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

Not sure what happened yesterday but I ended up eating most of a packet of chewits and a mini flake before bed! I wasn’t hungry, DH wanted something to eat and I said I thought we had a packet of biscuits so I went off to find them. Discovered that rubbish in our junk box which I never go in because most of it is sweets / contains gluten and spotted the chewits that someone had bought my DC for their birthday at the weekend?! DH opened them so I thought I’d have one. And of course they were the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted so I took them back to the sofa and didn’t stop until they were gone!

So here we are again, starting again

Definitely falling into bad habits again, I really wish people wouldn’t buy this rubbish to bring into my house.

The lack of sunshine isn’t helping either because it demotivates me, come on summer!

I’ve been too busy to do any Pilates for over a week as well, so I’m going to put my workout gear on today for the school run as that’s half the battle. Hopefully it will encourage me to just do it when I get home and then I’ll feel awesome for the day.

Meal plan today:

B- skillet potatoes and poached eggs
L- bolognese with cheese and salad
D- jacket potato stuffed with broccoli, tomatoes, pepper, chorizo, onion and cheese
S- fruit

I’m finding this weather quite hard to cope with. I can’t believe I’m still pretty much winter clothing. I’m still leaning towards (home made) soups and hot food rather than the usual salads.

Looking forward to a bit of warmth this weekend... if the forecasters are right!

Yup! Winter coat and sweater on the school run. Blooming joke!

My hallway is rammed with coats. I was chuntering this morning then realised I had a winter coat, a rain mac, a hoodie, a denim jacket and a fleece hung up, and that I had worn all of them last week.

Tomorrow tho things start to improve thank goodness.

Fed up with the weather too. Am back to homemade soup for lunch, fingers crossed tomorrow will be more salad weather!
Today - Breakfast - nothing
Lunch - homemade veggie soup, orange, fromage blanc with honey, flax and chia seeds
Dinner - homemade quiche (I know it isn't allowed, but I won't eat all the crust) and lettuce from garden. Before it gets washed away.

B = stewed apple and berries with Greek yoghurt and a spoonful of cream, coffee with milk
L = nothing as I had a late breakfast (didn’t eat until after running and yoga so it was 11am) and it was very filling, had a banana at 3pm to keep me going
D = a “mindful chef” lentil veg curry thing which seems to have all healthy ingredients so should be on plan. Maybe berries and cream with a squirt of honey if I’m hungry.

I feel better already and it’s only been one week with some weekend slippage.

L: Tomato and lentil soup plus oatcakes with cheese, tomato and cucumber
D: Salmon, potato and cherry tomato traybake. Possibly with pak choi as there’s no broccoli or other green veg until someone goes shopping.

It’s 5 weeks until the wedding from Sunday so I am getting 100% on it. No more delicious dark chocolate on the sofa every afternoon. Sob!

B. Nothing, I almost never eat it anyway
L. Snack plate of cheese, boiled eggs olives grapes and oatcakes
D. HM tandoori chicken, potatoes and salad

So far, so good!

Thanks for your comments about exercise. I normally exercise fasted for short distances but will often take sweets or gels for longer ones so that will take some getting used to.

Can anyone suggest some decent savoury snacks if such a thing exists in this WOE. Ideally something to replace the evening nibbles

How about cubes of cheese and a bowl of olives. That’s my go-to.

I’d never had oat cakes until today..they were so so nice. Had them with cheese..more cheese!! 😂

Cheese is life Flossie 😁

I snack on cheese and olives as well, and cherry tomatoes. But am finding 7 weeks in I am rarely hungry between lunch and dinner, I never eat breakfast either.

Today will be salad for lunch, with olives and anchovies which I love. Tea will be a jacket potato later on after kayaking.

Feeling a bit meh about the weekend particularly as its a bank holiday. Tomorrow dh wants takeaway. I really don't want takeaway. I don't just not want it because of the diet, I don't want it because I can't think of anything I want to eat. Am debating making chicken shish kebabs for me, cooking them in the day then just having cold chicken shish and salad. Would cook them when I want them but planning on being pissed by the time we eat 😁.

Unless we can find a decent takeaway that does nice grilled meat or something am going to do that I think.

Morning all. Found this article on tonight's BBC program 'What are we feeding our kids?' about the rise of ultra processed foods.

whatsnew2day.com/children-as-young-as-seven-who-live-in-remote-areas-of-the-amazon-develop-diabetes/

Wow, that's even more shocking @TrevorTheMushroom! The impact the UPFs had in such a short time is profoundly worrying!

I suppose it is because they had gone from pretty much zero UPFs to a sudden increase, but it is very worrying reading. Really shows what we are exposing our children to 😥

I have a 'treat' cupboard which the kids can get a snack out of each day. I do limit portions (e.g. half a packet of sweets rather than a whole packet) but it's something I'd like to get them out of the habit of. I never buy anything for the treat cupboard, but other people give us things for the kids and my DH likes junk food snacks so he buys them which is part of the problem.

We did run out this week and for the first time I sent my kids to school with no treat in their lunchbox. It was the first thing they asked when I picked them up - "where was my treat mummy?" 🤦

I did convince 2 of them that strawberries with Greek yoghurt was a better treat and they had that, but then a neighbour dropped in some chocolate bars so the others had those when they got home from school. I think it's going to be a long hard battle, but will seek small victories and know that every little improvement is better than no change at all.

B - porridge
L - going to pinch the idea from @Undisclosedlocation and do a picnic snack plate of cheese, olives, rye crispbreads and whatever bits and pieces of veg I have in the fridge
D - spaghetti bolognese, but I'm having courgetti rather than the spaghetti

I'm listening to Tim Spector's book Spoon Fed at the moment. For anyone interested in food it's a good read (or listen). I'm learning things I didn't know about supplements, fish etc. and will only be buying frozen or canned fish in future. A lot of detail on UPF of course.
Ran 10 miles this morning, no breakfast,
lunch - something with eggs (sun is out so salad weather, yes!)
dinner - quiche and lettuce (again)
Hoping to get out on a bike ride later on as the wind has dropped at long last.

@samthebordercollie why only frozen and tinned fish?
Breakfast today was Greek yoghurt with flaxseed and raspberries. Lunch will be leftover kale, salmon and bulgur wheat salad with tomatoes.
Dinner is a baked fennel thing DH is making which has 50g spelt pasta in, planned before I read the book. Will eat it anyway but have said no pasta after this week’s meal plan runs out.

@Tiredandbored It is quite shocking isn't it? I've been thinking quite a bit recently about what my daughter eats and how much of it is processed. Even though we've always been quite good at cooking fresh foods at mealtimes, lots of snacks and treats are ultra-processed. I do try to limit treats but I often end up giving her bread or cereal when she is hungry. I'm trying to figure out what to replace those with. She likes cherry tomatoes and berries but the cost can start to add up.

We're similar in that our main meals are all home cooked but packed lunches and breakfasts for the DCs are much harder.

DS (9) is very happy to eat leftovers of any sort for breakfast and realised he was still hungry after cereal so now prefers meat. This is great apart from he sometimes eats whatever I had planned for my lunch.

DD (13) is much more difficult. She only likes cereal or waffles for breakfast but while she's working her way through the current stash I'm going to try and get her to eat home made granola or something like that.

They do both like green eggs and ham popovers which just have some flour in. I need to find some other breakfast options though.

Packed lunches are hard if I tried to avoid bread. Nothing runny or smelly, easy to eat quickly, and it has to survive almost 6 hours out of the fridge. Oh and not be heavy or bulky. Cheese sandwiches are so easy!

It's hard, isn't it! I refuse to buy them some of the worse cereals (e.g. Frosties, Coco Pops) and have enforced Weetabix if they are having cereal for a supper snack, but they prefer things like Rice Krispies and Cornflakes in the morning. I also try not to buy jam or Nutella except very occasionally, but they do have bagels and toast from white bread.

Interestingly though they have voluntarily started to use butter rather than margarine - they prefer the taste of it (despite the challenge of spreading it!)

I'm going to aim for 20/80 with my kids I think. So 20% not this woe, 80% this woe. I think if I try to enforce it fully it will kaybe set them up to crave and binge crap when they can. Dd leaves home for uni next year so diet will probably go downhill there anyway.

And although for me as a fatty cutting out wheat makes sense, the kids aren't overweight particularly. Ds has a bit of puppy fat which is disappearing but dd is a size 8 and no chub whatsoever. I know it's more than weight but think I need to focus on cutting out sugar and upf like chicken nuggets and sweets and chocolate biscuits rather than cheerios or ham sarnies.

If I can get them eating mostly homecooked and snacking on mostly healthy stuff I will be happy with that. They are both pretty active as well so do genuinely get starving hungry and chucking a slice of toast at ds at 8.30pm when we are back from kayaking shuts him up a lot quicker than a salad would.

That sounds like a good balance @HighlandCowbag.

I do recall reading something a few years ago that kids need a lot of calories because they are growing so much and sometimes empty calories (like white bread) are the best way to get these into them. I've no idea if this was from any sort of scientific position and can't even remember where I read it, but there's possibly some truth in that.

I also remember growing up on a diet which pretty much consisted of white bread, sausages, spam and fruit pastilles all washed down with cremola foam for a significant part of my formative years and I'm still mostly functioning as a coherent adult.

Yes they do have different dietary needs to an adult. Ds is ridiculously active. He does kayaking for about 4 hours a week from spring until October time, he rides 2 or 3 times a week, will come running with me if he can, swimming lessons, thinks nothing of a 5k walk, will go hours on the allotment and obviously at school all day as well. And he's only 7 so still growing at a rate of knots. He does go through the occasional chubby stage, usually over winter when we don't ride or kayak as much but then shoots up again.

I'd really to improve their breakfasts, maybe I'll leave the packed lunches for a while!

I've just switched to all full fat milk as I read something about skimmed milk affecting your blood sugar quite drastically.

Then I listened to a quite boring podcast about how milk from jersey cows is better for you and used it as an excuse to switch to Channel Islands gold top from the milkman, it's delicious! So much fat in it, it tastes amazing, even the kids have noticed. The full fat life is considerably tastier than the all sugar life.

DS (14) has been chubby, thin, chubby, thin, currently slim. Kids grow a lot vertically and that uses a lot of calories. He doesn't eat BF either (he gets the bus at 7.30am), but at school they have to have school dinners, starter, main course, dessert or cheese, and they eat at midday so it isn't too long. Listening to the Tim Spector book tests have proved that not eating breakfast has not derogatory effect at all on children, despite what the breakfast cereal manufacturers tell us.

@Gensola, regarding fish in the book, if you live near the sea and it's fresh that's great, otherwise frozen is better. And sea lice and farmed salmon...yuk. In fact fish isn't as good for you as you think. And fish oil supplements do nothing.