I will NEVER diet or follow nutritional advice again

[holmessweetholmes]

I thought I was pretty clued up on healthy eating and on why certain foods were good or bad. Then I read 'In Defence of Food' by Michael Pollan. It is astonishing to read about how utterly clueless, completely untrue, or often deliberately misleading, official nutritional advice is. And incredible how simple it is to eat healthily. Anyone who has ever dieted/low carbed/low anythinged should read this book.

Holmes - wouldnt that be because supermarket bread is crap? ;-)

I'll check it out next week and see what I can find out, but right at the moment I'd be surprised if there is a real problem with the variety of flour they're using.

This is a great thread. I've also decided to ditch the diets and just eat sensibly. I've only got about 10lbs to lose to have a healthy bmi and have lost 3lb in the last couple of weeks through not dieting.
We're lucky enough to have a big garden and I have started growing fruit and vegetables again this year. Sunday I made a salad from home grown cucumber, baby carrots, radishes, beet root thinnings (the rootlet and leaves) and various salad leaves. I added tomato from sainsbury and some olive oil and home grown herbs.
It was bloody fantastic, we had food orgasms. The flavours were zinging.

Yes Doitforme, I am slowly coming around to that way of thinking about various things! I've never been much of a rebel and have always been good at doing as I'm told, so it's a bit of a revelation to ne really .

GrendelsMinim - yes, I think it is crap! I have no issue with the flour itself personally. I don't know enough about it. I am just happy to be buying and making good bread and using my nice local flour!

It's because we've been bombarded with the word healthy by marketing for years. And it's stuck on stuff like juice, and even then it is a bit better in the grand scheme of our supermarket and takeaway food.

It's quite hard to counteract it. Then there's social pressure around the idea of treats.

Yes, sometimes I feel like going and living in a cave! It's frightening to think how much 'information' we all absorb on a daily basis from media (not just tv and papers etc but from stuff we look at on the internet).

I'm just astounded that so much research goes into processed food and additives.
It makes sense that the proteins in human hair could make food have a longer shelf life because hair doesn't grow old but who would've thought to put it into food in the first place? It just amazes me that so much time, effort and money is used to research and implement the use of additives. As well as lacking nutrients, so much food contains weird stuff.

The more I find out, the more I'm put off all pre-made food. I don't want to be a slave to the kitchen either though.

Thanks to those who answered my questions. I am desperately trying to understand, but still really struggling to get my head round some things.

Everyone says it's not a diet and just healthy eating and doesn't need much thought. So how come I just can't get it? I class myself as an intelligent person, and I just can't get my head round it.

Maybe it's just me.

Personally I think the fat thing is a bit of a red herring. I don't think it matters that much whether you choose skimmed or ff milk (apart from ff tasting horrible). However, the difference in fat contents of different cuts of meat is massive and the nutrition doesn't really come from fat. Lean protein gives you what you need and is highly nutritious. nothing wrong with fattier cuts on occasion but I refuse to believe eating rib roasts regularly is particularly good for you however 'natural' (and yummy!) they may be.

Wheat I think is ok but you should watch it. I probably eat it on average once a day. tend to have fruit and greek yogurt for breakfast btw which is really quick.

I think personally a lot of weight problems are about emotional eating which is a fact largely ignored by the nhs.

You'd be better off changing advertising and regs than tackling emotional eating via the NHS. It would cost a fortune. Funds aren't limitless so who misses out? Who pays for it. Not very efficient.

but surely if it reduced obesity that would then reduce their spending on obesity-related illness.

Keep asking questions, Sissy! I'm no nutrition expert, but then nutrition experts seem to have been responsible for the mess we are in! The reason it needs so much thought and doesn't seem straightforward is that we are bogged down by years and years of muddle-headed thinking because of all the conflicting advice!

My strategy is just to buy, make and eat the best quality and least processed stuff I can. And to slow down and pay attention to my appetite and tastes in a calm, curious way. So that I eat when I am hungry, choose things I like and enjoy, eat sensible portions and stop when I am satisfied. And to stop constantly associating food with weightloss and health but to enjoy it as nourishment and pleasure.

I don't know for definite if this approach will make me slimmer. I do know that it will make me happier and healthier.

Sure but better to tackle at beginning than end. I'd say far more efficient use of funds.

What things are you still struggling with Sissy?

If you think of food that anyone's (English, Indian, Chinese, anyone) great grandparents ate then you're pretty much ok.
It's using lots of raw ingredients and making them into food yourself rather than relying on mass manufacturing to do it.

If you need to lose weight then yes check fats. You can't eat food with tonnes of butter and oil in it but a a little is fine.

Check sugar and wheat too. Again, you won't be healthy if you're eating huge slices if home made cake daily.

Tobysmum77 - surely one of the benefits of taking this attitude to food is that ideally you get a real balance. Sometimes fatty cuts, sometimes lean, sometimes wheat, sometimes not. Whereas one of the problems of following diets or dietary advice is that people become very focussed on following rules which iften involve excluding whole food groups or eating far too much if others.
This is the problem with the low fat diet - by cutting out almost all fat, people were driven towards sugar when companies compensated for the lack of flavour by adding tons of it to everything.

Emotional eating is a problem, but I do think it is a cycle perpetuated by the type of food chosen as much as by the emotional aspect itself. You reach for the cake because you are feeling low emotionally, but keep reaching for it out of habit because it is bloody addictive.

Besides emotional eating, there is habit and culture and peer pressure (real or imagined) too. I went out for coffee the other day with two friends, both overweight and they both had a cake. I also had a cake because I didn't want to say no and look like I was being all self-denying and judging their choices. Because I'm a healthy weight, I felt like they might feel I was making them look bad.

Not that it matters in the scheme of things, I don't have cake out often and I enjoyed it. But I didn't need it or particularly want it and it wasn't the snack I would have chosen at home.

And I am generally really not the kind of person who worries about what people think or has to fit in, yet the pressures and issues we all have about food and weight are so pervasive. There are thousands of offices where people bring in cake all the time and people have to make a choice between having it and joining in or saying no and isolating themselves socially/making other people feel bad. It's complex and even among people who understand healthy eating, there is this culture of "ooh everyone loves cake/doughnuts/chocolate". Read an interview with a skinny sleb and the ultimate accolade is that while they are beautifully slim and have glowing skin, they aren't uptight and it's so refreshing to see them reach for the cake.

It's not just the messages about what's in food that are so confusing, but all the conflicting cultural stuff about enjoyment of "bad" food being socially inclusive.

Great post, BeeBlanket. So true.

I think I'm basically struggling with what I can eat and can't.

I guess Mcdonalds is out - I get that. I don't get if I can eat a chicken tikka masala and boiled rice from my local indian restaurant?!

This is just one example

I get Bee's post about the culture. I always take a piece of cake at work, although I don't particularly like it. I'm too afraid to offend the 'cake bringer'.

Completely Bee.

To me, if you want the Indian, have it. But savour and enjoy it, and don't eat for the sake of it if that makes sense?
I low carbed, am now more paleo and was eating a lot more fat than I used to and virtually no bread/rice/pasta. It's changed my body shape completely. Lost 29lbs or so but the shape was the main difference

So orange = good. Orange juice = ok (I dilute with water). Orange flavour sweets that haven't seen an orange = not great!
Same with meat - sausages with high meat content = fine, sausages that are packed with shit = not good
My PT told me to shop the outside of the supermarket and not enter the middle aisles, and it does work!

Bee - it's all imaginary though. I never 'take the cake'. I am not socially excluded, and it doesn't make other people 'feel bad' (quite the reverse - it means more cake for them). Nobody, nobody in the world, has to take the cake if they don't want to. And if they do take the cake, it's because they want to, on some level, even if they don't admit it to themselves for some reason.

Even if you're going to macdonalds (politics aside), you can have a fresh salad with real slices of chicken which totally meets the "real food" definition. I like KFC (if fast food is what we're doing, which is occasionally) because you can get a real piece of chicken and a corn on the cob. It may not be of the highest quality but it's not processed food.

Likewise with a takeaway, it's not necessarily "bad", it depends what it is and what's happened to it. Quite a lot of takeaway options are made of fresh veg and meat (eg stir fry type things).

I think the point is to get away from the idea that whole categories of food are bad - junk food, takeaways, carbs whatever – and aim for food that's as good quality, fresh and unprocessed as possible. That won't always mean hand-picked organic superfood perfection but it's just a general principle to go with.

Herc of course you're right, I didn't have to have the cake. My point is I did, even though I'm aware of all this because at that point I was just worried about offending - and that that was ridiculous - but I think it is a powerful force in society.

of course it's about balance but getting back to meat one of the issues is that the fatter cuts are very often the nicest. Therefore without rules people rarely get the right balance. For me personally I need rules but sensible ones so I get the nutrition I need.

Another issue I think is people who are big often see food as a bad thing when in fact you need it to be healthy.

We do hear that people need a treat otherwise they are depriving etc lots of loaded language.

But perhaps a treat doesn't have to be sugar.

Marsha - but the people who say that are silly. As are the people who listen. Society isn't forcing people to eat cake any more than it is forcing them to smoke or drink. Or eat cheese. The 'big (name your poison)' lobbyists do a good job of socialising messages but ultimately nobody is forced to do anything, it is still a personal choice and people don't surrender agency to 'society'. They use their agency to make their own choices and then say 'society made me do it' and it's not true. Society may suggest but it's people who actually 'do'.