Category: eating

diets · eating · family

Multi-Grain Cheerios talks to women about dieting

Sam B3 Comments

While I was away working on the book with Tracy, I occasionally turned on the television in my room. It’s a bit of a novelty. I don’t have one at home.

I have a flat box with a screen in my house you see, but it’s not set up to get TV, hasn’t been since the kids were little and we set ourselves free. (I’m an abstainer, not a moderator, by temperament. See Moderation Versus All or Nothing.) We do watch DVDs and Netflix but I never really see ads except when traveling.

And while watching I saw an ad that surprised me. It was by Cheerios and it featured happy little girls and the last line, that’s what caught my ear, was “Because she will never diet.” I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but no. It was just fine.

Multi-Grain Cheerios talks to women about dieting (Marketing Mag)

“In an effort to create a dialogue with diet-fatigued women, General Mills Canada has launched a multimedia campaign for its cereal brand that it hopes will encourage women share their experiences and feelings about dieting via an online hub.

The ultimate objective, according to General Mills Canada vice-president of marketing Dale Storey , is for the brand will help foster a “movement” that believes “healthy, balanced living is a much more effective way to managing one’s weight and health than the yo-yo of deprivation dieting.”

A national TV commercial kicked off the effort last week. The 30-second spot, developed by Cossette – General Mills’ creative agency – shows young girls having fun and fusing those scenes with copy that uses dieting terms. For example, “She will never stress over yo-yoing.” The last line of the spot is “Because she will never diet.”

The awareness campaign is meant to make adults more mindful of their impact on young girls’ perceptions of dieting.

“We want this generation of women to be the last to diet,” said Jason Doolan, General Mills director of marketing, cereal, in a release.

To help further spread the word, Multi-Grain Cheerios has partnered with Big Brothers Big Sisters to back its Go Girls! mentoring program, which educates girls 12-14 about living healthy and is one of the organization’s fastest-growing mentoring programs.”

Here’s the Cheerio’s Go Girls website. I think it’s pretty well done. What do you think? And I’m curious, as someone who doesn’t watch regular TV with ads, if this is playing in the US.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Kk_V3A4bE

diets · eating · weight loss

“Vegan” Is Not a Fad Diet

Tracy I12 Comments

cake I’m vegan. And that’s my birthday cake (back in September) from my favorite vegan restaurant.  It’s bar none the very best chocolate cake I’ve ever eaten.  And it’s vegan. No eggs, no dairy.

You’ve probably heard by now about Beyonce’s 22-Day Vegan Challenge with her hubby, Jay Z.  I heard about it when it was announced, and I’m hearing regular updates about how it’s going for them on what is often described as their “health kick.”  The Daily Mail (I know) reported that one week into her vegan “health kick,” Beyonce is flashing her abs.

Everywhere I turn these days I’m reading about how losing weight is one of the big reasons to become vegan.  It’s starting to drive me to distraction!

See that chocolate cake? It’s not health food.  Vegan is NOT a sure fire way to drop pounds.  Losing weight isn’t even the best reason to eat a vegan diet.  Why? Because french fries and potato chips are vegan. That cake is vegan.  Coconut milk ice cream is vegan. Vegans, no less than anyone else, don’t just eat fresh fruit and vegetables.

Now I think it’s a good thing that you can still find all sorts of indulgences and follow a vegan diet. But what that means is that you need to do a lot more to drop pounds than switch to a plant-based diet.  I myself didn’t lose a single pound when I become vegan.  Nothing. Nada. Rien. 

So why become vegan?  The two primary reasons have nothing to do with your health: 1. animal welfare reasons and (2) environmental reasons.  I won’t go into all the details here, but billions of animals a year suffer unspeakably and unnecessary cruelty in industrial farming.  I’m not talking about cruelty inflicted over and above the regular conditions of their lives. I’m talking about the very conditions they live in day to day.  If you’d like to know more about that, read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation or Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation or even just go to the Vegan Society website.

Livestock farming is bad for the environment and the atmosphere. It’s a huge contributor to global warming.  There’s that great statistic: a vegan who drives a Hummer makes a smaller carbon footprint than a meat-eater who drives a Prius.  Yes, there are other variables, but there is no question that mass livestock production is hurting the planet.

And yes, there’s lots of evidence that it’s good for your health. But there are still all kinds of not-great-for-your-health choices available on a vegan diet. So there is no automatic free pass or anything like that, and some things, such as lean protein, become a bit more challenging (not impossible with some knowledge).

Back to the 22-Day Challenge that Beyonce and Jay Z are on.  If the reasons for being vegan are compelling (and they are!), then being vegan for 22 days just isn’t quite “getting it.”  I mean, I’m glad that Beyonce and Jay Z are bringing some good press to being vegan. They’re even saying they feel great and it’s not difficult. Lucky for vegan PR that they aren’t having a negative experience — if it was a struggle and they had an adjustment period where they felt bloated or tired what have you?  Animal welfare and the environment would still matter.

But you don’t hear about animal welfare or the planet when you hear about their vegan challenge.  Given the facts, it’s just irresponsible to promote veganism without even mentioning these other reasons for being vegan.

Most ethical vegans extend their vegan choices beyond their diet, making an effort to avoid animal products in other areas of their lives. You’re unlikely to find a leather couch in a vegan home, and if you look on-line you can find all sorts of vegan footwear.

Another misconception that needs clearing up and now’s as good a time as any to do it: being vegan doesn’t mean being gluten free.  Gluten is from wheat; wheat is not an animal product. Therefore, you can be vegan and not be gluten free.  It’s very disappointing to someone like me who loves baking to go to a bakery where all the vegan options are also gluten free. Worse yet if they’re also raw.  There are raw vegans, but most vegans are okay with cooked food. Why? Because there is no animal welfare or environmental reason to go raw.

Here’s a nice article where the author promotes the idea of veganism as a lifestyle change, not a diet.

There are also successful vegan athletes like ultra-triathlete Richard Roll (author of Finding Ultra) and the no-meat athlete, Matt Frazier (author of The No-Meat Athlete). Although both emphasize “plant-strong” over “vegan” (see Sam’s posts about the difference here and here) the point is, you can be a vegan athlete.

If you’re interested in learning more about becoming vegan, in addition to the resources above that outline some of the ethical and environmental reasons, I found these books to be really helpful:

The Ultimate Vegan Guide by Erik Marcus

Main Street Vegan: Everything You Need to Know to Eat Healthfully and Live Compassionately in the Real World by  Victoria Moran and Adair Moran

Becoming Vegan: The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy, Plant-Based Diet by Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina

And some good vegan cookbooks:

Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitch and Terry Hope Romero

La Dolce Vegan by Sarah Kramer

The Happy Herbivore by Lindsay Nixon

Bon appetit!

 

 

 

athletes · body image · competition · eating · Rowing

Lightweight rowing and disordered eating

Sam B3 Comments

Weight categories in sports are tough. See Audery’s post on kids and weight categories in martial arts. And I’ve written about why the Athena category in running and in multisport events is fairly useless.

Sports introduce weight categories when there are size differences that result in performance differences such that putting differently sized people up against another wouldn’t be fair. Think boxing. Or weight lifting. Larger people have an advantage.

Weight categories have been employed for centuries as a method of equalizing competition in a number of different sports. In sports where the physical strength of the combatants was understood to be crucial to their ultimate success, weight categories recognized the fundamental principle that, all things being equal, in strength sports the larger athlete was likely to be the stronger athlete. Stated in the alternative, where two athletes possess equal technical skill in a strength-oriented sport, the larger athlete is more likely to overpower the smaller athlete. FAQ, World of Sport Science

That’s true too in rowing. It’s better to be big. Rowing just has two categories, light and heavy. See LiveStrong on the difference between lightweight and heavyweight rowing

What are the categories?

“At the international and college level, a male rower is not eligible to compete in lightweight rowing if he weighs over 160 lbs. A woman cannot row in the lightweight division if she is over 130 lbs. While a good lightweight rowing team can sometimes beat a heavyweight team, the sport of rowing favors the tall and strong athlete. Height gives a rower more leverage to propel the boat through the water. Strength gives a rower the explosive power to propel the boat faster.”

(The subject of what happens when a lightweight boat does beat a heavyweight boat is a frequent source of humour on rowing tumblrs.)

Why have weight categories in rowing?

“According to the Federation Internationale des Societies d’ Aviron, or FISA, the international governing body of the sport, lightweight race was introduced “to encourage more universality in the sport, especially among nations with less statuesque people.” Lightweight events were introduced at the World Championships in 1974 for men and 1985 for women, and it joined the roster of events at the Olympic Games in 1996.”

What are the worries about weight categories?

“The practice at some colleges of using heavyweight rowers to drop sufficient pounds to qualify for the lightweight boat is controversial on two grounds. First, drop-down rowers replace “normal” lightweights in the boat, cutting opportunities for smaller rowers to compete. Second, allegations of eating disorders among both women rowers and male drop-downs have been widespread. A female college rower at the Everything 2 website tells of men “living on carrots and multivitamins for weeks while doing full workouts every day,” in a misplaced attempt to demonstrate discipline toward their sport.”

To this, I’d add a third worry. There are people in the middle who don’t fit into either group.There are, for example, women who are larger than lightweight and who can’t weigh down but who aren’t tall enough to be competitive in the open class. I met a woman recently who at 5’7 was throwing up her hands ( and her oars) and switching to cycling. She couldn’t get light enough for lightweight, despite pressure, but at her height she is nowhere near large enough make it in heavyweight competition.
You might think lightweight rowing made it possible for small women compete in rowing but in fact competitive lightweight rowers are usually well above average height for women. They’re not short by any means. They’re thin but not small.  It’s shocking to think that if I’d discovered rowing earlier and if I was any good at it (two big “ifs”) that I would have been pressured to row lightweight. The last time I weighed in the 130s was grade six! And I’m in the middle, clearly not tall enough for heavyweight.Is losing weight to row lightweight a successful strategy? Not always.  The issues are very complicated. To get a sense of the debate see National Eating Disorder Awareness Week: Lightweight Rowing

“One study that’s cited a lot when talking about weight loss and lightweight rowing is this one. Some of you guys have asked me about this too – can a smaller heavyweight rower lose weight and be competitive as a lightweight? This study found that it is possible, but what I think is worth noting is that the “heavier” heavyweight athletes lost more muscle than fat mass over the course of the 16 weeks this study was conducted. 16 weeks…that’s roughly four months. Winter training through mid-spring season is about four months, so think about that if you are considering making the transition. Preparation must start well before the time you plan to fully compete as a lightweight. The rowers who suffered the greatest loss in muscle mass weren’t able to be competitive as lightweights because of the drastic reduction in power output, energy, etc.”

Further reading:

 Prevalence of eating disordered behavior in collegiate lightweight women rowers and distance runners.

This study examined eating behavior in collegiate women lightweight rowers, runners, and controls. It was hypothesized that rowers would show an increased prevalence of restraint in their eating behaviors, but not probable eating disorder cases as compared with runners or controls, because they are required to make their target weight but are discouraged from further weight loss.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11176143

eating

Is Your Bra a Smarter Judge of When to Eat than You?

Tracy I4 Comments

smartbrabgI’m a big advocate of Intuitive Eating, so at first glance, a bra that is designed to tell me to step away from the fridge sounds like a bad idea.  But though it won’t be on the market any time soon, according to this report “a team of researchers at Microsoft have been working on a prototype of a smart bra embedded with sensors that track the wearer’s heart activity, so that it can monitor her emotional moods and essentially intervene when she’s stressed out and tempted to overeat.”

My favorite philosophy blog, Feminist Philosophers called this “the panopticon bra.”  The panopticon is that prison design that leads the inmates to self-police because they never know when they are being watched.  Feminists frequently claim that social norms around femininity have a panopticon-like hold on women’s lives. I myself have likened food tracking to the panopticon.

The Consumerist says of the bra:

Once those sensors detect a looming episode of overeating, they signal the woman’s smartphone which will then flash a warning telling her to back away from the fridge and make better diet decisions. Which, again, not sure it’s cool for a bra to be telling people how to live their lives, but then again, if people want that help, sure, give it.

Being a proponent of Intuitive Eating, I know that one of the most challenging aspects of it is learning to decipher the difference between emotional eating or habitual and mindless eating, on the one hand, and eating because we’re hungry, on the other hand.

The main goal of Intuitive Eating is to learn to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re satisfied. Period. And that’s a huge challenge for many people. Hence, the bra.  The Consumerist is right to point out that men also struggle with mindless and emotional/stress-related eating.  So a non-bra alternative would also have a market.

Sam asked me if I thought the bra advocated something like the opposite of Intuitive Eating because it does the monitoring for us and tells us when to pay attention.  I think it could be a useful device for the aspiring Intuitive Eater because it encourages us to pause.  I don’t see it as necessarily shaming or guilting us into not eating.  Rather, I see it as potentially useful for helping us be more mindful.

I know, I know. Tracking is supposed to be the same — it encourages mindfulness.  So in this sense, whether using the bra or using tracking, are we not engaged in panopticon-like self-policing?  I guess to that I would say it depends whether you are using it as a “stick” or merely as a method of creating more awareness.

For me, tracking feels more stick-like than neutral.  I can do it for short periods of time to gather information, but used over the longer term it feels like a life sentence of sorts.  Similarly I can imagine that if the bra is used as an awareness tool on the path to becoming a more Intuitive Eater, then the eventual goal would be to dispense with it. It doesn’t need to have a panopticon-like hold on us.

In the end, for most of us, emotional eating is not a successful way to cope with stress. Becoming aware of it and learning to deal with stress in other ways is a worthwhile long term goal that goes hand in hand with learning to approach food more intuitively, to meet the body’s needs.

The smart bra won’t always be smarter than the person who wears it.

diets · eating · weight loss

Let’s Talk about the Myth of the Skinny Vegan Bitch

Tracy I15 Comments

Here’s how the first installment in the Skinny Bitch series (authors Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin) starts:

It sounds almost empowering.  Almost.

The first red flag?  If you’re full of self-loathing then…wait for it…getting skinny is the answer!  If that’s not clear from the introduction, it is made super-clear on the first page of chapter one where it says: “Healthy = skinny. Unhealthy = fat.”  I’m sorry, but I think that simple equation has been firmly established as utterly false.

Getting healthy is a lot more complicated and is absolutely not correlated to being skinny.  Some of the least healthy people I know are really skinny.  The authors seem to maintain a distinction between a “skinny bitch” and a “scrawny bitch.” That’s when they recommend against over-exercising. Despite warning against over-exercising, they promise that “you’ll soon become addicted to exercising.”

And the mixed messages don’t stop there. They are opposed to fad diets, like low-carb diets (and especially Atkins). They encourage people to eat bread and fruit.  This makes it seem like a not very restrictive way of eating (a lifestyle, remember, not a diet).  But they have a whole chapter that explains why “Sugar is the Devil.”  That would make it thoroughly evil.  I’ve posted about why food is beyond good and evil here.

On the pro side (for me, anyway) they promote a vegan diet for lots of the right reasons too. They quote Linda McCartney, who said that “if slaughterhouses had glass walls, we’d all be vegetarians.”  They remind you that if you adopt a vegan diet, “you’re sparing the lives of at least ninety animals a year.” They even talk about the environmental impact of livestock farming (methane from livestock contributes a lot to global warming).

But I want to take issue with two of their fundamentals.

First, the whole bitch thing.  People are annoyed enough with vegans.  We are inconvenient, not just as dinner guests (“what will we feed you!?”) but as in-your-face reminders that your food choices have moral implications for other animals and for the planet.  So associating veganism with being a bitch. It’s just not the kind of PR we need.

Second, the idea that being vegan will make you skinny.  No. It’s just as easy not to be skinny as  a vegan as it is not to be skinny as a non-vegan.  There’s all sorts of vegan crap out there.

Now of course, the skinny bitch “philosophy” does not include vegan crap.  Nope. A skinny bitch will embark on a regimen of “pure eating.”  Remember: this is not a diet:

Never feel like or say you are “giving up” your favorite foods.  Those words have a negative connotation.  You are simply empowered now and able to make educated, controlled choices about what you will and won’t put into your body, your temple.  Be grateful that you know the truth about the foods you used to poison yourself with…Be excited about feeling clean, pure, healthy, energized, happy, and skinny.

So let me say this.  I’m vegan. Have been for over two years now.  I eat a fairly “clean” diet, in the sense that I choose lots of whole foods, no animal products, I don’t drink alcohol or take any drugs, I’m more active than my peer group.  But I am not skinny. I’m kind of average, really. And I was kind of average *before* I became vegan.  So the magical transformation won’t come simply by becoming vegan.

That’s not to say there aren’t all sorts of good reasons.  But becoming vegan is not to be approached as another diet that will get you thin.  And all this “pure and cleansing” talk–getting rid of toxins and so forth–it’s just not borne out by science. See this about juicing.

That’s my myth-busting message today:  Go for it! Become vegan (which is not just about food, by the way). But you don’t have to be a bitch and don’t listen to the people who promise you’ll be skinny.

Skinny isn’t even a great goal.  It’s not empowering.  And if you are experiencing self-loathing, try loving the body you have and treating yourself with compassion and care.  We have lots of that to go around on this blog!

body image · diets · eating · sports nutrition

Weight lost and gained

Sam B10 Comments

While debate exists about how many people regain weight they’ve lost (let’s just say most, or lots), how much weight they regain (all of it or more) and how long it typically takes to regain weight (certainly within five years pretty much everyone will have gained it back), no one denies that keeping weight off is much, much harder than losing it in the first place.

When people talk about weight regain one thing they often say, which I think is mistaken, is that people regain weight because they give up the restrictions and go back to their old habits. As Ragen Chastain says, “The myth goes that almost everyone fails at weight loss because almost everyone quits their diet and goes back to their old habits/doesn’t have the willpower to keep dieting/doesn’t do it “right”” But that’s not what the evidence says. People have a hard time keeping the weight off because their bodies have changed.”

Read the rest of her post on why dieters regain weight here.

This mistaken way of thinking suggests that if the people who lost weight stuck to the restrictions they’d be fine but in fact, in my experience, you start to regain weight while still dieting. Your metabolism slows down and what was once little enough food that you lose weight becomes too much and you start to gain.

How does this happen?

First, you now weigh less and so need fewer calories to support the new lower weight.

Second, your metabolism slows down. See Tracy’s post on metabolic health.

Third, your hormones change making it much harder to stay at the new, lower weight. Read Gina Kolata on the studies that demonstrate this here. See also Tara Parker Pope’s The Fat Trap.

Fourth, exercise no longer has the same effect. That’s just what getting in shape means. Consider running. The first time you run 5 km, it’s hard and you burn a lot of calories. Later, when you’re fit, running 5 km is easier but you also burn fewer calories. Now you need to run further or faster, at the same effort as you did as a beginner, to keep burning that many calories. Few of us keep pushing ourselves the way we need to.

My story: I’ve lost a lot of weight in my life. I’ve weighed everything from 155 lbs to 235 lbs with stops at just about every station along the way. I’ve gone from the top of that range to near the bottom twice. This last time on my way back up I stopped about halfway and so I didn’t regain the full amount. Phew. So for now at least I’m one of the rare people who has lost weight and kept lots of it off. The big weight loss was ten years ago now so that’s a pretty significant period of time not to have regained all or more of the weight, just half of it.

These days I’m focusing my energy on getting leaner, improving my muscle to fat ratio and you can read about my motivation for that here, here, and here.

Speaking of changes in body composition, I was fascinated to read recently that there’s also an interesting difference between the weight you lose and the weight you regain. It’s differently composed. When losing weight you typically lose in about equal amounts fat and muscle. But sadly when you regain weight it’s almost all fat.

“When individuals lose a reasonable amount of weight, the majority of the weight they lose is usually in the form of fat. But weight loss can be contributed by other things too, notably muscle. Generally speaking, about one sixth to one quarter of weight loss is actually ‘lean’ mass (mainly muscle).The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recently published a study in which followed up post-menopausal women after they had spent 5 months losing weight on a calorie-controlled diet, with or without aerobic exercise [1]. The average weight loss was about 11.5 kg during this time (exercise, by the way, did not improve weight loss over dietary change).This follow-up found that the average overall weight loss a year after the weight loss intervention stopped was still about 8 kg. Of course, some women did better than others, with some maintaining their weight loss well and others regaining a significant proportion of lost weight.The interesting thing about this study is that the authors monitored not only weight, but the body composition. This allowed to calculated the relative amounts of fat and muscle lose and regain by the women. Here, in summary was what they found:For each 1 kg of fat lost during the weight loss phase, women lost an average of 0.32 in lean body mass.For each 1 kg of fat regained subsequently, women regain only an average of 0.08 kg of lean mass.Putting this in percentage terms, 76 per cent of weight lost originally came in the form of fat.When weight was regained, about 93 per cent of this was fat.The problem here is not just that the body is getting proportionally fatter. The loss of muscle is a concern too, as muscle mass has some bearing on metabolic rate, and it also can determine functionality. It’s not good to lose muscle, particularly as we age, as it can leave us weak, frail, incapacitated and prone to falls and injury.”

See Regained weight found to be ‘fatter’ than weight originally lost

diets · eating · Uncategorized

Let’s Avoid the Language of “Cheating”

Tracy I6 Comments

cheating_rectAt one point at the CSWIP conference on the weekend, I reached over to the dessert tray to grab some sort of chocolate coconut square.  I kind of bumped someone at the same time (once I had made the decision to go for the chocolate square, I was on it!) and said to her something about how I was cheating.

She looked kind of shocked to hear me talk about “cheating” because of course I am vocally and publicly anti-diet and had just talked about the harm of dieting the night before.

It became clear to me that she had mistaken my reference to “cheating” for the usual cultural meaning–as going off our “diet” usually by “succumbing” to a high fat dessert. In fact, that’s not what I meant at all. I don’t talk that way about desserts. Nope. I have great respect for them and think people can eat them if they want them and when they want them. Period.

But I’m vegan and the chocolate square wasn’t.  I’m all for vegan desserts, but there weren’t any at the conference. And after a few days, and a keynote, and great company, and excellent papers about food, well, I just wanted something other than fruit!  So I “cheated” in the sense that I (confession coming right up) set aside my vegan principles for a few minutes to eat dessert.

This whole incident made me reflect upon the notion of food, eating, and cheating. What’s the difference between using “cheating” the way I did instead of the “cheating on my diet” way?  I think they’re a bit different, but that probably it’s not quite the right word for what I did either.

Well, let’s think about what it means to cheat.  Cheating is associated with rules.  We usually say we are cheating if we are breaking the rules and trying to get away with it. We can cheat on an exam (scribble notes on our forearm, for example), cheat when we’re playing monopoly (grab some cash when no one is looking), cheat on our taxes (“no need to declare THAT little bit of extra income, right?”), or cheat on a partner.

The idea is that we’re *supposed* to be doing one thing but instead we do another.

That’s why my friend and colleague was so shocked to hear me talk about cheating in relation to food.  I’m all about food being beyond good and evil.  I’m really opposed to dieting.  So in my view there is no particular way that we are *supposed* to eat that would restrict desserts in a way that makes eating them akin to “cheating.”  Diets attempt to control us by imposing rules from the outside–we externalize the legislation of diets (even if we eventually internalize them, as I’ve discussed here in my view about tracking). I’m especially not partial to a rule-governed approach to food and eating.

My choice to be vegan is different from all of that.  It’s an ethical choice based on what I see as a principled objection to contributing to the needless suffering of animals.  It’s not about rules as much as it’s about principles. These are not principles imposed on me by anyone; I do not need to externalize them as a legislative force in my life to see them as legitimate and worth respecting.

Yes, going against my principles is an issue, but it’s not exactly right to call it cheating because I’m not trying to get away with anything, I’m not breaking any strict rules, and I’m not (exactly) compromising an explicit or implicit commitment I’ve made to others (the way cheating in monopoly does). No one else much cares, in fact, because it’s a matter of my own personal moral commitments and integrity.

I had some interesting conversations through the weekend with fellow vegans about how we handle different situations, and it made me realize that it doesn’t need to be all or nothing. I do consider myself vegan despite the occasional lapse. And I think, much like wandering away from any “plan,” it’s best not to think of lapses in terms of cheating.

eating

Luna Bars: “Nutrition” for Women

Tracy I24 Comments

Apple-and-Peanut-ButterI had no idea until today that Luna Bars are actually specifically marketed to women. The Luna brand is a sub-brand of Clif. Now I don’t know if the packaging has always said “for women” on it, but today when I was shopping I noticed it because they had a sample station where you could try the White Chocolate Macadamia Nut bar and the S’mores bar.

Let me say up front that I have nothing against Luna bars. In fact, both of my samples were delicious, like eating a candy bar really.  But it’s the idea that they are “for women” that got me curious.

I asked the woman who was in charge of the Luna samples.  She said something about iron and vitamin D, and then as she walked away she mumbled something like, “I don’t actually know why they say ‘for women’ on them.”

So when I got home I went to the website. The Luna Bar website is quite an interesting place to go.  It’s got a whole section about nutrition where it tells you that when you get a snack attack at the office you can reach for hummus and veggies or…I’ll give you one guess.  Yes! A Luna Bar.

The nutrition page also has information about how to find your “power curve.” That’s about keeping fueled so you don’t run out of energy before the end of the day. You can find your “happy place” between lunch and dinner with a S’mores Luna Bar. In other words, the Luna Bar (of any flavour) is, according to the website, a great thing to include in “smart snacking.”

Luna’s four key ingredients that make it a “whole nutrition bar for women” (trademark) are calcium, vitamin D, iron, and folic acid.  Adults need all of these, but the blurbs say that women of childbearing age especially need folic acid to fend of neural tube birth defects and that women under 50 need 18g of iron per day, over 50 they need 8g.

Using the White Chocolate Macademia Nut bar as an example, you’ll get 15% of your daily vitamin D, 30% of your daily iron (for women under 50, let’s assume), 35% of your calcium and 100% of your folate.  You’ll also get 7g of fat, 25g of carbs, 11g of sugar, 9g of protein and a total of 190 calories.

That’s not too bad for an occasional snack, I agree.  It’s a bit better than a Kit Kat Bar. A Kit Kat’s 210 calories will give you 11g of fat, 27g of carbs, only 3g of protein, 6% of your daily calcium requirement, and undisclosed amounts (if any) of iron, vitamin D, and folate. And despite how much I love Kit Kats, I actually thought the Luna Bar was tastier.

In the end, I didn’t buy it because (a) the fact that it’s marketed as “whole nutrition women” seemed a bit….I can’t quite find the word I want…”shady” maybe?  (b) I’m already maxed out of storage space with a box of Clif Bars and a box of Protein Builder bars, and I actually don’t eat them all that often (maybe twice a week at most).

In the spirit of many websites these days, Luna’s website goes far beyond the bar itself in a section called Luna Life.  Why?   Because…

You’re not only what you eat. Here we take a look at what feeds your strength. Whether you’re an athlete, an artist, a foodie, or just plain awesome, we hope you’ll find something here just for you.

And they are indeed doing some good things on that page, all by way of encouraging us to incorporate Luna Bars into our lifestyle.  Do I object to that broad kind of marketing? Not necessarily.  In a capitalist economy the bar that can lodge itself into our brain and become associated with our healthy and active lifestyles is the bar that will do the best.

In targeting women, Luna is attempting to do just that — to become associated with a certain type of lifestyle–active, yogic, accepting of who we are, providing us with positive messages such as “love your legs for what they can do, not just how they look” (though someone who can’t walk might not appreciate that message, non-disabled women with body image issues sure can use the pep talk).

And of course Luna supports causes that appeal to many women — breast cancer research, and a charity called “healthy child, healthy world.”

But let’s get back to the Luna Bar and its place in a well-rounded diet.  Whatever they say about “whole nutrition for women,” the fact remains that a Luna Bar is not the best or the worst thing to reach for if you need something between meals.  It’s got a treat-like quality and, I think, is probably as satisfying as a chocolate bar while slightly more nutritious.

The thing is, you’re probably better of still going for the apple slices with peanut butter that they mention, or the hummus, or a handful of almonds and a few raisins.  For me, I need to be cautious of my motives for purchasing things like this. If I like them too much, then they become regular parts of my diet when they only deserve to be occasional.

But now I’m rambling.

LUNA is all about good food and good nutrition, but let’s face it: You’re not ONLY what you eat. Here we take a closer look at what feeds your strength. Whether you’re an athlete, an artist, a foodie or just plain awesome, we hope you’ll find something here for you. – See more at: http://www.lunabar.com/luna-life#sthash.rVadEv5E.dpuf
LUNA is all about good food and good nutrition, but let’s face it: You’re not ONLY what you eat. Here we take a closer look at what feeds your strength. Whether you’re an athlete, an artist, a foodie or just plain awesome, we hope you’ll find something here for you. – See more at: http://www.lunabar.com/luna-life#sthash.rVadEv5E.dpuf
Book Reviews · diets · eating · fat · health · weight loss

Book Review: Taking Up Space

Tracy I9 Comments

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I’m a big fan of Go Kaleo so I was happy to see that Amber Rogers has put a lot of her important message into a new book called Taking Up Space.

The very idea of taking up space is feminist to the core. It challenges traditional assumptions about what it means to be a woman, about what it means to be feminine: “smaller, thinner, lighter, softer, quieter, daintier.”

Amber Rogers is tired of it:

I have a body that takes up space.  I have opinions that take up space. I have a healthy sense  of self-worth and that takes up space too.

Like most of the books that I like to blog about, this one promotes an anti-diet approach.  Why?  Because

Our diet culture is designed to keep us fat and sick; hating and doubting ourselves because when we doubt ourselves we will buy more useless crap.

So although the book will be helpful to women who want to lose weight and learn how to maintain a healthy body weight, it is not your average diet book. Don’t expect a quick fix, detailed eating plans, or a detailed exercise routine.

After her disclaimers about people with serious medical conditions and eating disorders (namely, see your doctor, you shouldn’t be getting your info from a book or a blog), she introduces the three rules that guide her approach to weight loss and maintenance:

1. Make peace with your body.

2. Acknowledge that there is an appropriate amount of food your body needs to support your activity and a healthy weight, and that calories are relevant.

3. You’re allowed to eat whatever you want.

The section on making peace with our bodies is full of well-researched information about the “flaws” so many women hate: cellulite, normal fat storage (gluteal-femoral fat reserves), belly pooch, and those various lumps, bumps, veins, hairs, and stretch marks that, as she so nicely puts it, are the “evidence life leaves on our bodies.” Let’s love our bodies a bit more.

Rule #2 introduces the book’s main concept, which is that we need to eat the amount of food our bodies need to support our activity and a healthy weight.  For this, calories matter.

If you have followed the Go Kaleo blog, you will know already that energy balance and metabolic health are high priorities for Amber Rogers.  I have blogged about her metabolic health approach here. Much of that good information is provided again in this book.

She gives the usual information, by now well-supported, about the body’s natural famine-response or starvation-response to severely restricted diets.  In essence, if you drastically cut calories, you’ll lose quickly for a short period of time and then your amazing body will adapt.  The metabolism will slow down to support the body’s functioning on less.

So, in order to maintain a healthy weight without compromising your metabolism, it’s necessary to bring calories into the equation.  Most women need 2000-3000 calories a day to support their activity level at a healthy weight.  And yet most weight-loss diets max out at about 1200 calories a day. Do the math.  You can’t eat that much less, move more, and expect your body to handle it indefinitely without a famine-response.

She links to a calculator  that helps figure out how many calories a day you need to support the weight you want. It’s a great tool. You may be surprised at the result. I know I was.

I turned the dials to reflect my gender, age, weight, height, activity level, and the hours I spend sitting and sleeping, and it turns out that in theory I need 2700 calories a day to support my weight.

I say in theory because I am sure that most days I don’t eat anywhere near that and yet I still weigh about the same as I did back in January (when I stopped weighing myself). So I must be doing something wrong because my caloric intake should support a lower weight.  If the information Amber provides in the book is correct (and I’m not doubting it; she’s very convincing), then the most likely thing I’m doing wrong is not eating enough, and probably not enough protein.

Food quality does matter. She recommends one gram of protein per pound of body weight, an amount I personally find overwhelming. For me, that’s over 130 grams of protein a day and I can rarely manage it.

Knowing whether you’re getting what you need involves tracking. I hate tracking. She acknowledges that lots of people have a troubled history with tracking and that it’s not essential. But she thinks it’s the only method that is guaranteed to work. Why? Because it really is about calories in and calories out.

Two things she says make me think I might be able to work with her approach, including tracking (for a period of time). First, she re-frames it not as a tool of restriction but as a tool of seeing that we are getting enough.  Second, she notes that it’s temporary. She says: “Tracking for awhile teaches you how to judge proper portion sizes, how much food you need to meet your energy needs, and how to put balanced meals together. Over time, these skills become habit and you can leave the tracking behind.”

I did try this a few months ago when I became determined to increase my protein to at least 100 grams a day.  I tracked for about a week.  And I confess that I did find that I was falling short most days, not just on protein, but on calories.  But the thing is, I went to bed every night feeling totally stuffed.  It went against everything I have been doing to internalize the principles of intuitive eating. So this is something I’ll need to work with a bit to see if it’s going to work for me. Frankly, intuitive eating is more important, but I can do it while still trying to make choices that are higher in protein.

Amber is very sensible about weight. She notes that many of us may have a too-low goal weight in mind, and provides a few guidelines for determining whether the weight you aspire to is a reasonable weight for you to maintain.

She encourages slow weight loss that preserves lean mass, metabolic health, and leads to successful maintenance. That means resistance training, eating enough, and developing a sustainable and enjoyable exercise routine. She cites research studies that show that regular activity is essential to weight maintenance.

In order to lose moderately and without metabolic damage, “you are essentially going to eat the amount of food that will support a healthy weight.” The calculator cited above will tell you what you need to know if you dial in your goal weight and take it from there. She gives a few more details that you can find if you read the book.

If you follow her recommendations about caloric intake, choose a healthy—not unreasonable—goal weight, and maintain a regular exercise routine that includes resistance training at least three times a week, you should find yourself eventually leveling off at a healthy weight. At that point you can turn your attention to “body recomposition.”

That’s the process of changing the percentage of lean mass to fat mass. If you maintain the same weight but increase your lean mass and decrease your fat mass, your body will start to look different.  Amber herself has undergone gradual changes in body composition over the years that show up dramatically in the photo series that makes up the banner of her blog.

For those who have moved into the body recomposition phase, she provides some good tips: eat the calories for maintenance, get plenty of protein, eat carbs too, keep in mind that it’s possible for a healthy woman to gain 2 pounds of lean mass a month, don’t restrict fat, EAT, experiment, do resistance training for strength, get rest, and get rid of guilt.

She has a separate section geared towards those who are in recovery from starvation, including a list of signs to help determine if you have an eating disorder.  I won’t go into the details here, but it is an informative section. The most important advice contained there is to seek professional medical treatment.

The third rule says you’re allowed to eat whatever you want to eat. You will find no specific food plans here.  The main guideline is to eat a wide variety of whole foods, including protein and carbs. Nothing is forbidden.  Treats are important so that you don’t feel deprived.

For many people, this will be a revolutionary idea that might require some further work.  I recommend Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch and If Not Dieting, Then What?  by Rick Kausman if you need a bit more about the transition from restrictive diets to unrestricted healthy eating.

Finally, though the book doesn’t focus on exercise, Amber sees “physical activity, not diet, as the cornerstone of health.” Diet’s main function is to support our physical activity, to provide energy and fuel so we can do what we like to do. Find something you enjoy and make it a regular part of your life.

I’ve gone into the book in some detail because I think the information contained is important. But I have still only sketched out the main ideas. The book is worth reading if you are seeking to lose weight or feel happy with your weight but are wondering how you might shift the lean mass to fat mass percentages around.

I have the ebook on my kindle and my iPad, and I feel it’s absolutely worth the $9.99 it cost.  The focus on metabolic health and energy balance makes it unique among weight loss books. I don’t think it’s a negative thing that the book provides information about how to lose weight. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to shed a few pounds, gain lean mass, and achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

Amber provides enough information about how to choose a realistic body weight, and emphasizes that in lots of cases the right healthy body weight for you might not match the ideal you have always had in mind: it might well be heavier.

That’s one of the things I like most about her book, other than that it’s well-researched and full of excellent, reasonable information. By the end of it, it’s not just okay to be at a weight that’s a bit higher than you’ve always had as a goal, it’s even desirable.  Even though I gave up weighing myself and swore off dieting back in January, this is the first book I’ve read where I actually feel at the end of it like I’m totally good with the weight I’m at right now. 100%.

If you are a regular follower of Go Kaleo! you will find most of the information is not totally new to you. Amber is up front about this. But it’s good to have it all between two covers (even virtually), and she deserves support for the amazing work she is doing free of charge on the blog!

Book Reviews · diets · eating

Book Review: If Not Dieting, Then What?

Tracy I13 Comments

if not dieting then whatSummer vacation is the best time to catch up on some reading, and I’ve been doing just that.  Last week I read If Not Dieting, Then What? an Australian contribution to the growing literature advocating “non-dieting.”

Dr. Rick Kausman promotes a gentle, forgiving, and sensible approach to achieving a healthy and comfortable weight without dieting.  He provides good information and sound advice, starting off with a no holds barred chapter called, “Diets Don’t Work.”

I have said the same things many times on this blog, and am myself a strong proponent of intuitive eating as an alternative to dieting precisely because of the documented record of restrictive diets’ failure to produce long term results.

He cites familiar studies that yield the following results: “In controlled settings participants usually lose 10% of their weight.  However, 1/3 to 2/3 of the weight is regained within one year, and almost all is regained within five years.”  Depressing.

And yet most people with a history of dieting know this to be true. Why else would we have “a history” of dieting instead of a one-shot successful weight loss followed by successful maintenance?

The first “worksheet” in the book invites readers to list the diets they have tried, the results of each diet, and “Why they didn’t work.” The “why they didn’t work column” says it all.  If they worked, we wouldn’t be reading the book.

The book is, above all, sensible in its advice.  He focuses on small changes in approach rather than things like goal weights and eating plans.  In fact, he recommends forgetting about goal weights, throwing out the scale, and aiming for achievable and sustainable changes to eating and lifestyle.  For example, a commitment to swimming twice a week is achievable and sustainable for me (I’m already doing it).

All of the books I have read on this topic engage with the issue of non-hungry eating.  If Not Dieting, Then What?  is the first book I’ve read that emphasizes that some non-hungry eating is not just forgivable (they all say that) but normal.  Eating for sustenance and from hunger isn’t the only legitimate reason to eat. The most important thing, according to Dr. Kausman, is to be aware of why we are eating.

To that end, he offers a nice awareness question to ask ourselves when we are going to eat:  “I can have it if I want it, but do I really feel like it?”  For me, the simplicity of this one question makes it a useful tool.  I like too that it gives me a choice and invites me to pause briefly to reflect upon what I feel like.  Just this weekend, this simple question stopped me from stuffing myself beyond my comfort zone at a family gathering.

I’ve done a lot of reading and heard all sorts of suggestions, but for me this single question has been a real turning point.  It reminds me of when I quit smoking many years ago.

The smoking cessation program I followed asked us to track our cigarettes for the first week without quitting. The only two changes were that (1) we were to wait five minutes before lighting up when we had the urge and (2) we were to save all of our butts in a jar (yuck).  Other than that, we could smoke if we wanted to and weren’t required to cut back. Just waiting five minutes cut my smoking in half that week, making me aware of just how many times I used to light up out of habit.

“I can have it if I want it but do I really feel like it?” has had the same result.  I do far less mindless eating.  And as Dr. Kausman notes, the approach is empowering because it gives me choices. It’s the opposite of dieting, which involves rules and restrictions that are utterly divorced from what we’re feeling and never ask ourselves to check in with ourselves about what we feel like.

He offers three basic concepts in addition to this question:

1.  There is no such thing as “good” food or “bad” food.

2. A natural way to look at food is to eat less of the foods you enjoy the taste of now because it’s okay to have them again another time.

3. Try to eat slowly and enjoy your food.

I’m totally on board with these.  In fact, I’ve blogged about why food is beyond good and evil before.  But he offers two replacement categories: “healthy everyday food” and “high fat sometimes food.”  These categories could be useful as long as we can emply them without moralizing them. The difficulty is that these days, “healthy” is often code for “morally good”; “high fat” is often code for “morally bad.” So I’m cautious about that.

I do like very much the idea of everyday foods and sometimes foods.  When combined with an honest reflection upon the key question (I can have it if I want it, but do I really feel like it?), I know that in my own case I don’t seek high fat alternatives with little nutritional value nearly as often as I thought I would when I lifted the rules back in January.

And I can’t be reminded enough about eating slowly. I am not sure where I learned to eat quickly. It’s not as if I grew up in a home where people stole food of my plate or where there wasn’t enough to go around. I’ve never had a job where I had to scarf down my food and get back to work.

But Kausman relates eating quickly to feeling guilty about eating.  I think that ever since I started dieting over thirty years ago I have generally felt as if I shouldn’t be eating.  And if you have a lot of rules around eating, that feeling of “I shouldn’t” just intensifies. So we shove it down as a guilty pleasure.

Eating slowly and mindfully so that I can enjoy my food makes perfect sense and is also a great challenge.  But now that I’ve introduced real choice, it’s becoming easier and easier.

The book includes chapters on “Nutrition versus Intuition,” “Natural versus Normal Eating,” “Eating with Awareness,” “Nurturing,” “Body Image,” “Being Active,” and “Working with Food in a More Positive Way.”

The approach recommends seeking a balance between thoroughly intuitive eating and eating based on nutritional knowledge.  But since he thinks that most of us aren’t all that keyed into our intuitions about food, that’s what we need to focus on first. Once we learn to touch base with that, we can add our nutritional knowledge to the mix in a “non-diet, non-deprivational way.”

Since I’ve done a lot of reading on a lot of these issues already, and since eating slowly and with awareness is my greatest lingering challenge, I got the most out of that chapter. But it will be different for everyone. No doubt some chapters will speak to different people more strongly.  Others will (as was the case for me) review well-trodden paths concerning alternative ways to nurture ourselves, challenging cultural assumptions about body ideals, and incorporating activity into our lives in a way that works for us.

Overall, If Not Dieting, Then What? is a good addition to an important alternative to the diet trap. Rick Kausman offers excellent information, encouraging words, and tangible suggestions that will be useful to both the seasoned intuitive eater and those who have had it with dieting and in need of a change.

For Rick Kausman’s resource page, see here.