Why We Eat (Too Much) Thread 2

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

Shiny new thread to continue on with! I hope everyone keeps going.

For any newbies, this thread is based on a book by Dr Andrew Jenkinson. The main principles are to cut out sugar, wheat and ultra-processed foods, while eating fresh natural ingredients. It works!

Previous thread: thread 1

@Tinkling glad you ate feeling better today. Send some sunshine my way please?
@CornedBeef451 and Tinkling running isn't for everyone. It's always best to find a sport you enjoy. Walking is good. I wish I didn't love running as much because it takes up a lot if my time, but there are worse thing to be addicted to I suppose.
No breakfast as usual, salad niçoise with an Orange and fromage blanc for lunch. My lettuces from the veg garden are ready to be eaten so dinner will be something and green salad!

I have a love/hate relationship with running. I hate the effort it takes but love it when I'm doing it and after. You definitely need to enjoy it though because it is not easy.

Had left over roast potatoes, pork, carrots and parsnips for lunch with a naughty spoonful of apple sauce. Was lush tho. Will have something light for tea, going shopping post school run so will pick something up then. Probably salad and fish.

@samthebordercollie I think in my head I'm a runner, despite all the evidence to the contrary, so I'm sad that I violently dislike it.

I really like lifting weights but gave myself a hernia so scared to do it again!

Hi all!

Checking in after a terrible weekend - I got absolutely slaughtered drunk at the barbecue. I was sick when I got home and then again in the morning. I ate a cupcake and a burger in a bun despite promising myself that I wouldn't do that, and in the morning I felt so awful and there was very little food in - no eggs or bacon - that I had toast. I felt awful all day and I'm still really dehydrated today. I had roast pork with crackling for dinner, which was delicious but also very salty, so I'm glugging water and trying to rehydrate before I next weigh myself.

On the plus side I'm wearing jeans that gave me a distinct camel toe 3 weeks ago and now they don't!

Today's food
L: Omelette with cheese, salami and spring onion, plus an apple
D: Beef pie with veg (from freezer, homemade, yes it has pastry but I need to eat them to free up freezer space!)

Actually laughing out loud @CornedBeef451 being a sourdough wanker and @TooExtraImmatureCheddar with her camel toe! 😂😂

I am totally with those of you who don't "get" running. I did C25k last year during lockdown but never got a buzz from running. Ironically my DH runs every day and even more ironically I do a team sport that involves running, but running - just running for the sake of running - no thanks!!

@Tinkling, I suspect most of us on this thread have succumbed to binge eating at some stage. Keep focusing on moving forward though, can't change the past but new start and let's go again!

Oh no! Sorry to hear about the hangover!

I’ve been glugging the liquids too. Had vegetable fried rice for dinner and I’ve had a banana and some 70% chocolate.

Exercise wise I do enjoy a good yomp with a friend, and I love netball. I am god awful at it but I spend most of the time laughing so I love it for that!

Walking works for me because it fits in with my day so easily. I walk 4 miles a day doing the school run, I don’t know what I’ll do when my children don’t need me to walk them to school any more! Take up running I expect

Evening all,

I've been back on plan for the past 2 days, woohoo.
Can someone tell me if what I've eaten is okay? I'm still waiting for my copy of the book arriving.

Greek yogurt, mixed berries & linseed.

A mixed salad of tomatoes, hummus, mozzarella, sundried toms, pesto, carrots, avocado and ham.

Chilli, sweet potato, spinach & cheese for dinner.

Banana, grapes, tangerine x 2
3 sugar free sweets, sherbet lemons from aldi which are lovely and 2 squares of green and blacks salted caramel chocolate.

Plus x 2 coffees with cream.

That sounds like so much food!!!

It sounds pretty decent @StrawberryFizz26, but perhaps check what's in your hummus, pesto and sun-dried tomatoes, as a lot of them use vegetable oils - I looked for tomatoes recently and they were all in sunflower oil, so didn't buy them.

Perhaps you're not worried about the oils though, if you're focusing on healthy home-cooked meals first?

I'm also sceptical about anything that claims to be sugar-free - often the sugar has been replaced by sweeteners and I'm not convinced we should be eating them. However I am very much of the opinion that this WoE has to be realistic and sustainable, so a few sweets will not spoil it if you're doing everything else right, so don't change that if it's the little treat that keeps you on track.

Your dinner sounds lush!! I'm getting food envy thinking about it! 😂

Thanks tiredandbored I'll check out the oil in the hummus, sundried toms and pesto.

I'm really enjoying this WOE & I can defo recommend the green and black chocolate, it's 5g of sugar and its fiiiiiiit!!

Love to join!!
Have stalked from afar. Love food, and have eaten clean more or less for a year. But have the odd wobble!!
Went sugar free about 5 years ago. Not strictly but didn’t buy sugar or have it in the house. And limited processed food.
When I became stricter last year, the weight dropped off me. But still struggle from time to time.
Interested to follow you guys and see your successes

Hello all. Haven't been on here for a bit and see we're onto a new thread! I've been following Andrew Jenkinson on Twitter and apparently his book is available on kindle for 99p tomorrow in case anyone is interested. It can be read with a kindle app on online if you don't have an actual Kindle.

www.amazon.co.uk/Why-We-Eat-Too-Much-ebook/dp/B07XLFX52N?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Hi Strawberry, don’t worry about too much food! Your body will start regulating after a couple of weeks - I found that I ate a lot for the first few days and then pretty much stopped feeling hungry. I hardly snack now, it’s really weird! I have a lot to lose, though, so I don’t know if that would happen so quickly if you didn’t have the copious fat reserves that I do. Interested to see your coffee with cream - I was reading a Dick Francis written in the 70s and people had cream in their coffee as standard, and in fact, my granny used to give us that at Christmas. Funny how food habits change! I love cream in my coffee.

Flossie, welcome! Nice to hear from someone who has tried this before.

Reading all the exercise chat - I have exercised less since realising how fat I am. I must bite the bullet and restart! I was exercising at a reasonable level before, so I mustn’t give up. I used to do a sport twice a week pre-Covid, but they had to close to over-18s for almost the whole of the last year - I got one class in that time! I don’t know if they’ll reopen the adult class with numbers going up in my area.

Morning all

Welcome Flossie, you will enjoy this thread I think .

Yesterday was good though a bit light on veg. Leftover Sunday roast for lunch. Pork, roast potatoes and roast carrots/parsnips with a naughty but very nice spoon of apple sauce. Wasn't particularly hungry come teatime, had some veg/egg fried rice which was nice.

Today will be leftover rice maybe with some salad. Tea will be something easy, possibly a jacket potato as kayaking til about 7.30pm.

Re exercise I do quite a bit of active stuff, like walking, gardening, doing the allotment/chickens, kayaking over summer, we have ponies etc. But found that tho they are good I don't actually sweat or get out if breath and I need to sweat and breath out of my arse to get that exercise buzz. I think you need to enjoy it though. I used to like gym classes when I was younger and then swimming later on with dd.

I do need a goal to work towards to tho or I end up drifting. This year I'm signed up for a 10k challenge in September. Dunno if I will be ready but it's a target. Hopefully I will be slimmer by then as well which always helps.

Ah thanks for the welcome 😁

My food usually is ok - porridge and berries with honey for breakfast, Greek salad for lunch, roasted veg and halloumi, or veg stir fry for dinner.
I’m veggie, so live on cheese!!
I’ve always found pasta and bread bloats me so naturally exclude them if I can, although I’m definitely making more effort recently as have noticed my tummy is a lot flatter for it.
My downfall is wine!!

Exercise wise, I cycle and wild swim, and am trying to get back into running albeit painful and slow!! 🙈

Thanks for the kindle book tip off. Is that downloadable onto a iPad in that format?! I’m not very tech savvy!!

Welcome @Flossie44
Yes you need to download the kindle app on your iPad and you can download it from Amazon on that device.
Good to see so much exercise happening. Even if diet is the most important thing for weight loss muscle burns more calories than fat and everyone looks better toned!
I only do aerobic exercise (running, cycling, swimming) at my age 55 should really do weights but hate exercising indoors.
Yesterday had fish and green salad for dinner with some chocolate mousse which I cocked up majorly (choc not melted properly) none of the rest of the family will eat it so I have to 😂
Today Tuna Niçoise salad as it really is the weather for salads 🙄 and chili tonight with more green salad.
I confess to 2 digestive biscuits after work as I was so hungry 😳

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9588967/What-month-eating-ultra-processed-food-did-me.html

Really interesting experiment in which Dr Chris Van Tulleken ate ultra-processed foods for one month and assessed the impact they had on his health.

I know it's the DM which is not popular on MN, but I found it fascinating and quite concerning, especially when he talked about the long-term impact it had on his brain. And how addictive the foods were!! Very worrying when you consider how much of our diet is made up of these foods nowadays in modern society.

That’s a really interesting article, thank you for sharing.

I totally understand it, biscuits 100% have that affect on me.

That is a shocking outcome to the experiment, its no wonder we crave crap food. We ate more upfs during lockdown than we ever have, all 4 of us put weight on and me and the kids were probably as active as before when you take into consideration we all worked or were sitting at school for lots of the day.

It is addictive, I need to seriously look at tje kids diets. Dd isn't too bad but ds (7) would be a proper junk food junkie if left to his own devices. Luckily he will eat proper food and is pretty active.

@Tiredandbored thanks for the link to the article. Nothing surprising there, a bit shocked his brain hasn't improved after stopping his diet, maybe that takes longer? Unless the goverment steps in (which they won't due to the power of the industrial food companies) nothing will be done to tax or advertise the danger of highly processed foods. In France that things are going the same way - when I arrived 20 years ago there was less than 1m of supermarket shelf for crisps (just ready salted) now there are 12m. People still cook from scratch more perhaps than in the UK, but there is more and more ultra processed food sold. It's no good treating diabetes 2 with a pill, more preventative action is needed to stop people getting overweight and obese in the first place.
Food is medicine!

I have stopped buying processed food now but we are running down our stores of things like crisps, soreen bars, Easter eggs, mini milks. They’ll take a while to work through but I no longer have freezer crap. The DC are sad to be not having chicken nuggets but they’ll get used to it.

Wow!! That article is chilling!!

UPFs are over marketed. It’s interesting what the article says about France aiming to drop production by 20%, it’s so responsible and such a shame U.K. won’t follow.
On the odd occasion in the past where we’ve had a party weekend of eating crap..it’s taken a massive toll on me for about a week afterwards. Bloating, pain, ibs, heartburn, sluggishness and anxiety.

Food is indeed medicine.

Thanks for the article, I’ll record that programme

I've been thinking more about how many UPFs we eat in my household - my personal total is relatively low as I don't eat crisps, biscuits, cake, cereals, bread etc and cook my meals from scratch. However I'm ashamed to admit my kids eat far more - cereal or toast for breakfast, sandwiches on white bread, potato waffles, beans, toasties etc for lunch. Their dinner is usually good, but breakfast and lunch are terrible. All the things that are quick and easy to make for breakfast and lunch are UPFs! It would take so much more time to prepare different food for those meals if I am to reduce their UPF totals.

Mum-guilt levels are rocketing right now 😥

Tired it's so difficult isn't it? I try and compromise a bit with mine, especially ds who is fussy. So he will have pasta but I either make him cheesey pasta myself or he has tuna mayo with it. The mayo isn't ideal and I know we don't eat pasta on the woe, but it's better than a microwave portion of tuna pasta bake. We all eat together sundays anyway so usually homemade something. Then the rest of the week is fajitas, he might have nuggets/waffles one day or a supermarket pizza. He usually has a second roast dinner with leftovers etc. Just normal family meals. Week days he has school dinners. Breakfast is a high fibre cereal usually, but he will also have fruit and natural yog once or twice.

The big thing with him is biscuits and sweet treats so have just reduced the amount I buy. And I don't really buy him sweets as such. Sometimes he has them from my dms or he might have a few of dhs if he buys some at the weekend. I think with young kids as long as they aren't having ready meals upfs every day, every meal and you try and encourage healthier choices it's about as much as we can do. I try and balance a starving 7 year old post swimming or kayaking or riding with nutrition and just getting him fed and in bed. I do find cooking extra portions works well with him. So shepherds pie for instance or sunday roast, I just do a bit extra and save him some for the next day.

Not sure what I am having today. Its my wedding anniversary and dh wants to order in so will probably be off plan tonight. Not sure what we will order, probably chinese. Am not a massive fan anyway so will avoid wheat at least but will have a 'normal' meal. Probably choose something like beef and mushroom with rice. Lunch will be salad of some kind, I have some mackerel so may have that. Also having a few beers cos anniversary. And also out for a meal Saturday so this week will be a bit iffy.

But I have been for a run this morning so at least that's something.

Happy anniversary @HighlandCowbag!! 🎉🎉

Happy Anniversary @HighlandCowbag!

@Tiredandbored thank you sharing the article. It’s quite sobering how quickly his body felt the effects. I try not to eat too much in the way of UFPs but it is hard when out and about. We are seeing family this weekend and I’m already worrying a bit about what to eat. They will likely make a pasta dinner with a jar of sauce which isn’t totally horrendous but not ideal.