Why We Eat (Too Much) Thread 4

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

Hi to all regulars and lurkers!

Here's the 4th thread, based on the ideas in Dr Andrew Jenkinson's book. We've seen some amazing losses on these threads, and the benefits for me can be summed up as 'no counting, no starving'.
We don't count calories, and if we're hungry we eat. We're focused on quality.

General eating principles:

No sugar
No wheat (which reduces unhealthy carbs)
No ultra processed foods, and in particular no processed/ultra refined oils
Honourable mention to tipping the balance of omega 3 and 6, but that’s mostly achieved by doing the above.

His principles also include trying to sleep more and reduce stress, and take regular (moderate) exercise.

If any of this sounds promising, please feel free to ask questions and come and join in!

I agree @jewel1968, that this diet is so much easier if you enjoy cooking and have time for it. It's a much bigger change of lifestyle if not, and is probably quite overwhelming.

After reading more on the subject though, this is about much more than weight loss for me, it's about health. Ultraprocessed foods are literally poison, as much as cigarettes and alcohol are.

These days, I think of ultraprocessed, sweet, deep fried or chargrilled foods in these terms - I can eat this, but it's the same as having a cigarette or a drink, and I have to strike a balance between present day pleasure and future health. I also need to keep healthy so that when I do eat bad things or drink alcohol my body can manage the effects efficiently.

I recently watched a Phil Wang stand up special on Netflix, which had a brilliant bit about exercise and weight loss. He said his body is at the intersection between ideal and effort. Of course he wants a better body, but his current state was how much he wanted it.

This sums up how I feel (and maybe this will change as I get older and things start to fall off or whatever). I know I could go much, much further with the healthy eating and exercise, and it would be very good for me, but I don't want to sacrifice the things I enjoy for the sake of a few more years of life. Especially if that involves decades of never eating chips.

@TheLeadbetterLife I'm not sure I actually want to know this but... what's wrong with deep fried and char grilled foods?

The things we cook for ourselves are often char grilled (gas grill in the yard) and occasionally deep fried in olive oil.

Oh it was in Metabolical. Apparently there’s some chemical reaction between starch and hot oil that basically turns it into poison, plus anything burnt is a carcinogen.

Everything that is delicious is terrible basically, but I’m not living off cruciferous vegetables and that’s that.

People asking for a specific cookbook -

I've found this, co-authored by Robert Lustig who also wrote Metabolical and various other books about the dangers of processed foods and sugar.

Haven't looked at it yet myself but thought might be of interest:

robertlustig.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Fat-Chance-Cookbook_Eat-REAL-Download.pdf

@TheLeadbetterLife - thanks, I'll not worry too much about wholegrain/meal then. I found spelt flour at Tesco (my standard delivery), so will give it a try.

@Winecheesesleep - I also asked about the pasta thing! I think I'm going to just move towards "limit", both on that and really all the things he mentions.

I feel like anything that asks me to cut something completely out of my diet - or something that is a natural food, not something we've invented in factories - just isn't going to work. I can shift my diet away from things, but not cut them out entirely. I still don't understand what he has against corn, though. Has it also been bred weird like wheat?

I don't feel like I can give up calorie counting just yet - it makes me feel a bit safer to know I'm not completely gorging. And that is what I had been doing - when I decided to lose weight a week or so ago, I put my regular breakfast into MFP, and found I was eating over 1200 calories just at breakfast! And then feeling hungry all morning and the rest of the day, leading to constant snacking/big meals. Cutting calories has actually made me LESS hungry - I'm thinking the why might have something to do with the things in this book. I often found if I ate "too much", I'd feel just like he said happens when your body thinks it's starving. But if I stay within a lower calorie count, I'm not hungry and feel pretty okay. I often had the sense that my body was refusing to use any of its stores but instead insisting I put food in my mouth to use directly. It actually matches with what he said about how insulin works - it opens the gates TO the fat cells, and that means fat can't be burned when that's happening. I'm wondering if eating too much somehow gave me an insulin spike.

Can I ask another question? I've seen people mention 'plateaus' which they interpret as set-points. I'm wondering if it might be possible to have multiple set-points, just at different levels? Having recently gained weight very quickly over lockdown, I noticed that my weight gain stalled for significant amounts of time at the exact same weights I struggled to get below while dieting. They're all about 2 stone apart. I'd stay that weight for months, then if something happened such that I gained maybe 4 pounds above it, I'd suddenly start gaining regularly (without much changing my eating) until the next one. Has anyone else experienced something like this?

As after reading this book, it made me wonder if my goal weight is a bit too high. It's actually about 10 lbs above a weight I used to stay effortlessly at, which is 2 stone away from the first of these plateaus I've encountered in both directions. Maybe I should be aiming for that lowest weight, as maybe it is another plateau/set-point? I had just thought "oh, I can't try to get as skinny as I used to be", just because, well, it seemed like it would be unrealistic (and I also thought I was a bit too skinny at that weight, yet could never gain... until I did... and then shot up 2 stone nearly immediately). But perhaps it might actually be easier to maintain if that's somewhere my body wants to be?

Yes @Words that link is fantastic, and does summarise everything very neatly.

It should be in the opening post of all these threads.

@murmuration

Yes eating too much does spike insulin, I think there's a mention of that in Dr J's book, so portion sizes are important, as well as cutting sugar and carbs etc.

My husband and I have found our appetites have naturally reduced since changing our diet, and (believe me) we ate huge portions before.

I have no idea whether the plateaus I've experienced are new weight set points or not. I suppose none of us can know. I do know that I seem to be struggling to get below 75kg, and have been for several months now. 75kg is a healthy weight for me, but only just (BMI 24), and I would ideally like to get down to 72 or 73. I'm trying to build more muscle and eat more vegetables in lieu of cheese, to see if that gets the last few kgs off.

That said, like you, I never, ever imagined I could get down even to 75kg. It's been 20 years since I was last this weight, when I was in my late teens / early 20s. Since then my weight has been up and down, but I rarely got below 90kg, and only then through starving-hungry calorie restriction.

[quote Styletryle]@Words brilliant link, working my way through now. It's like everything condensed down. Never read anything by Lustig before but have intended to.[/quote]
I highly recommend Metabolical. It's very up to date so more relevant than his previous book Fat Chance (2012). He writes as an endocrinologist so a lot of emphasis on the insulin spike issue

@murmuration

I think a set point is just the weight your body currently wants to be.

Every so often it changes what it wants.

So yes a plateau is when you are on a set point for a while and you're hoping that your weight will start moving down again at some stage!

It's not a technical term though, just how we talk on here.

Could I check if this seems OK or if I have gone too far?!

B: porridge with some double cream
L: 2 sausages, 2 eggs and some Plum tomatoes
D: turkey saltimboca (turkey steak with parma ham and sage) plus probably some cabbage fried in butter

I've only just started so not worrying too much yet about omega 3:6 ratio etc yet, just concentrating on 3 freshly cooked meals a day and avoiding wheat and sugar.

@Winecheesesleep sounds good to me!

If you stick to olive oil and butter you will mostly sort out the omega 3:6 thing without doing too much else

Thanks @Aria999, I felt like DH was a bit confused by my lunch after announcing I was going to start eating more healthily

@Winecheesesleep lol I know it confuses people.

My MIL was very dismissive when I suggested that eating cheese doesn't actually make you fat.

However I have lost 10lbs since I last saw her so maybe she will be more impressed next time...

You could see if DH would read the book?

He's really supportive, I guess I feel a bit conscious of announcing yet another diet. I'm the classic yo-yo dieter from the book who has tried it all.

That's probably not great though as I don't want to go into this assuming it won't work. I'll explain it to him!

Hi there. Plenty of copies of the Fat Chance cookbook available secondhand online- have a google.

Portion sizes. Oh Lord. Mine are still far too big, and the reminder that they spike insulin is important.

I had a far too large large and tasty non meat dinner of lentil and red pepper stew served with shredded fried sprouts and broad beans, roasted kale and roasted carrot with thyme. Oh and some steamed chard.

My veggie dinners are as excessive as my coffee consumption. No wonder I am 'stuck' weight loss wise.

I don't do abstemious!

I didn’t actually bother reading the recipes in the pdf, I just found the intro a really good summary and explanation of the principles. I’ve written up my own version of them, adding in my intermittent fasting.

I also thought the Cindy’s daily diet bit was extremely useful, breaking down the quantities of each food group she eats. So simple. I’m adopting that method, again with a few tweaks, and adapted to a more European food supply.

It's interesting about the portion sizes. I have genuinely just been eating whatever I feel like and stopping when full. It seems to be working.

Maybe I am just lucky I feel like eating sensible portions? But they don't seem very small to me!

For those of you finding it hard to detach from calorie counting, the Dr's Kitchen podcast this week is with Dr Giles Yeo who explained why calories don't count, it's the food content which is most important.

Thanks @samthebordercollie, I'm going to give that a listen today. CICO is rather ingrained in me.

Oh, that sounds interesting sam! Unfortunately I'm currently in a work-until-9pm-or-I-collapse mode, so I won't have time to listen to something for a bit.

I think I have to readjust my approach about counting calories - I do think being aware of just how much I was eating was a big eye opener. I'm not sure it can only came down to what you eat - if I eat a couple 1000+ calorie "snacks" of cheese a day, I don't think it matters that it's good food, it's just still too much! Also, I've found clear difference in my appetite (drastically lowered) if I pay attention and eat less. BUT I found I'm now 'heading' for my calorie goal and having MORE even if I'm not hungry.

Like today I finished my planned lunch but still had only had 900 calories, so ate a bit more even though I wasn't hungry. I'm confused though - surely that's not enough in the long term? Or, if I did eat only 900 today, would I be hungrier tomorrow? Oh, I do IF, and actually am not hungry at all after lunch time, so it's not a bother at all - if I do eat in the afternoon/evening I get ravenous and feel weak and dizzy, but it's an un-satisfiable hunger, if I eat I only get hungrier and feel weaker. Clearly my body doesn't want food in the latter half of the day, which I for a long time ignored because of cultural expectations.

I made my pumpernickel bread - at first I thought it was a disaster, it looked like a burnt lump in the bottom of the breadmaker. But it was in fact just very dense, and only a little burnt. DD doesn't like it all, but DH I think likes it more than I do. I have some ideas of how to make it bigger and fluffier, and I think I need to check the cycles on my breadmaker to figure out what to run it on - there might be some that allow it to rise more and don't burn it as much.

@murmuration

Your hunger is linked to the type of food. I think because of the insulin profile.

Good fat and protein will fill you up. Carbs will make you hungrier.

Also if you go too low carb and into ketosis it is a big appetite suppressor. I found this out by accident recently! Interestingly I only started losing weight again when I increased my carbs slightly. I guess ketosis doesn't agree with me.

There is a lot of evidence presented in the book about how your body can and does (if the feedback mechanism is working) increase metabolism to burn off unwanted calories. Some of the studies had very high amounts of calories in them.