Why We Eat (Too Much)

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

Has anyone come across this book? It's written by Dr Andrew Jenkinson, who is a bariatric surgeon in London. Basically, it's about how to lose weight by lowering your body's natural set weight point. This may take a long time but it's sustainable and doesn't fuck your metabolism.

The book goes into a lot of detail about the causes of obesity, because he says it's important to understand why people are getting fat in the Western world. It pretty much comes down to eating too much omega-6 fat and sugar. The overall volume of food people eat doesn't matter.

I'm trying to work out how you would cut that out practically and I wondered if anyone had tried it. It sounds like going lower carb but not low carb as in low carb diets. He suggests eating low-carb breakfasts and throwing out bread (and anything else baked). I eat toast for breakfast most days and sandwiches for lunch. I'm trying to work out practical alternatives that I actually like.

Porridge
Full fat unsweetened yoghurt
Bacon and eggs
Omelettes
Soup
Oatcakes and cheese
Salads

Other rules include no takeaways or fast food or crisps etc, and no snacks, mainly because most snack food is carb-based with vegetable oil in it.

I'm having steak tonight with mozzarella and tomato salad, all drizzled in EV olive oil. Steak will be griddled with butter. If I am still hungry after that I'll either have an apple or some Yeo Valley plain yoghurt.

Yesterday I had a huge portion of home made tomato and basil soup with a dash of turmeric and a generous swirl of double cream.

Ooo yes steak sounds lovely. I have some actually for this week. I haven’t had it in a couple of years at least!

Weighing myself always always without fail makes me miserable or want to restrict my intake. Back when I was basically anorexic, I weighed myself most days and if I was under 8 stone, or was a good day. If I was over, it was a bad one, and I’d generally binge, hate myself, then starve myself in response. If it was a good day, I’d starve myself.

As I’ve gained weight (got pregnant) and got properly diagnosed with eating issues, I’ve learnt to let go of the scales because I understand they don’t serve me. I had an entire year (pre lockdown) sitting at 9st 7 and being quite happy with that. Yes I’d have liked to be 9, but I felt good. I’m now more like 10st 7 and every time the scales tell me I’m still over 10st, it triggers a binge in me like it did back when I was 2st lighter. The difference now is, I no longer starve myself. So I just continue to get bigger in response.

Definitely sounds as though scales aren't a good thing for you, @Tinkling. For some people they can be motivational but they're not necessary to track weight loss - the fit of your clothes will tell you whether you've lost weight even before it becomes apparent just by looking in the mirror.

And I'm glad to hear you've been able to get a proper diagnosis for your eating issues - it sounds as though you are managing them really well.

Hopefully this will work well for you - the very last thing anyone should be doing on this plan is starving themselves as it will have the opposite effect to that intended, of resetting your weight point - so it's ideal for those who don't want to restrict, just to eat the right kind of healthy foods. It's one thing that attracted me, as I've fallen into patterns of severely restricting food in the past and I'm convinced it's damaged my metabolism.

Me too Arbadacarba It’s so nice to not be restricting and feeling hungry. Although I had ‘a moment’ today - I’ve been hungrier than usual all day so had tuna salad at lunch as I thought the protein would fill me up but then by about 4pm I was suddenly starving and had a stand off with a bar of Dairy Milk! I soooooo wanted some but held my nerve and had potato and cheese as it was quick to make. I think maybe it was a carb craving after my salad. I don’t want to deny myself things when I really want them and I fully intend to have the odd bit of chocolate here and there but I want to get my new eating habits bedded in a bit more before then. If it had been about weight loss then I would have just eaten the chocolate, but the fact that I’m wanting to succeed at this for my health helped me resist.

Well done @OhMyChrist2020! Brilliant. I have found a mid afternoon snack that works for me is a glass of full fat milk and an apple or a banana. Afternoons are my worst time, I think because I have breakfast fairly late I don’t need a snack as I just have lunch, but lunch to dinner time is hard.

I felt so good cooking all the fresh stuff for dinner today, I feel like I’m nourishing all of us which really appeals to my maternal instincts. And no complaints from the kids! Normally I’d give them a frozen chicken kiev but I thought I’d try and they ate it all with no complaints. Very happy with that. And even better, I have a perfect portion made for lunch tomorrow too.

I feel like I’m eating too many carbs - but they’re potato and rice. I just have something in my head that you can’t eat fat with carbs but not having carbs just makes me feel so ill, so I think that’s why I feel so guilty having the high fat (and therefore high calories).

You’re right @Arbadacarba, it’s so easy to damage your metabolism. It happened so badly to my SIL, she barely eats and is running around after 3 children but can’t lose weight.

I'm 8 days in and really enjoying this way of eating so far. Some of it is very much like I eat anyway in terms of cooking a main meal , but I'm having to get used to not having a sandwich at lunchtime. WFH at least means I can improvise. And I'm enjoying having a breakfast of oats in natural yoghurt. I'm amazed at how I've not needed snacks, im a massive sugar fiend and yet I've not come close to caving. I don't think I've gone this long without chocolate in a very long time!

I felt so good cooking all the fresh stuff for dinner today

I agree, this is one of the best things about the plan. I used to rely heavily on pre-prepared food - now I look back and wonder why I did that to myself - the idea of, say, a frozen lasagne leaves me cold.

The only thing I really miss is bread - and bread is where I've lapsed from time to time. I might try making some of the cloud bread recommended upthread, or alternatively I could simply accept that I will have bread from time to time. Pre. this if I wasn't on a diet of some kind I could easily eat four or five slices of bread/toast a day, often with jam and usually with margarine - so having a single slice less than once a week plain or with butter is a vast improvement.

I struggled at tea time today, didn't get home til 6.30pm due to traffic issues, normal 20 min journey took an hour. So dh then wanted chinese takeaway. I was determined not to break but his and dds order wasn't enough. So instead of the omelette I was going to have I had a portion of the duck you get with hoison sauce and pancakes but left the sauce and pancakes and just had the meat and cucumber and spring onion.

Was tasty but a bit dry 😅. But at least I didn't have wheat or loads of seed oils or noodles or sugary stuff.

I will be having a cheat night tomorrow tho. Wine and an Indian. Will have boiled instead of fried rice and our Indian apparently uses ghee rather than veg oil and I know they cook the sauces themselves. No nan bread, but will probably have a couple of poppadoms.

Before I was diagnosed coeliac I ate shed loads of bread. Two slices every morning for breakfast plus at least a slice or two for a snack. Bloody loved bread. It was usually granary, sometimes I’d get white or a baguette for a treat. Soup with bread... Oh and garlic bread at least once a week! Maybe a burger... it was a staple part of my diet. So I completely get you. I think if you’re gonna have bread then have bread, proper stuff, and enjoy it. I miss it dearly. GF bread is absolutely crap.

@HighlandCowbag I’m very impressed! I would have had it aaalllll. My old order would be sweet and sour chicken balls, Chinese pork chow mein, Sarah sauce and chips. Yum yum.

Can I ask what oils you are all using?
And whether you're using up what you have?

Not eating nuts and seeds will be hard!

I've actually had weight loss surgery but am terrified about putting the weight back on. So far so good but who knows what my set point is now!

Extra virgin olive oil for drizzling etc. - butter or lard for cooking.

Using up - my husband has a naturally very low set weight point, so isn't interested in this plan - we often eat separately so he is still using sunflower oil and margarine for his own meals.

Beef dripping and goose fat are other cooking options.

Thank you. We always have olive oil, so I'll try butter. Although how do I deep fry this nigella Lawson chicken thing I want to make this weekend?!

My DP is a veggie and doesn't struggle with his weight. Very annoying!

@Cocksinsocks Jenkinson is a bariatric surgeon and was inspired to create this plan by the experience of the people he'd treated. He reported that people who'd had the procedures he offers (gastrectomy/gastric bypass) experienced a lowering of their set point after surgery.

Yes, naturally slim husbands are very annoying!

We’ve been away for a few days which has made things much harder as we weren’t always able to cook. It’s very difficult to buy ready-prepared food which isn’t full of wheat and all sorts of other stuff - even the salads have dressings full of veg oils. I managed to avoid the bread, cakes and biscuits - but one of the meals was fish & chips so definitely not on plan! (I did pick the fish out of the batter, which actually was nice as it was a good chippy so the fish was good on its own, and had a large portion of mushy peas! But I couldn’t resist a few chips, which I am sure will have been fried in veg oil).

It’s made me realise how many unnecessary ingredients there are in ready made foods - even things like prepared salads which are supposed to be healthy.

Now I am home I can get back on track.
Lunch was bean salad, slice of chicken, cottage cheese. I like pickles as they make salads a bit more interesting - sauerkraut, olives, gerkins etc.

Dinner tonight was pasta with home-made lentil, veg & tomato sauce - family had regular pasta, I had gluten-free bean pasta which surprisingly tasted ok.

Yes my surgeon said bariatric surgeons believed this surgery was lowering set points but there wasn't LOADS of evidence yet. I had it two years ago, 10 stone lost.

Apologies if this has been linked to before but this article is fascinating - www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html

Convinced me to get surgery.

I'll have a good read of the thread!

[quote Love51]@Arbadacarba or anyone else, how do you make roast potatoes or any other roast veg? Like parsnips and carrots? As in what fat do you use?[/quote]
Goose fat is fab for this!

I'm still reading listening to the book. There is a lot of good information in it. My problem with it is not eating nuts or seeds or whole grains which are all really good for your gut microbiome which I'm really passionate about at the moment. I haven't got to the omega 6 bit yet so that might convince me.
I can 100% see why giving up bread and baked stuff and processed food (my pet hate) makes you lose weight. Gluten free food is usually packed with sugar and other bad stuff so not a great alternative.

@samthebordercollie oh yes, everything GF tastes so sweet, so much is inedible to me because of it. The custard creams are absolutely vile. It’s like eating a spoonful of sugar dust.

I saw a programme recently about gluten free food - the gist of it was that because gluten free food is essential for some people with specific health conditions such as coeliac disease, it's somehow given rise to a myth that everyone should go gluten free because it's 'healthier'. But the scientists on the programme said that unless you have one of the specific conditions that means you can't tolerate gluten, there is no benefit to going gluten free.

As you say, @samthebordercollie , because the alternatives to gluten are often nutritionally very poor, gluten free food can actually be worse for you if it's not something you've a medical need to eat.

Re lunches - it was a shame you couldn’t meet your friend Tinkling - I think I would have just gone anyway and taken a pasta salad.
Maybe we should share ideas for easy quick lunches that can be made from things we are likely to have in? I am trying to keep a few basic foods in the cupboard and fridge so that I can usually throw something together.

Here’s one of mine:

Tuna Niçoise salad - can add all sorts to this eg tinned mixed beans, leftover rice or potatoes, any salad, olives, dressing made with ev olive oil, vinegar and fresh herbs

I also found this recipe and was planning to make some for the freezer as they can be taken on a lunch out along with salad:

www.intervalweightloss.com.au/recipe-savoury-frittata-muffins

I am finding the ‘no wheat, no sugar, no processed foods’ side of it easy to understand, but where I am struggling is the Omega 3 / Omega 6 issue.
Lots of foods seem to have high levels of Omega 6 - the list of foods which don’t seems very limited!

Also in the book there are some contradictions - for example he suggests houmous - this usually contains veg oils unless you make your own. He also suggests pasta salad which is wheat?

I came to this book as I didn’t want to be spending time counting calories, but now am contemplating making my own houmous and mayonnaise!!

@Wandamakestoast I was confused by the pasta salad bit too!

I don't like shop bought humus so always make my own, it's really easy. It does have tahini in it though, not sure if that would be a problem on this.

I've just started section 3 of the book so from today I am avoiding sugar and processed foods and ordered more veg on the shopping due today but that's as far as I've got.

I did something similar about 3 years ago so we've already switched to butter and olive oil only, and nearly always cook from scratch but it's constant snacking that I struggle with.

I did low carb for a while and found out I'm not really bothered about pasta and rice but I LOVE bread! Parathas, home made sourdough, hot cross buns, love them all.

I also love sugar, this bit is likely to be quite difficult.

That’s the thing with GF, unless you cut out all gluten products it’s the only way it’s healthier. Replacement products are highly processed crap with little fibre.

I found basically everything listed in the book had higher omega 6 than omega 3! I’m not sure how I feel about this ratio thing, but anything that eradicates junk food from your diet can only be a good thing.

I’ve just put together a beef rendang for dinner from the fast800 recipe book (the food in there is absolutely delicious). Will be serving it with a mixture of brown and wild red rice, and pak choi. Might do some broccoli too. Hoping to have enough left for lunch tomorrow, I really don’t want to be preparing meals 3 times a day.

My go to lunch was always tuna pasta for something quick and healthy (can of tuna, mature cheddar, peas, sweetcorn, cucumber, pepper and red onion mixed in with pasta). I don’t like it so much with a jacket potato. I might try it with a baked sweet potato though and lose the sweetcorn so it’s not too sweet.

The fast800 book does have lots of great meal ideas. Turkey fajita wraps (lettuce for the wrap), tuna stir fry (unfortunately I cannot find GF hoi sin but I did make my own a few times, not as good but still nice). I also looked on the healthy start website and there were a few recipes on there I’m going to try, peppers with a spicy turkey stuffing and potato bake.