Living Well

Staying on a diet is hard when you eat with others

One of the hardest things about staying on a diet is eating out or eating with others who aren't on the same diet. You feel a bit weird ordering something not  on the menu or asking for substitutions. Whenever I order a hamburger without the bun, I cringe even though I like it, because it sounds weird. If you've felt like this before, try reading Steve Pavlina's thoughts:

One of the major challenges with dietary change is that the direction of improvement takes you far away from average because the average diet is pure crap. This creates a risk of disconnecting from other people as you continue to grow in order to avoid succumbing to social drag.

Here’s how I look at this situation. If I eat a crappy diet in front of other people, I’m subtly encouraging them to do the same. That does a real disservice to people who share a meal with me. I don’t want to be the kind of person who lowers the standards of everyone I eat with (or who reinforces pre-existing low standards).

If I put myself in the position of eating a healthy diet when I’m with other people, then I subtly influence them to improve their own eating habits as well. I don’t need to discuss what I’m eating to have this effect — I know from experience that it happens automatically. Try it for yourself by sharing a meal with someone whose diet is much healthier than yours, and see if you don’t feel slightly more motivated to make some improvements. We’re all subtly influenced by the people we connect with.

Eating with someone who makes strange comments about my food isn’t a big deal to me. The more important issue is whether I’m serving as a positive example to others.

When you order something strange, think about it as setting a good example. A good example for your kids, your friends and your family. Not self-righteous, just a good example.

Eat only food that doesn't rot

Michael Pollan, author In Defense of Food of and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals gives some good advice:

"don't eat any food that's incapable of rotting. If the food can't rot eventually, there's something wrong."

He also blames many of our health problems on the "western diet":

we all know what the Western diet is, but to reiterate it, it's lots of processed food, lots of refined grain and pure sugar, lots of red meat and processed meats, very little whole grains, very little fresh fruits and vegetables. That's the Western diet -- it's the fast-food diet -- that we know it leads to those diseases. About 80 percent of heart disease, at least as much Type II diabetes, 33 to 40 percent cancers all come out of eating that way, and we know this.

He blames our society for making bad food cheap and recommends:

You need a farm bill that makes carrots competitive with Wonder Bread.

He goes on to explain how we add preservatives to food so we can transport it and then we spend lots of money (and contribute to global warming) by transporting the food around the world.

Read the whole interview at AlterNet.

How to do low carb the easy way

A lot of people start out on a low carb diet the Atkins way where you count all your carbohydrates and try to keep them under 20 grams a day. If you eat everything out of a package, the counting isn't too hard but keeping your daily diet to under 20 carbs is hard if you are eating all packaged food. If you aren't eating out of a package, it's hard to count. So either way, people starting out on Atkins are likely to quit just because it's too hard to count carbs.

Don't worry about the exact number of carbs you are eating. Just follow these simple guidelines.

1. Cut out all the high carb, starchy foods like:
   
   • potatoes
   • bread
   • rice
   • baked goods
   • sugar
   • pasta
2. Base your meals around a protein (chicken, steak, fish) and vegetables. Some meals we often eat:
   
   • ham and cheese stuffed chicken breast with broccoli
   • steak with asparagus
   • cajun chicken greek salad
3. Make smart choices where ever you can but don't worry about the occasional high carb food. I ate a girl scout cookie this morning - although it wasn't good for me, I didn't have the four or five I normally had. Guilt will often make you give up the whole plan, so just concentrate on all the good choices you have made!

What are your tips for staying on a low carb diet?

Carbs make you hungry!

Frank and I have been eating a low carbohydrate diet for the past two months and we were just commenting this morning on how well it's going.  (Although I think Frank still misses potatoes.)  My favorite part of eating low carb is that I'm eating a lot less and I'm not hungry.  US researchers have just proved that protein is best for keeping you from feeling hungry:

Diets high in protein may be the best way to keep hunger in check, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that offers insight into how diets work.

They also said that eating carbohydrates will actually make you hungrier.

They also found that eating carbohydrates resulted in a strong ghrelin suppression at first, but ghrelin levels rebounded with a vengeance, rising to an even higher level.

Basically, the carbohydrates eventually made people even hungrier than before they had eaten.

So at the very least, it should be easier to lose weight on a low carb diet as you won't always feel like you are starving!

Low fat diet advice is cascaded, not proven

The New York Times' review of Good Calories, Bad Calories put the current situation of bad advise well.  First they explained how cascades work:

But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong.

If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.

And then they explain how these cascades are really common in science, especially medicine:

Cascades are especially common in medicine as doctors take their cues from others, leading them to overdiagnose some faddish ailments (called bandwagon diseases) and overprescribe certain treatments (like the tonsillectomies once popular for children). Unable to keep up with the volume of research, doctors look for guidance from an expert — or at least someone who sounds confident.

And that is how we ended up being told to eat a low fat diet!  Dr. Keys gave the original, unproven advice to eat low fat and the rest just followed or "cascaded" along.

American Diabetes Association endorses low carb diet!

The American Diabetes Association now supports low carb diets:

For the first time, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) has come out in support of low-carbohydrate diets for people with diabetes who want to manage their weight.

I haven't seen the published guidelines myself yet.

Trans fats depend on where you live

How many trans fats you are eating might depend on where you live. Atkins Low Carb Original 1970 Diet pointed me at this:

Atkins Low Carb Original 1970 Diet: TRANS FATS: TRUTH ? via kwout

Insulin and carbs control how much fat you store

Dr. Feinman explains how carbs, not fat in the diet, controls how much fat we store on our bodies.

Carbohydrate, through its effect on insulin, is the key player. Insulin not only sweeps up glucose from the blood but it also plays air traffic controller, making the call as to whether that glucose is turned into fat or is used for energy. Most importantly, insulin determines what happens to dietary fat — whether it gets stored or oxidized for fuel.

The simple low carb diet: 5 foods to avoid

Dr. Dan Eichenbaum recommends a simple diet for diabetics.  It's a low carbohydrate diet:

I explain to my patients that eating carbohydrates is like putting diesel fuel in a vehicle that can only run on gasoline.

Just as a gas engine won't burn diesel, a diabetic's "engine" cannot burn carbohydrates.

He makes it simple by just restricting five foods:

• bread and baked goods
• potatoes and root vegetables
• rice
• pasta
  
• fruit except for berries

I think this is a good diet for us all, not just diabetics.

Occasional fasting may be good for you

A new study suggests that fasting for one day every month may be good for your heart:

A study in Utah, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is based, found that people who skipped meals once a month were about 40 percent less likely to be diagnosed with clogged arteries than those who did not regularly fast.

They did this study on Mormons because they already fast once a month.  Further studies will have to be done to confirm this.  This should be an easier study than most to replicate as you can have people come in once a month for the day and make sure they don't eat anything that day!  (Most diet studies are very hard to verify!)

Book Review: Good Calories, Bad Calories

If you have ever tried to lose weight or just eat healthy, you must read this book, Good Calories, Bad Calories.  This book changed my thinking about food, health, nutrition and exercise.  I didn't realize how much of what doctors said that I just believed.  I didn't realize that what they recommend is based on little proven evidence.  Or how much contradictory evidence is just ignored. 

This isn't a diet book.  It's a book about the history of nutritional advice.  Our understanding of food and obesity, how it's come about and how it's changed over the past century.  I'll be writing more in future posts but here's what I've definitely taken away:

1. A calorie is not a calorie.  A lot of other factors matter like what kind of calorie, what kind of person, metabolism, exercise, external environmental factors, ...
2. Calories in does not always equal calories out.  Or we are not measuring all the calories in and out correctly.
3. Dietary fat does not make you fat.  Fat is not necessarily better or worse than protein or carbs.  It's not necessarily equal either!
4. Many of our current doctors are 100% convinced of what they know and not really willing to consider radical shifts in thinking.   Like they continue to recommend  eating less calories and exercising to lose weight when it's obviously not working for many people.  (Do you really lack the will power?)

More to come, but I definitely recommend Good Calories, Bad Calories.  You can read a good excerpt written by the author, Gary Taubes, on ABC News.

Insulin makes you fat

I've always believed that if calories in are greater than calories out, you gain weight. But at the same time I don't think we eally understand weight gain or weight loss yet so I always study new diets with interest.   Yesterday I listened to a Science Friday interview of Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, with interest.  I liked his points well enough to order the book.  He believes we haven't proven that dietary fat or calories cause obesity.  In an article in Newsweek he writes (I edited and shortened):

1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization.

2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion.

3. Sugars [...] are particularly harmful [... because it ...] elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates.

4. [...] refined carbohydrates, starches, and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes.

5. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating, and not sedentary behavior.

6. [...] Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss; it leads to hunger.

7. Fattening and obesity are caused by an imbalance—a disequilibrium—in the hormonal regulation of adipose tissue and fat metabolism. [...]

8.[...] When insulin levels are elevated—either chronically or after a meal—we accumulate fat in our fat tissue. [...]

9. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity.[...]

10. By driving fat accumulation, carbohydrates also increase hunger and decrease the amount of energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity.

He recommends a low carb diet, similar to the Atkins diet. I'm going to read the book to learn more.

You eat more than your parents did at your age

One of the Ten Surprising Nutrition Facts to come from the "Fourth Annual Nutrition and Health Conference" held in San Diego, Calif., May 14-16, 2007 is:

The average American is eating 300 more calories each day than he or she did in 1985. Added sweeteners account for 23 percent of those additional calories; added fats, 24 percent.

I'm sure we're not spending any more calories than we did in 1985.

Swallow an expanding jelly pill ...

This pill expands to the size of a tennis ball in your stomach - making you feel full and hopefully encouraging you to eat less.  It's supposed to mimic the effects of gastric bypass surgery without the surgery.

I think I would eat less just to avoid having to take a pill that would expand into a tennis ball in my stomach!

Personal Diet Coaching

New evidence is suggesting that one on one coaching may help many people lose weight and maintain their weightloss.  Today's New York Times has an article Winning the Nutrition Game, With Help From a Coach.  A typical coach charges $100-200/hour for personalized consulting.  Coaches might plan meals, suggest exercise routines, or uncover hidden problems like food allergies.  Diet coaches typically have degrees in nutrition, exercise physiology or medicine.

Do you really want to eat that cookie? How bad can it be?

Here's a trick I use to figure out if I really, really want to eat a cookie or not.  I figure out how much weight I would gain if I had that same snack every day for a month.  So an oreo a day is half a pound a month.  A bud light a day is a pound a month.   Would you rather eat an oreo every day (assuming you can stop at one) or would you rather weigh half a pound less at the end of the month?

Atkins, why does it work?

The Atkins diet is a low carbohydrate diet.  The theory is that if you eat only protein and fat and very little carbohydrates, that you will force your body to make carbohydrates from the fat in your body. 

I've known several people that have lost a lot of weight following the Atkins plan. (Not any of them have kept it off long term though!)  My personal theory is that they've lost lots of weight on Atkins because they've eaten a lot fewer calories.  Seriously, how much steak can you eat?  And if you aren't eating carbs, then you are eating just steak, no baked potato, no bread, no sour cream, no beer, ... you are eating a lot less!  Also, there a lot fewer temptations during the day.  You might see a bowl of candy (a no-no on Atkins) or a jar of cookies but how often do you see a plate of jerky sitting around?  I think Atkins works because you don't feel deprived - you are allowed to eat as much as you want - but you eat a lot less because how much steak are you going to eat, seriously?

I think people lose weight on Atkins but have a hard time keeping it off because it's really hard to avoid carbohydrates in everyday living.  Could you order a cheeseburger, hold the burger, hold the fries everyday?

Key to losing weight: tracking what you eat

Study after study has shown that people that lose weight and keep it off write down what they eat.  Writing down what you eat makes you aware of what you eat.  There are too many opportunities in today's world to consume calories without even noticing.  The piece of candy as you leave the restaurant, a couple of chips before dinner, a cookie from the cookie jar at the office, the handful of M&Ms from the receptionist's desk.  They all add up.  Just 11 M&M's a day would be a pound a month - that's 12 pounds a year!

Writing down everything you eat will help you realize how many calories you consume without even noticing.