To think I eat healthily? My DH doesn't!

[Virtualcareerchanger]

I think I eat a well balanced healthy diet. Me and DH are trying to get fit and I said I don't need to change what I eat I just need to start exercising, however my DH disagrees and thinks we need to cut out carbs as carbs are sugar. He said he thinks we eat too much carbs and dairy. I thought I would bring this to the mumsnet aibu jury. Here is what I have eaten (and DH) over the last two days. Am I being unreasonable to think this is fine for someone trying to eat healthily?

Day 1
Breakfast: porridge oats made with semi skimmed milk a teaspoon of honey and 3 tablespoons of blueberries
Lunch: cheese salad sandwich on wholemeal bread with a scraping of vitalight spread, a raw carrot and an apple
Snack: a banana
Dinner: salmon, sweet potato and brocoli

Day 2
Breakfast: porridge oats with semi skimmed milk a teaspoon of honey and 3 tablespoons of raspberries
Lunch: tin of carrot and butterbean soup, a wholemeal roll with a scraping of vitalight spread, an orange
Snack: raisins and almonds
Dinner: homemade Thai chicken curry with rice

Op I don't think your diet is particularly healthy although it's not terrible compared to what the majority of the population eat.

Not enough (natural) fat or protein imo, but then again, I eat the way your DH wants to eat, and I have done, for many years- Lchf/paleo. Common misconceptions about Lchf/paleo/primal diets is that they cut out entire food groups- they don't! Example, I don't eat grains (well, except rarely a bit of rice), grains are not a food group, they are part of one (carbs), and other, less starchy carbs such as veg and leaves provide all the fibre you need (another misconception, low carb diets have no fibre).

While it's true that our bodies use glucose, they actually have no "essential" requirement for any form of carbohydrate as we can synthesise our own - the same can't be said of fats and proteins, a lack of the essential ones (the ones we can't synthesise) will lead to illness and potentially even death, and yet, according to much official advice, fat and protein should be minimised in the diet and carbs are lionised. I'm sure that has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the historic (and continuing) influence of powerful processed food producers in the formulation of the guidelines, and in funding training for HCP wrt various conditions caused by the diets they are promoting!

That's my Monday morning rant out of the way, I'll on my hard hat and step aside

For me -

B- coffee with double cream and left overs of last nights dinner (protein, salad leaves), or nothing but the coffee as I usually fast till lunch.

L- wild salmon sautéed with half an avocado (yes, you can fry avocado!), served a large mixed green salad, or other similar seafood dish.

D- roasted/sautéed meat or fish with Mediterranean style roast mixed veg and size salad.

Snacks, fruit (berries usually), dark chocolate, nuts, cheese, coffee with cream.

Plenty of green salad leaves with every meal, and lots of different colours of veg for variety. Courgette "noodles" are great.

30min intense exercise every day + a good walk- because it's not just diet, exercise is very important too.

(I've lost a very large amount of weight and gained a lot of health this way over the past decade)

Your meals sound very sensible to me.
I'm always interested in all the tweaks that posters suggest to improve nutrition etc. Which sounds bollocks and unnecessary to me but that's my opinion

When it comes to meal planning can your dh have the same meal minus the carbs if that's what he wants to do? Cooking seperate meals is going to be quite faffy especially when dc's are factored into the equation.

I completely agree with banana. I do wonder when people post meal plans or talk about their diet whether they genuinely have eaten like that for years and will continue to for years or whether it's their latest 6 month fad. Lots of people get very evangelical about eating regimes until they lose interest and move onto the next thing.

Whilst I do respect the opinion of a nutritionist I find their role a little confusing. If you are the type of nutritionist who advises clients privately on how to lose weight for cosmetic reasons (like the OP) then great, but that advice is also often based on fads.

If you are what I would think of as a "real" nutritionist (advising people for medical reasons) you're usually treating patients with medical conditions (IBs, chrons, bowel cancer etc) and that medical advice is really very different to what healthy for a "normal" person -particularly one of a healthy weight who just wants to lose a few pounds. so not sure that A nutritionists advice is on a thread like this

op this article is very interesting, especially when looking at carbs:

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/which-countries-have-the-healthiest-diets-a6971466.html

I bloody love MN food threads! The OP has a diet which is pretty well balanced and healthy compared to what I see most people eat yet we still have posters outraged at a scraping of vitalite and falling for the big money making porridge conglomerates instead 😂😂

Foggy on what planet is the OP's diet not particularly healthy? In reality, it's healthier than what 95% of the population eat. I really don't get how people have the time or the energy to endlessly obsess about the carb/sugar/salt/trans fat content of every microgram of food they consume. I try to eat healthily - I eat a lot of veg and try and keep processed food to a minimum. As long as most of what I eat is healthy, I reckon my body can cope with the odd bacon sandwich on white bread.
I have never seen a thread on here where someone is asking for advice about diet where the OP doesn't get criticised for something , usually eating too many carbs. I have never met anyone in RL who eats avocado and spinach for breakfast.
Diet seems to be like a religion for some people - constantly quoting from their own particular 'Bible' and trying to convert people with the Good News about low carbing or clean eating.

MissHoolies On planet paleo.

Cheese sandwich is not a particularly healthy option but otherwise great. Cutting out carbs is terrible for your body as your body is burning fat stores to cope. It's certainly not a healthy thing to do. Restrictive diets are also difficult to maintain in the long term. There is no need to cut out dairy unless you have a genuine intolerance, and its a good source of many fat soluble vitamins and minerals like calcium. I did it once and my hair, nails and skin really suffered.

From the article I posted it seems the healthiest diets in the world all include carbs (Japanese - rice, mediteraian - whole grains etc) I think we are becoming larger not because of carbs (which our grandparents diet was based around) but processed food and lack of exercise. The above article also shows the healthiest nations eat little red meat, mostly fish and some poultry.

Sounds like a healthy diet to me. The only thing I've noticed is that on day 2, your snack includes dry raisins, which would be high in fructose. Maybe swap it with an apple or something?
I do think your husband is being very OTT and controlling!

I think your diet looks very sensible and well thought out. Although personally I'm over the low-cal stuff. I try to find butter from grass fed cows and I buy full fat organic milk now. I'm convinced food nearest to it's natural state is better than chemically processed - purely from a logical and observational point of view. And with carbs I don't cut them out but I try to find the least refined and most nutritious possible. It sounds like you are already doing this with wholemeal bread, honey and sweet potatoes. Maybe try switching your bread to independent artesan rather than supermarket if you can afford it, which are slow-developed over several days and do not contain any chemicals and as much gluten. I'm not an expert but If you are a size 10, normal frame and eating that kind of diet then it certainly sounds like exercise is what you need just to firm up and tone your muscles. Do something that you enjoy and will stick with as that is the most important thing. What do you like? Swimming? Dancing? Climbing? For general fitness anything that gets you moving and gets your muscles working will help. Pilates and yoga are good for core strength and balance. Good luck. x

Pollymere

The low carb no dairy thing didn't agree with YOU. Not everyone on the planet. As I said upthread, different bodies need different diets. As for burning fat stores, that's what some people want. This is why they choose a ketogenic diet so it's not so very terrible on the body at all especially if your body thrives on that sort of thing.

I was merely posting as an antidote to all those who were saying the OP has a very healthy 'textbook' diet as there is quite a lot of misinformation here. The diet may be perfect for her, it may not. It's certainly not perfect for everyone, but that will all be very individual based on genes, any present health issues and health goals. If the OP is happy with her energy levels, weight, no jiggly health problems etc but simply wants to tone up then she needs to do weight bearing exercise. If she would like to lose weight, then she needs to adjust her diet and the best excercise in that case would be HIIT. It certainly is not as simple as calories in/calories out, in fact that is a big fat con.

I personally specialise in fertility and female health. I do take referrals from some enlightened GPs. Unfortunately they simply don't have the time or resources anymore to work with those patients with chronic illness who don't want to go down the drug route, or where perhaps the tests come back just fine but the patient still doesn't feel in full health. I also have access to many tests that are simply not available on the NHS sadly. I work with a range of health issues and of course the diet is always tailored to each client. No fads but firmly based on science. It's fine if you want to believe that whole grains are good for you - yes they are better than white bread or pasta - but there is also a step beyond that, and the science is there to support this. I don't subscribe to the 'clean eating' movement or Atkins or any other popular 'diet', in fact I don't prescribe 'diets' but a way of eating that frees clients from the idea of dieting, forever. I work a lot with PCOS, digestive health, thyroid disease, menopause etc but I don't specialise in cancer so if I have enquiries from someone with bowel cancer I will refer them to someone that does. Obviously the recommendations for someone undergoing surgery for bowel cancer would be wildly different from someone with debilitating PMS. I think you may be confusing registered nutritionists with the new breed of wellness coaches perhaps. You will see a lot more about functional medicine and genomics as we go forward.

Dr Aseem and Dr Chatterjee are two doctors who are spearheading the change in the U.K.
doctoraseem.com/lifestyle-medicine-save-nhs-billions-halt-healthcare-crisis/

Some of you may find this piece of research interesting. It shows that whole grains are not helpful but healthy fats are.

Oh, and the Mediterranean diet is based mostly around meat, fish, veg, plenty of olive oil, and some butter and wine. All unprocessed and cooked from scratch. It's a myth that Italians eat a lot of pasta and bread (I'm half Italian so grew up on the Mediterranean diet).

www.foodandnutritionresearch.net/index.php/fnr/article/view/31694

I eat like Foggy and the husband the subject of the thread but my point is you can eat a healthy diet in lots of ways as I was saying to my teenager. Most people need to eat less for a start and they need to ensure that what they eat has lots of good nutrition in it rather than empty calories.

I also agree with the suggest we should keep it simple and not be faddy. i would say eating healthy foods is what we've done for tens of thousands of years and if you stick to that you're fine. Those of us who think it went down hill a bit at 10,000 years ago when our health got worse and we started stuffing down carbs are not against those who think eating your potatoes with skins and your rice is fine. Anyone eating fish, rice, veg and no processed foods is on the same side as me whose lunch will be fish and the veg. It is not a massive difference.

The big difference is between those stuffing their faces and eating junk foods and the rest of us. So find what works for you and make sure you mostly eat food in its natural stage and you cannot go far wrong. Also eat less and move more.

Many of us have found and the science shows that good fats fill you up and carbs make you want to eat more and more however so do have a look into that.

What you eat seems healthy to me.

Id only cut the carbs if your overweight and need rapid weight loss for health reasons your a slim size ten tell ur husband to stop trying to control your food its not of his bloody business

Sandyrose, affluent Italians may have eaten as you say. For less affluent families, the proportions have always been: larger portions of vegetables and carbs (and oil), small portions of fish and meat. Which incidentally is not dissimilar to a traditional British diet (except for the vegetables), or a traditional Scandinavian diet (again except for the vegetables) or a traditional Chinese diet. Pasta has traditionally been used to take the edge of one's appetite, just like Yorkshire pud in this country.

What has happened in recent times, all over Europe and the US, is that proportions have changed. Instead of a small piece of meat to give flavour to our spuds/bread/Yorkshire pud/boiled cabbage we now eat massive slabs of meat. Instead of one cake, or a spoonful of sugar in our tea, we now have processed main courses which have sugar as a standard ingredient. Lots of people have stopped drinking water and drink sugared (or artificially sweetened) drinks everyday, rather than at the occasional children's party.

I absolutely agree that portions are much, much larger than they used to be and many people eat far too much meat in one sitting, often processed meats. But overwhelmingly people in the western world are filling up on grains and eating staggering amounts of sugar. This is cheap and tastes good. My Italian family are generally very careful with portion sizes, they will have a small piece of fish or meat with a large serving of vegetables in season. Bread and pasta very occasionally, but they are an appetiser and this would be fresh pasta not dried. Now you can buy 'Italian tomato pasta sauce' in the supermarket containing 6 tsp sugar!

Sounds fine to me the only thing I would change is whole meal to granary bread but that's my preference it has less sugar ( I make up the sugar with French fancies)

Perhaps it'd be a good idea to do a bit of research on nutrition - then you'd be armed with evidence for how you eat?!

Here are a couple of links to be going on with:
www.bda.uk.com/foodfacts/Calcium.pdf
www.gisymbol.com/healthy-weight/

This course is really good. It's a MOOC (google it if you've never heard of them) through Futurelearn/Open University. The course is free and the next one starts in January.

www.futurelearn.com/courses/the-science-of-nutrition

I notice they're doing one on preventing childhood obesity too:
www.futurelearn.com/courses/childhood-obesity

I love a health thread but having a job to keep up.

Although generally sceptical of cross culture comparisons – I warmed to the poster who said, 'Eat real food, not a lot, mostly plants.' It comes from a long article by Michael Pollen in 2007 about American food. He also wrote this,

The Masai subsist on cattle blood and meat and milk and little else. Native Americans subsist on beans and maize. And the Inuit in Greenland subsist on whale blubber and a little bit of lichen," he said. "The irony is, the one diet we have invented for ourselves the Western diet is the one that makes us sick.

Genuine question: what do those of you on low carb diets eat for lunch? I mostly have sandwiches because they're quick to make for a family when we're both working and are really busy. I've just had a frittata for lunch which was very nice but I am working from home today. I just don't have time to be making salads and stuff during the week.

Also, what would you eat with soup? I generally make soup at the weekend and have a roll with it as it's not filling enough on its own (unless it's got lentils or something in)

I work too, as does my husband and we have three young children. The kids have packed lunch so we try to make the same for everyone, often it's leftovers. Instead of sandwiches you could try wraps, or go one step further using rice paper wraps or large salad leaves. It may sound strange initially but you soon get used to it and won't want to go back.

Low carb doesn't mean no carb 😉. Soups - I make sure there's a good amount of fat and protein so don't need bread at all, in fact now I think it would feel very strange to go back to eating bread with soup. A small piece of cheese and crudities or hommous perhaps if I need something to go with it.

Sandyrose, thanks for clarifying re brown fat/visceral fat: I was a bit confused for a minute there!

Out of interest, what sort of tests do you have access to that aren't available on the NHS?