the back of the snack drawer.

When the Precision Nutrition Lean Eating lesson a couple of months ago suggested that you might be a “red light food,” I defended you (and still do — you’re definitely not something I would banish from my life).  I said I needed you and felt comfortable with the amount of time we spent together. As you know, I believe food is beyond good and evil.

I didn’t even notice that we were drifting apart. But it kind of happened like this.  The Lean Eating program started nudging me in the direction of what they call “healthy habits.”  Lots of them had to do with making sure I was including things in every meal–lean protein, veggies, smart carbs (like quinoa and steel cut oatmeal).

They also recommended that I eat slowly and that I stop when I was 80% full.  The theory was that in time, if I followed these habits, I’d experience “food displacement.”  What that means, roughly, is that trying to fit in all the healthy habits every time I ate would change the sorts of things that I turned to regularly.

I could tack you on to the end of a meal, but usually by then I’m already 80% full (that’s my most challenging habit).  Stand-alone snacks without greens or protein just aren’t a big part of my repertoire anymore.  And in that late-afternoon slump I feel better if I have a mixed greens salad with tofu or chickpeas than a few squares of dark chocolate (sorry).

I didn’t consciously seek to send you to the sidelines.  Remember how the triple chocolate cake at Veg Out used to be my absolute favorite thing on their menu?  Well, the other night I went there and didn’t even order dessert (not even to go, which is what I did in the early days of eating to 80% full–just packed up a piece of cake to eat later). Why not? I just knew I wouldn’t get around to eating it.

I feel a little bit sad that we’ve parted ways in such a low-drama kind of way. Like I said, you’ve not been banished.  I’ve just found other things that make me happier these days.  I had no idea food displacement could have this affect on our relationship.  Not that I would have done anything differently, mind you.

I’m kind of relieved that I can easily get through a day, a week, a month without feeling that hold you used to have over me, especially after a meal.   It’s nothing personal and I have nothing against you.  I just don’t need you as much as I thought I did. Thanks for being there for all those years.  I’ll keep in touch but it’s just not going to be the same anymore.

Take care of yourself. I know that lots of people still love you as much as I once did.

Yours,

Tracy

eating

Falling in Love with Kale, One Recipe at a Time

Tracy I7 Comments

kale-benefits-1We’ve all read about leafy greens and how great they are for us. Those of us from a certain era know all about canned spinach as the source of Popeye’s bulging biceps!

But we’ve come along way since then. Kale is the new superfood. A dark green leafy vegetable with a slightly bitter taste, a sturdy spine up the centre line of each leaf, and all sorts of ways to prepare it. If you don’t like one way, try another. And if all else fails, there is the miracle known as ‘kale chips.’

I’ve fallen head over heels in love with kale over the past couple of months. It was not love at first sight by any means. I’m pretty partial to spinach actually (though I know full well it’s not enough for Popeye-esque biceps). But I kept reading about kale.  I was challenged recently to try some new things from the produce section of my grocery store, and since there’s not much that’s new to me, it seemed a good time to introduce myself to kale.

So what’s the big deal about kale?  Is it really a superfood? Superfoods are nutrient dense and have lots of health benefits.  According to this article, it’s an under-appreciated superfood, a real “nutritional powerhouse.”  The health benefits of kale include: high fiber and low fat; high in vitamin A, vitamin C, and vitamin K (potassium) and iron); rich in anti-oxidents; anti-inflammatory; high in calcium.

My experiment began with a recipe for Balsamic Glazed Carrots and Kale from the cookbook, Vegan Planet.  It’s a simple and tasty recipe that makes a great side dish. I even enjoyed it at room temperature the next day as part of my lunch. One downside about cooked kale (perhaps there’s a trick that I’m not aware of) is that it loses its vibrant green color and goes kind of dark and dreary.  And like spinach, it shrinks a lot. You need to cook way way more than you think you do.

The next thing I discovered was a Sweet Kale and Vegetable Salad kit.  It’s a kind of shredded mix that includes all sorts of things, including kale. It is AMAZING. I add my own dressing (since the poppy seed dressing it comes with isn’t vegan) and usually give it a protein boost with some chickpeas. Sometimes I use it to add crunch to a more traditional mixed greens salad.

But more often these days I’m eating it as its own salad (with the chickpeas) as a mid afternoon snack.  It’s so easy to toss a bit in a container and take to work. Granted, kale is not the only thing in this mix. It’s also got broccoli, brussels sprouts, chicory, cabbage, and some dried cranberries and roasted pumpkin seeds.  Those who tell you kale is too bitter to eat raw are just wrong. It’s excellent in a salad.If you’re just getting your toes wet with kale, it’s a good way to go.

GreenDetoxSmoothie-300Having experimented with cooked kale and raw kale in salads, my next move was to toss it into my morning smoothie.  Most mornings I mix up a smoothie with a banana, frozen strawberries, a handful or two of spinach and/or kale, a cup of almond or soy milk, a cup of juice, a few scoops of protein powder and some flax oil. This makes enough for me and Renald for breakfast, and a snack later on for myself and I love it.

If you’re going to use kale in the smoothie, don’t include the hard spine (though if you have a Vitamix blender it can probably handle it).  Spinach adds pretty much no flavor to the smoothie. Kale is similar in this respect, as long as you have a lot of other flavorful ingredients. Here’s a website devoted to smoothies with kale. And here’s a simple kale smoothie recipe from the Canadian Living website.

But it’s the kale chip that cemented my relationship with kale.  I confess to being skeptical about the idea of kale chips. As a potato chip fan, many imposter chips have disappointed me over the years.  But the kale chip is not trying to be a potato chip at all. It’s its own special thing.

I discovered this at an event in the fall where the reception table included kale chips brought in from (I think I’m remembering correctly) a Buddhist monastery (or meditation centre?) nearby.  These light and airy delicacies had some sort of coating on them that seemed almost cheesy. But they were totally vegan.  Nutritional yeast, as it turns out.

This weekend I experimented with kale chips.  A friend (the same one who ordered the kale chips from the Buddhists for her event) sent me a recipe that had an oven version and a dehydrator version.  It’s not a low fat recipe, but it sure beats out potato chips for nutrition, relatively lower fat, and flavour.

The recipe is for Spicy Tahini Kale Chips from the Savory Simple blog.  I have to say, this is the one. It’s a simple concoction of  tahini, lime juice, nutritional yeast, olive oil, and dried red chilies tossed (with bare hands) into bite sized pieces of washed kale.  I did half in the oven and half in the dehydrator.  I thought the dehydrator would produce markedly superior kale chips, but the oven worked just fine (and I had my chips in an hour; the dehydrator took eight hours).  It’s a simple recipe and the outcome was a bowl of delectable, delicate kale chips bursting with flavor.

kale-chips_4223

Honestly, it’s one of those recipes that make me think, “wow, I can make these at home!”  More coming up later this week.  Between the smoothies and the chips and that ready-made salad, I’m a kale convert!

eating · health · Uncategorized

Talk Review: Forks and Knives–Weapons of Mass Destruction or Instruments of Healing

Tracy I1 Comment

Fruits and vegetables in the shape of a heart, green on one side, red on the other. Photo credit goes to http://saladexpress.ca/en/blog/fruits-and-vegetables-canadas-food-guide-superstars
Fruits and vegetables in the shape of a heart, green on one side, red on the other. Photo credit goes to http://saladexpress.ca/en/blog/fruits-and-vegetables-canadas-food-guide-superstars

Can the way you eat change your life and transform your health?  If Hans Diehl, author of Dynamic Living: How to Take Charge of Your Health, is right, you bet it can.  Making the connection between what we eat and what’s healthy isn’t exactly a new idea.

Most people who go on diets are seeking “healthier” eating habits.  But beyond the idea that healthy eating habits will lead to weight loss, and weight loss will lead to improved health, few people think about further indicators.  They assume that if they lose a bit of weight and get into the right BMI range, then it’s all good.  Wrong.

Way back when we first started this blog, Sam talked about Fit, Fat, and What’s Wrong with BMI.  We have repeatedly emphasized that weight and fat are not sole determinants of health and physical fitness.  We’re not into super-restrictive diets for weight loss.  They don’t even work.  We’ve talked about that tons, including here and here and here and here.

I attended Hans Diehl’s talk on campus the other day because I’m a member of the Western Ontario Vegan Society, an energetic and enthusiastic student group whose cause I believe in, and I like to support their events.  The abstract said that “Dr. Diehl’s research shows that most people with hypertension, Type-2 diabetes, elevated cholesterol, and heart disease can reverse these diseases and often become drug free within weeks.”

That kind of research interests me. It’s in keeping with the work of Physicians for Responsible Medicine, of which Diehl is a member. He advocates Lifestyle Medicine and has developed an affordable program called the Complete Health Improvement Program (C.H.I.P.).

In keeping with my commitment to writing only about empowering, positive, and optimistic things for the next little while (in honor of spring), his talk left me with a good feeling.

He went over the usual scary stats about our declining health as a population.  I did wonder at some points how much of the increased instances of things like diabetes and heart disease have to do with better diagnostics, but whether we as a population are actually less healthy or are only now discovering how unhealthy we are, the fact is, it’s possible to make relatively simple dietary adjustments and radically alter our health.

Diehl correctly cited BMI as a meaningful measure over populations not individuals.  And the BMI in North America is over 40, which indicates not just obesity, but increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis, asthma, sleep apnea, cancer (especially prostate, breast, colon, and cervical).  Many of these are chronic diseases that, according to his and others’ research, correlate with lifestyle choices.

Apparently, french fries are the most eaten vegetable in North America and soda pop consumption accounts for 1/3 of all sugar in the American diet (not likely far off in Canada, although I think our fast food drink sizes are a bit smaller).  Without going into all the gory details that many of us know already, the upshot is that as a population we’re undernourished and overfed.  This could  be due to all sorts of things, but he attributes it largely to big food companies who pay scientists to do research into the pleasure centre in the brain that processed foods activate. It’s the brain’s “blisspoint” and the right amounts of sugar, salt, and fat make it come alive to produce pleasure.

I have no expertise from which to critically assess these findings. But I’ve eaten my share of sugar, fat, and salt, and it always made me feel temporarily good. I should stress the temporary nature of that boost.  No doubt many of us are familiar with it.

Anyway, the fact is, though I do not delude myself into thinking that the only reason to eat food is for its nutrients, I find claims about the health benefits of whole foods, mostly plants, to be quite persuasive.

Focusing on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes pretty much guarantees a low fat, low sugar, low salt diet.  Doctors like Dean Ornish, Neal Barnard, and Caldwell Esselstyn have all argued that it is possible to prevent and reverse heart disease.  Bill Clinton adopted a vegan diet after heart disease required quadruple by-pass surgery. I’ve faulted Clinton for just one thing: that he doesn’t draw any attention to the animal ethics side of the vegan debate.

Though Diehl’s talk focused almost exclusively on the dramatic health benefits of a plant-based diet, he mentioned at the end of his presentation that there are plenty of other reasons to take such a change seriously.  In terms of animal welfare, 1,000,000 animals are slaughtered for food every hour in the United States.  And there is growing concern about the environmental impact of industrial livestock agriculture.

But even if we just focus on the health benefits, they are undeniable.  The American Heart Association reports that heart disease is the number one killer of women, causing one in three deaths each year (compared to one in 31 death each year from breast cancer).

Leaving the Diehl’s talk, I didn’t need to make many changes to my lifestyle or my way of eating to conform with his guidelines. But miraculously, my usually skeptical and reticent spouse is eager to sign up for the C.H.I.P. program when it’s offered in London next fall. That’s fairly strong evidence that the talk had a convincing impact on people who aren’t currently following the recommendations.

Diehl’s message isn’t new. You can get it from lots of other sources. But the views he expresses aren’t exactly mainstream yet, despite the amazing health transformation experienced by lots of people who adopt the basic diet strategy:

  • fruits
  • vegetables
  • legumes
  • whole grains
  • water

Sounds easy enough.  Enjoy! 🙂

body image · eating

What if?

Sam B8 Comments

CatThought experiments are a fun way to figure out why we do what we do. In Thought experiment about physical activity I asked, “Suppose that Crossfit/rowing/cycling/Aikido etc had no impact on the rest of my life, no effects at all, would I still do it? Let’s remove all instrumental benefits and ask if without them, I’d still work out the way that I do.”

Over at Fit and Feminist Caitlin posed a different question, “If You Could Have Good Health From A Pill Would You Still Exercise?”

This Matrix cat asks the same question about exercising for weight loss. It makes me realize how little I even think about that question. That’s a good thing because I exercise a lot and hardly ever lose any weight.

I worry that exercising for weight loss puts many people off physical activity. Why? Suppose you exercise and don’t lose weight. What then? Do you quit? Many do and then they lose all the tremendous benefits of physical activity. I worry too that thin people are hurt by this myth because they think they don’t need to work out. See How equating being fat with being out of shape hurts thin people too.

I’m not sure where this version of the Matrix cat meme came from. I’d be happy to give credit if I did. He showed up in my newsfeed day reposted by a friend.

diets · eating · weight loss

Diets Don’t Work but They Do Make Us Suffer

Tracy I14 Comments

diet-fix-bookI had a few errands to run this morning before work, so I hopped in the car just in time for CBC Radio One’s The Current.  This morning Anna Maria Tremonti interviewed Dr. Yoni Freehoff, author of The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail (and how to make yours work).

Freehoff’s main point was that diets fail because they make us suffer, and human beings aren’t built to suffer indefinitely. We can suffer for a period of time, but eventually we’ll say, “enough’s enough.”

Now, I have read and heard and even written quite a bit about dieting and why it doesn’t work. See here and here and here, for example. So I didn’t think there was a lot new for me to pick up, though of course I found the segment interesting. But one thing I learned that was new to me was the idea of “best weight.”  Best weight, according to Freehoff, is whatever weight a person reaches when they’re living the healthiest life they truly enjoy.

I like the idea of best weight because it doesn’t legislate standard weights but rather scales it to enjoyment and choice.  The idea doesn’t totally divorce weight from healthy lifestyle, but it doesn’t suggest rigid height/weight/BMI measures either.

As Sam has done in her post Fit, Fat, and What’s Wrong with BMI?, Freehoff reminds us to ignore BMI. It’s only a meaningful measure for populations, not individuals.

If you want to hear the whole interview with Freehof, you can tune into it on The Current, here.

And they ended the segment with a country song called, “The Diet Song.” It was new to me, though I guess it’s been around for a while.  It really captures the suffering of a dieter with these lyrics:

Breakfast black coffee one slice of dry toast no butter no jelly no jam
Lunch just some lettuce two celery stalks no booze no potatoes no ham
Dinner one chicken wing broiled not fried no gravy no biscuits no pie
And this dietin’ dietin’ dietin’ dietin’ sure is a rough way to die

Here’s the whole song (not entirely unproblematic in its entirety, but the dieting suffering part gets that feeling of deprivation right):