“Dieting”? Consider this
If you’re reading our blog, the chances are good that you lead a fairly active lifestyle, perhaps have some personal fitness goals, and are conscious of what you eat to some degree. Most of us know what we should be doing where diet is concerned. The reality is, much of what we know about diet and the informations and suggestions we choose to follow where what we put in our mouth is concerned, comes to us from already digested sources (pun intended!). In the 80’s, low-fat diets were all the rage, and soon, anything in the grocery store that boasted a “low fat” label was much more readily consumed, which meant most of those foods needed to undergo extra processing in order to be even remotely palatable after the fat was removed. The foods that people may have considered “diet friendly” then, we no longer consider as such—we eventually realized that in stripping the fat from a product, more sugar needed to be added in order maintain a recognizable flavor, which of course defeated the purpose of removing the calories from fat.
Enter the Atkins Diet, which invited you to enjoy foods that were low in carbohydrates—like eggs, bacon, and steak—but limiting foods like starchy vegetables and bread. We know that the Atkins diet can be effective, because Jennifer Aniston had success with it, most of North America was following suit, and it seemed to be backed by some science. Soon, “low carb” replaced “low-fat,” but our diets still hadn’t improved much. Even though we weren’t eating as many refined carbohydrates in the form of bread and pasta, we were missing out on fiber and nutrients by limiting our vegetable and fruit intake.
Today, people seem to be more conscious than ever about where our food comes from and the process it undergoes before arriving in our grocery store and, eventually, our kitchens. Today, we opt for wild-caught fish instead of farm raised. We eat grass-fed dairy and beef, and free-range chicken. We know that avocados contain a healthy fat that isn’t meant to be stripped away into a low-fat alternative. We are concerned about the amount of pesticides used to grow our vegetables and do our best to stay away from foods that have unrecognizable ingredient lists. Today, we’re more concerned with what the lingering effects of ingesting certain foods can be. While this consciousness is great on some level, our tendency to place complete blame for discomfort, weight gain, and other maladies on one food or food group still remains. In health news recently, both gluten and dairy have been blamed for everything from pain-causing inflammation (whether due to intolerance or sensitivity) to acne, and “sugar” has become interchangeable with “opiate”. So what do we do to prohibit these undesired effects? Entirely eliminate these food groups from our diets in the name of health. The recent trend towards “paleo” eating suggests we eat as our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate, thereby eliminating foods that modern-day agriculture has popularized—sugar (whether the cane or corn-syrup variety), bread, and milk, and their respective variants. But in the name of health and weight loss, is cutting out everything that contains sugar, gluten, or lactose really the answer?
Oftentimes, simply eliminating the food groups we believe are the culprits of all our health woes seems to be easier than eating them in moderation (not including, of course, those with food intolerances or allergies). But, in today’s diets as in the low-fat, low-carb diets of years past, we may also be depriving ourselves of key nutrients and fiber, and usually making our lives more difficult in the process. One aspect of “dieting” for weight loss through elimination that tends to be forgotten is that elimination of any one food or food group usually results in weight loss- particularly if the food that has been removed from your diet was previously one of its major building blocks. By ridding your diet of a particular kind of food, you are probably eating fewer calories, which is ultimately a key aspect of weight loss. But here’s the rub: if you’re replacing those calories with another food source, you may, over time, see weight loss halt or not happen at all.
Fortunately, there’s something to be learned from this frustrating pattern. Though most popular diets over the years have more or less missed the mark on what exactly causes weight gain and what we can do to reverse it, most popular diets (though maybe with the exception of the Twinkie Diet—look that one up!) seem to agree on at least three things, according to elite strength training coach Dan John (t-nation.com). Most diets recommend:
- Eating a variety of colored vegetables. Most all diets agree that vegetables are essential to a healthy diet, although in the past some of them may have disagreed on which ones were better for weight loss. Some vegetables may have had more time in the health limelight than others (Kale, anyone?), but everyone seems to agree that the more you’re eating, the better off you are.
- Avoiding cheap sources of carbohydrates. The Paleo diet, although somewhat controversial in whether or not it is an ideal or reasonable diet for most people to follow, has had success in one thing (though perhaps inadvertently): drawing awareness to the damage overly processed, sugary carbohydrates can do to one’s diet, in addition to popularizing better sources of carbohydrates such as quinoa and sweet potatoes. You might miss the Pepperidge Farm cookies, but your body will function better with the bulk of your carbohydrate intake coming from sources richer in fiber and able to keep you satisfied longer. Speaking of processed foods…
- Avoiding any fats made in a lab. Before, we demonized fats altogether as “bad for you” and “likely to make you gain weight.” Then, saturated fats were the problem. Now, we’re a bacon loving society that’s blending coconut oil and butter into our morning coffee. So, maybe we’re not so afraid of fats anymore, and have even gone so far as to accept them as part of our diet, a nutrient that helps us absorb vitamins and maintain healthy organs. But if you think you can ingest just any kind of fat, think again. We all know that trans fat, concealed in a lot of packaged food and solid at room temperature, is bad for us. Its made in a lab. But even fat sources we think less about and ingest more willingly, such as corn oil, undergoes a process in a lab to be created before its packaged and shipped to a grocery store near you. With so many other, less processed options, eliminating or limiting these fat sources seems to be a realistic goal for many health seekers.
If you click here, you’ll realize, historically, fad diets come and go, but overall, our goal appears to remain the same: lose weight and get healthy. To know exactly what to eat and when, maybe a fancy, scientific explanation isn’t necessary—perhaps its better to go back to basics for the best route to heath and wellness. Maybe eating more of the food nature intended and less of the food nature had no part in will get us there faster rather than an edible witch hunt that requires us to eliminate perfectly healthy foods from our diets. In any case, doing this seems to be simple—but perhaps not at all easy.
-Maria Capuano
