Why We Eat (Too Much) Thread 3

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

We’ve chatted as much as we (used to) eat! New shiny thread for more support.

General principles:

No sugar
No wheat
No processed foods
Honourable mention to tipping the balance of omega 3 and 6, but that’s mostly achieved by doing the above.

Everything else is fair game!

Some delicious sounding meals going on!

I had a good day yesterday. Had leftover roasted Mediterranean veg in the fridge, fried it back off, added some bassar spices (it's indian I think, my cousin gave me aome in a little tub to try) then added 2 eggs and broke them up in it. It was like an Indian foo young type thing and lush. Then airfryer chips, salmon fillet and salad for dinner. Also weighed myself this morning and lost another 1.5lbs so 1 stone 3lbs ish down and it takes me down into the next stone category which is always nice.

Today I have a salmon fillet left so that's lunch sorted with some salad. We have left over chinese food in the freezer from the weekend dh wants for tea so will do that but will probably just pick out a few bits of meat and veg, not a chinese food fan anyway. I might even just do myself a tuna salad or something.

It's Cranborne - Farnham- Shaftesbury @Bestbees

Well done on the next stone bracket, Highland! 1 stone 3 is a brilliant loss. Your Indian spicy foo yung dish sounds delicious.

Words, I reckon that a walking holiday will easily work off any extra carbs/oils that sneak in. In fact, you probably need more carbs when you're doing so much walking.

I weighed myself this morning after the Big Summer Food Fest and I'm down 3lbs since I last weighed in early July. So I can't have been as bad as I thought, and that takes me to a total loss of 11lbs. Closing in on that first stone! I have been circling at 8/9lbs lost for a month, and this is the first time the scales have dipped properly, so I'm very pleased with that!

Fantastic news on the weight losses chaps!

@words siracha sauce off the shelf has a few spooky ingredients in it, which is why we’re using up the last of ours this week and are going to attempt homemade. It is itself a fermented food, so should be good for the gut.

Ooh thanks for the tip @TheLeadbetterLife. I might try making my own too then...

And great news scales-wise ladies!

@TammyTwoSwanson

I know what you mean about the faff! My go to for quick grabs is cheese, apple, olives, or a yoghurt. Having said which I'm still not really back in the zone after our trip so we'll see!

Oh I love faffing with food . But I have the time and live alone so can please myself.

I made kimchi today for the first time. Much to my surprise all ingredients including the Korean spice mix were readily available locally.

It's now festering away:

Hi everyone. I am finding quite hard to avoid wheat. Massively craving sugar too, and i dont usually have a sweet tooth! Maybe i was more addicted then i thought.
Eating without bread leaves me feeling hungry, does anyone else feel that? Also i always thought it was better to reduce meat consumption, but without carbs, only vegs, thats not very filling...

@Adiia I am eating industrial quantities of cheese and avocado which fills me up. Also egg. But I do eat meat every day too (DH is a meatitarian).

Need to try eggs again, a bit worried they might give me stomach problems

Adiia I found in the beginning I needed quality protein as well as salad or veg, but my appetite has now shrunk. I genuinely have to consciously make myself have lunch, I never have breakfast and my evening meals are smaller as well. I rarely snack and have a pudding once a week as a treat on a sunday. But it took a good month to not constantly be thinking of food.

@Adiia

Hi everyone. I am finding quite hard to avoid wheat. Massively craving sugar too, and i dont usually have a sweet tooth! Maybe i was more addicted then i thought. Eating without bread leaves me feeling hungry, does anyone else feel that? Also i always thought it was better to reduce meat consumption, but without carbs, only vegs, thats not very filling...

Eat pulses, chick peas, lentils etc. I eat a mixed salad of broccoli, cherry tomatoes, chick peas and feta and it's very filling. So is Dhal curry. Add chia seeds and ground flax seeds to salads, veg and yogurt. I find Greek yoghurt with ground flax seeds incredibly filling. I know you aren't supposed to eat nuts, walnuts, almonds, cashews etc. but I do as they fill you up too (and are very good for you despite the omega 6 issue).

Does anyone else sometimes feel like they can’t do right for doing wrong when it comes to nutrition?

I’ve just been listening to a podcast with professor Tim Spector and I just feel like throwing my hands up in despair.

He’s all about the micro biome, but I am now worried that I’m eating too much fish, meat and dairy (though I don’t know if I eat all that much in relative terms), and thinking again about whether or not the times I do eat carbs are making me prediabetic.

I could start monitoring my blood sugar, but I’m scared.

I think nutrition is very shades of grey. And that opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one but you don't need to see everyones to form your own.

I go mainly with a wholefoods approach. If it looks like it did when it was alive when I buy it, it's probably OK. So a leg of pork, probably ok. Bacon, be cautious. Bacon frazzles, avoid. Dairy such as milk, butter, natural yog, cheese OK cos not much fucking about. A frubes yoghurt or cheese string, not so much. Homemade veg soup I've chopped and sauted, absolutely fine. Timned veg soup, nope.

And if you eat wholefoods mainly you will help your biome. If you want to go further then do it, but this WOE is and has to be healthier. I won't ever see a figure like my 20s, but in my 40s I am healthier and that's important.

Was it the podcast he did on the Spark? Tim Spector is someone wi respect enormously, however he prefers to eat meat once a month and fish isn't a great option because most of it is farmed, if it isn't farmed it's fine. He advocates eating nuts (yay) which is another reason I like him. And not eating breakfast. He doesn't dictate to others what to do, his focus is on tailoring your diet to suit your individual body as we are all different, even identical twins (which is where he has done a lot of work as a geneticist)

It was on Rangan Chatterjee's podcast.

I do agree with everything he said, I suppose that's just the problem. Some of things were contrary to Jenkinson's ideas.

We can all form our own ideas about what we think of as a good diet, doesn't mean we're right.

Also, Spector's thoughts on everyone finding what works for them is all well and good, but it basically involves extensive monitoring of blood sugar, triglycerides etc, which is intimidating, expensive and a right old faff. You can't really work it out on your own, beyond obvious things like whether you're overweight.

The Zoe plan which came out as a result of Tim Spector's twin research uses monitoring of blood sugars etc for a short period of time to develop a personalised plan, but the general underlying message is to eat whole food quality foods, mainly a big variety of plants, and the least processed, higher fibre, the better. The more personalised part tells you whether a particular food spikes your blood sugars/ whether you are sensitive to fats etc. The app that comes with it is useful in that you can input everything you eat, and it will give you an idea of how healthy it is for you personally ( a bit like MFP but better)

If I'm particularly hungry, I'll have potatoes, but otherwise, my appetite has massively reduced and I really don't need to eat much most days.
I mainly focus on no wheat - I think I'm celiac now anyway - no refined oils and only eat sweet stuff after dinner, if at all - and it will be something like a couple of squares of good quality dark choc.

I started listening to the same podcast today as well @TheLeadbetterLife! Didn't get very far through it as I needed to sort the kids, but will listen more tomorrow.

I've also started reading 'In defence of food', so will see what it says as well.

I think there is a huge range of opinions about diet and nutrition - probably a lot of them have a fair degree of merit and will have worked for many people because they will be so much better than a high UPF junk food diet. We will all respond differently to them as well and it is important to find what works for you.

I've had a good day regarding meals today:

B - porridge with apple and cinnamon
L - salad of lettuce, rocket, mangetout, yellow pepper, mozzarella and a boiled egg
D - salmon with honey, ginger and garlic served with broccoli, courgette, green beans, corn on the cob and baby new potatoes.

Only snack was fresh berries with Greek yoghurt and 2 squares of dark chocolate.

Yes, but the point is we can’t really know what actually works well for us personally without spending a lot of money on testing and analysis.

Yet these same doctors then blithely say stuff like, “just eat what your grandmother recognised as food”, which reveals their class privilege as much as anything else. My grandmother lived in a council house in Wigan and had a terrible diet.

I would love to eat pressed tongue on milk roll sandwiches, crisp butties and sherbet lemons, but I don’t think any of these doctors would approve.

They can’t have it both ways - either it’s simple, or we all need to fork out for apps and glucose monitors and be shitting blue muffins.

I guess there's a trade-off between the optimal and the realistic? After using the Mosley book I briefly considered having my poo analysed, and then thought better of it, and made some kimchi instead

*reading

I think it's worth remembering that the writers of these books are making money. There is an irony in reading a book that talks about the Diet industry making money from us and the writer of the book is also making money. Fat is big money.

I think there are nuggets of wisdom in Why we Eat Too Much and other books/podcasts but trying to identify what works for you and fits in with your life/budget is the challenge.

For example I think it is fairly obvious and makes sense that we should eat: - more fruit and veg

• less sugar
• less or no UPF
• less salt
• less bread
• more home cooked food from scratch
• etc...

But that ain't as easy to do if you are time poor or addicted or stressed etc...

I agree that eating what our grandmother's ate is overly simplistic and I actually don't really know what my grandmother ate. I do know she died at 98 and smoked a lot all her life. She didn't drink though. I am pretty confident smoking is very bad for you and yet had little or no effect on her. Her family were all long lived which tells me something about genes.