Are you on a diet?
I’ve tried being on a “diet” myself on and off in my younger years, for various commonplace reasons like getting married or going on vacation. It never really lasted, and neither did the results. It hasn’t been until the last couple of years that I felt really settled with a “lifestyle” rather than trying to find some “diet” that usually involved boring, bland food and a grumbling, dissatisfied stomach. Through all my research and self-education on health and fitness, I’ve come to realize how important it is to have a truly positive relationship with food. Food helps everything – I truly believe that. So why do people look at diets with such dread, and why do we have such unhealthy relationships with food?
My friend recently described her coworker’s latest diet. He was trying to lose a few pounds for the summer, and therefore was embarking on extreme caloric deficit. For lunch, he had simply eaten a bowl of plain lettuce and croutons with no dressing, and a cup of yogurt.
Ouch. I could hear his body rebelling from here, and he was in a completely different country.
I applaud the man’s self-control, but in my opinion it was extremely misplaced. Sure, he’d lose some body weight from this “supermodel diet” (his term, not mine), but it would include a lot of muscle mass and certainly no long-term benefits. In fact, if he did it long enough, he was liable to damage his metabolism altogether, making it more difficult to lose weight later. This didn’t even cover the fact that lettuce and croutons hardly gave you the vitamins and other nutrients your body needed to function optimally anyway.
This reasoning doesn’t seem to sway people either way. We’re too short-sighted, too focused on the end and not the means, obsessed with health as a vanity rather than a necessity for our quality of life. While I can be as vain as the next person, I’ve also come to understand that nutrition is more important than a six pack. (Yes, fine, I still want a six pack. Doesn’t everyone?)
Let’s change our relationship with food. We shouldn’t be looking at what we eat like just a mass of calories, or even just in macros. I myself am guilty of this, often looking at the amount of carbs in something rather than how chockful of vitamins it might be. I get it. It’s hard to get out of this mentality. We want to be skinny, not necessarily healthy. Here’s some of my thoughts on how to view food in a more positive way for your health and longevity:
BAD FOOD VS. GOOD FOOD: We love to categorize things, don’t we? This food is bad, so I feel guilty eating it. This food is good, but eating it sucks. Quick thought experiment – take this list of food and sort it into good and bad: Bacon. Spinach. Heavy cream. Cheese. Apples.
If I had to guess, many of you categorized bacon, heavy cream, and cheese as bad and spinach and apples as good. Why? Because of high fat content? Tell me why fat is necessarily bad. I eat all of those things on a regular basis, but I rarely eat apples. This is because I’ve seen my body do well on high fat and lower carbohydrates, and yet anyone on a traditional “diet” would see eating bacon as nearly sacrilegious. Don’t sweat over this food labeling. Think about the source of the food and your overall intake, rather than its societal connotations. Make good food choices, yes, but I would venture to say that if you eat whole foods from good sources, there won’t be too many “bad” choices out there for you anyway.
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NUTRIENT DENSITY VS. CALORIC INTAKE: I’ve used trackers like MyFitnessPal and others in the past to calculate my calories every day. This is not a bad practice so you can see your average caloric intake, which you can then adjust accordingly. But I wouldn’t recommend it long term, because all those numbers can make you miss the point. You may be trying to put yourself in a caloric deficit to lose weight. Great. But as a man proved once, you can eat nothing but Twinkies and still lose weight as long as you’re burning more calories. That doesn’t make him healthy, of course.
Try looking, instead, at the nutrients you need. We need 13 essential vitamins for our bodies to function properly. Vitamin deficiencies, as you know, cause all kinds of issues, from minor to major. Maybe you could take a multivitamin, like half of all Americans do nowadays, despite dubious evidence that it actually works. I think most experts would agree, however, that the best place to get your vitamin intake is from food. Here’s a radical idea: how about, instead of calories, we look at getting as many nutrients as possible from the stuff we eat?
Best Foods for Every Vitamin and Mineral
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NEW STUFF VS. SAME OLD SAME OLD: Variety is something I’ve tried to embrace in my diet. It’s so easy to eat just the things I love and know how to make, and forego trying weird or difficult things to prepare. But even if the things I eat are healthy and nutrient-dense, it pays to venture outside my comfort zone to incorporate new foods that have other benefits and nutrient profiles. This makes my eating more mindful all around, and it’s always fun to learn how to make something new. In the last few months, I’ve tried making beef kidney, watermelon radishes, leeks, and stinging nettles, all excellent foods with a myriad of benefits.
Why You Should Eat a Variety of Foods
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Now, I'm not saying you just eat for health all day and stop enjoying pizza. Studies have shown that we have a deep psychological connection to enjoyment of food, which is why most of us can't fathom just taking a pill for all our nutrients. I am a foodie at heart. One of my favorite things is trying a new restaurant with friends. I enjoy myself and my time with loved ones, and then I focus on nourishing my body at home. I don't feel guilty about indulging, I just make sure I'm mindful when I'm doing so. And then I get right back to it. This isn't going to be a perfect system. It's meant to allow you to have more freedom, and the way you eat for health may look quite different from mine. It's about the mentality, and I think we can all work on making that better.
Article to consider:
Nutritional Psychology: Is your Mind Ruining your Food?