What Should I Eat?
So I’ve been exercising a lot, but not eating really well, and I’d like to start figuring that out. I’m not eating a lot of sugar or junk or anything, but I’ve been doing a lot of grazing and feeling unable to make good choices and basically eating a lot of nothing (because I’m afraid of eating the “wrong” thing). I feel absolutely incapable of listening to my body.
This comes to mind because I was reading about the Kate Harding Diet Plan earlier this week, and she talks about this issue:
Teppy points out that the marketing schtick for so many diet programs boils down to, “You can eat what you want! You won’t feel deprived!” Of course that’s a complete load of crap — either you can “eat whatever you want” except for certain foods (Atkins, South Beach), or you can “eat whatever you want” in gerbil-sized, pre-packaged portions (Jenny Craig), or you can “eat whatever you want” and then spend an extra hour at the gym and not eat anything else for the rest of the day in order to stay on your plan (Weight Watchers). But regardless, “We will give you permission — in some limited way — to eat ‘bad’ foods!” is a tremendously effective marketing strategy.
And that’s because so many of us really believe somebody needs to give us permission; simply choosing to eat fatty, sugary food because you feel like it is absolutely not an option. And then somebody also needs to put a limit on that permission, so we won’t go and devour the world. In this culture, most of us never learn to trust our bodies when it comes to eating, and we certainly never learn to trust our desires. Choosing what to eat is a daily battle between good and evil.
I thought more about Kate’s diet plan while walking around the grocery store yesterday. (The idea being, first you have to just allow yourself to eat the world, and then come out the other side realizing you don’t want or need to do that.) But then I realized I wanted to eat cookies, Entenmanns donuts, chocolate pudding, and cheese for dinner, and maybe three weeks before my wedding is not a great time to start this diet plan. (Maybe I will begin at my wedding, with the red velvet white chocolate mousse wedding cake–will the guests mind if I eat all of it myself?) But in the meantime, if I’m not eating the world, and I want to be healthy, what do I eat?
The only nutritionist that springs to mind is kind of crazy. So tell me, healthy and well-adjusted people with normal relationships with food. Do you count calories? Do you mark things off on a food pyramid? Do you just eat what your closest co-workers eat? How do you decide what to eat? If you answer quickly, you might help me decide what to have for lunch.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Feel Good Friday, Question
Why isn’t Melanie banned yet? Has she actually contributed anything positive to discussions here? Do you keep her around for a cheap laugh?
Sarah – I haven’t seen you posting any brilliant dietary advice here…
The comments here have me even more excited that a Trader Joe’s is opening up only 3 blocks from my apartment…although I’m not excited about the increased traffic it will bring.
Is there anyway you can find a fat friendly nutritionist?
If you truly don’t know what/how to eat anymore, that may be your best option.
In the meantime, I would buy some donuts and a good variety of other foods.
Pdxwoman is abso-freaking-lutly right about staying away from high fructose corn syrup. I would add partially hydrogenated oils (aka trans fats) to the list, too.
The best thing you can do to eat healthy is to eat, whole minamally processed foods. These foods are more nutriant dense and your body will use them to build better functioning cells.
If you choose to continue to eat processed foods, take a second to think about what the item ‘should’ be made of. It the ingredient list doesn’t make sense (ie high fructose corn syrup in tomato soup) or if you have to use rudimentary Latin to gauge the ingredient’s purpose, put it back.
I like this site for a healthy shopping list http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php
This is really interesting to read. I definitely don’t qualify as someone who has a healthy relationship with food, so I wasn’t planning on posting, I was just going to read everyone else’s thoughts for ideas, but now that I’ve done that, I find I’ve got something to say anyway!
I actually did embrace the ‘eat the world until you don’t’ approach a few months before my wedding (and a few months *was* enough time to experience the weight gain that most folks get), and I really do think that it’s helped get me to a better place WRT not fearing certain foods. I haven’t found a good way to get past my laziness in not wanting to take the time to prepare most things, but I’m very, very glad that I’m no longer of eating the world.
I’m now wondering if there are any healthy at any size – type organizations that keep a list of fat-friendly nutritionists on hand – I would enjoy getting a professional’s opinion on how to build healthy eating in to my life, since they’d know good tricks for it. However, I do NOT want to talk to anyone who will define their definition of healthy eating on the size of my ass. (Size of my blood sugar, though – fine.)
On df213’s advice- I totally agree! I certainly don’t always follow it, but it’s a good thing to strive towards.
I read an article by Michael Pollan (author of the Omnivore’s dilemma), where he talks about some simple rules for making good food choices. And I think for him, “good” meant “ethical” and “low environmental impact” as well as “healthy.”
He articulated the point about processed foods in an interesting way. He said something like “Only eat what your great-grandparents would have recognized as food.”
That guideline rules out blue raspberry pop-tarts and entemann’s chocolate-covered donuts (have you seen the amount of wax in those things, not to mention the corn syrup?), but it allows pastries and donuts made with ‘real’ ingredients.
Of course, I think one his other rules is “eat mostly vegetables, especially greens.”
I’m not even going to read the rest of the comments. How’s that for discipline?
For me, eating what I wanted when I was overweight would not have been a good idea, because I had really terrible habits and thus the things that I liked in the amounts that I liked were the things that directly contributed to my weight.
It was work to teach myself how to eat in a different way. It took awhile to get my taste buds and preferences to come over to the leaner and for me, healthier way of life.
So even though now I can say absolutely, yes – I like what I eat and yes, most of the time I eat what I like – that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a learning curve or an uncomfortable period to it, and it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t take vigilance now and a lot of pep talking to not make the easy choice that fires up all the “woo” receptors in my brain.
I eat 5-6 times a day. I use http://www.fitday.com to track it. Most of the meals/snacks that I eat are with a protein, because I find it helps my blood sugar keep level and me not turn crazy.
There are three pieces of advice that have drastically influenced how I eat, and whenever I get bogged down in the details, I return to them:
1) “Eat like an athlete.” This is from Skwigg, and it really pissed me off when I first read it. But athletes eat to fuel their bodies for what they want to do next and what they just did, not just because chocolate sounds lovely or bread is always tasty, never mind that nasty little carb coma that follows.
2) “If you eat 7-9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, everything else is pretty much going to take care of itself.” This was from some random article by a nutritionist off the internet. But she’s right – focusing on getting the veg in means everything else becomes ancillary.
3) “Eat breakfast.” All across the internet, for a plethora of reasons, the experts are saying to eat the breakfast. The reason why I especially like this one (on top of all the nice reasons the experts say,) is that another random piece of internet advice that stuck with me is this: the choice you made last is the one that most informs the next one you make. By eating a breakfast made out of quality ingredients with balanced macronutrients and lots of whole foods, I’m putting my best eating food forward everyday. It is very hard to follow up a great breakfast that ought to have bluebirds singing about it with something that isn’t of the same mien. It’s like you start wanting to hit the healthy eating trifecta.
Here are some sites I like quite a bit. Best wishes to you:
Eating Well magazine and recipes
http://www.eatingwell.com
World’s Healthiest Foods database
http://www.whfoods.com
Old Ways Think Tank and food pyramids
http://www.oldwayspt.org/
What Skwigg Eats
http://skwigg.com/id3.html
“healthy and well-adjusted people with normal relationships with food” – these people exist? I thought they were mythical.
So far, the only thing I can see that differentiates the “thinner” people in my family from the rest of us is the fact that they don’t snack, they exercise regularly and they do as much incidental exercise as deliberate exercise. My dad lost 35kg over the last year – he now eats the same main meals I do (I live with my parents, temporarily for the last 3 years but moving on from that), does the same housework that I do… but also brings his work home and is busy all weekend, walks the dog 6km, 3x/week, goes swimming for an hour 3x week. I, on the other hand, eat crap during the day, sit outside at night reading with my cigarettes in one hand and my “snack bag” close to my other hand; I don’t walk cause I’m too heavy; I swim occasionally but am too embarrassed to do it regularly; I don’t have enough to keep me busy, so I start looking for food. When I’m flat out, I’ll just eat what’s in front of me and then keep going… it’s amazing what boredom can do to shoot down progress in a diet.
Um… where was I, again? Oh, yes: the only way I’ve managed to curtail certain foods (“bad” foods) is by telling myself I’m allergic to them. They make me ill, therefore I cannot eat them. So I can’t have ANY of it, not even one piece. This is easier with food I don’t actually like, obviously, but I am absolutely NO good at moderation. I am all-or-nothing – either I’m eating it until I’m ill, or I’m not touching the stuff. Either I’m smoking or I’m not. Either I’m cleaning my room for 18 hours straight or it’s slowly subsiding into pigstydom because I can’t commit to gradual upkeep.
And that’s probably my biggest downfall – the gradual upkeep part. Who can’t sit down and slog their way through a task until it’s finished? 24 hours? 36 hours? no problem. one hour a day for the next 45 years? omg, kill me now.
I don’t know if any of that made sense, it’s a little early in the morning and my anti-migraine drugs have kicked in.
I second this one:
{Don’t eat anything I don’t truly enjoy, even if it’s “good for me.” And lastly, on those occasions when I don’t eat healthy, make sure I eat GOOD.}
I have noticed that donuts smell a lot better than they taste so they just aren’t worth the blood sugar spike they would cause me, for example. There are other things I am willing to take the hit for, on occasion.
I make sure to start the day with plenty of protein, that way I’m not hungry again too soon. I also try to have some protein every time I eat. I have to work at getting enough, but it really helps keep my appetite and blood sugar under control.
If I’m hungry I eat something.
Nuts are a good snack. You can put measured amounts in little ziploc bags or the smallest gladware containers and keep the bag in the freezer. That will keep you from mindlessly eating too many at one time and making yourself sick. They can be pretty filling but it might take a little while to feel it and by that time you’ve eaten too much.
I stopped eating the habit foods. The ones that aren’t really what I want but I ate them because they were there. The stale cookie at the bottom of the bag, the last few cold french fries on the kid’s plate, the last few bites on my plate even though I’ve had enough. Why was I eating that stuff, anyway? So it wouldn’t go to waste?
These days I limit sugar and grains, they aren’t good for me. I don’t feel well when I have more than a little. There are plenty of vitamins, minerals, fiber, etc. in fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, nuts, eggs, and cheese. I don’t care what the USDA says, I feel healthier now that I’ve given up most of those ‘healthy’ whole grains I was eating back when I had between meal blood sugar crashes, afternoon sleepiness, and reflux plus other unfortunate digestive difficulties.
At the end of the day if my blood sugar is stable and I’m not having cravings or indigestion, if I enjoyed what I have eaten and don’t feel deprived, if I’m not having energy slumps after meals then I’m eating right for me.
A disclaimer: I’m sort of average-ish build and I don’t always eat as healthily as I would like, but…
Like many people, I try to keep an eye on the things I’ll be tempted to snack on, and not keep them in the house. In fact, I try not to have “instant” food that requires little preparation.
The only thing this doesn’t work with is bread: we need some of that, but I try to eat it as little as possible, and never more than two slices a day. (I don’t go a bundle on the “food intolerance” theories of weight gain, but my body does seem to dislike digesting bread). If I start eating toast I will overeat, so I try not to eat it at all.
I try to base meals around protein. I’m vegetarian (lacto-ovo), so this does mean I end up eating c*tt*g* ch**s* for lunch a lot (censored out of respect for mo pie’s views on the stuff). I eat plain yoghurt for breakfast, and find that really helps get me through the morning compared to cereal. (Sometimes I eat a little muesli and a little yoghurt. Variety is good.)
The other thing I do is try only to eat treat foods that are “worth it”*. I’ll eat cake or muffins that I’ve made myself, because I know exactly what’s gone into them, and also because this is a self-limiting treat: I can’t bake very often, because I don’t have time, and I can’t produce a cake instantly, so impulse-eating isn’t so easy.
*Wedding cake at your own wedding is obviously in this category!
Today I discovered something (thanks to my friend Shawn and the Nutrition Action Healthletter) that I plan to eat from now until the end of time. Fage 0% Greek yogurt with honey or strawberries. Today I had it with strawberries. Holy god. It is my tip to you. Trader Joe’s!
Since you asked just generally how we eat, here it is… I do the Weight Watchers Flex Plan but I go way over my points for the week. Usually 30-70 more points in a week than what I am supposed to eat, so probably 1800-2500 calories a day. I lose just fine for now, and when I stop losing eating this way, I will be fine with that (I weigh about 200 lbs. right now and I suspect that’s pretty much my natural weight). I have no interest in existing on 1300-1500 calories a day just to try and maintain at “goal.” I run 4 miles/walk 1 4x a week, and lift weights 3x a week (OK, 2x is more realistic).
I try to get in 6 servings of fruits and vegetables a day (I mean 6 total), along with 16-18 8-oz portions of water and 2 servings of milk. Almost all the grainy stuff I eat is whole-grain but I eat probably too many snack bars and that kind of stuff. That, trying to get in the portions of “healthy oils” that WW recommends, and trying to incorporate more minimally-processed, lower-carb snacks like nuts and string cheese are the current things I’m trying to focus on. I do track the points of everything I eat.
I don’t get real obsessed about any of this stuff. The main part of it that I like is eating more fruits, veggies, and whole grains; my husband and I enjoy cooking and eating healthy vegetarian dinners anyway, so it’s enjoyable and fulfilling. And I like the exercise and not feeling thirsty from not getting enough water.
So, we’ll see 5 years down the road if this is still working for me, but I’m pretty happy with it right now. I’m not stuffed and sort of “sugar-dazed” all the time, but I don’t feel ravenous and deprived and diet-y either. Despite tracking I don’t really feel obsessed, or like I think about food all the time, or like I’m just hanging on to “control” by the skin of my teeth. In fact I seem to find that tracking calms my mind because even if I have gone over my points by a huge amount, at least I know what the amount is and I can move on. If I go a few days without tracking, I gradually start to feel uncomfortable and want to graze out of nervousness and feeling like I “blew it” until I sort of go back and total everything up (something I have noticed in the past when I was dieting but not keeping a food log… I had a ton of trouble just letting overeating go and moving on from it). Once I “catalogue” it I don’t seem to have much trouble closing the door on whatever I ate that was excessive, and stopping the nervous eating. So knowing where I stand seems to be important to me. The other thing that has helped immensely is not reducing my points just because WW said I should. I was still losing slowly on 30 points a day (plus some overage, like I said) so I just stayed there.
Anyway, that’s how I eat right now. At other times in my life I’ve tried an “intuitive eating” or “demand feeding” approach and haven’t had much luck, but it seems others have. Then at yet other times (OK, most of my life and as recently as a year ago) I have been either stressed or preoccupied, plus totally in the throes of compulsive eating and tend to eat tons of fast food and snack on cookies and stuff constantly, finish my meals at restaurants even though I am way too full, and so forth. I don’t like how I feel when I am doing that, and I hope I don’t go back to it, but frankly circumstances change and I find that when I am eating compulsively, I can’t imagine being able to stop, but when I’m eating in a more controlled way I can’t remember what the compulsion felt like. So frankly I could fall back into it tomorrow, probably.
I love that you think Cynthia is a little crazy. I think so too. :)
Today I discovered something (thanks to my friend Shawn and the Nutrition Action Healthletter) that I plan to eat from now until the end of time. Fage 0% Greek yogurt with honey or strawberries. Today I had it with strawberries. Holy god. It is my tip to you. Trader Joe’s!
Yum! I’ll tell you what’s even better – Greek-style yoghurt with strawberries drizzled with agave nectar. It’s a low-GI sweetener a bit like honey but far, far, far yummier! Try it and you’ll be hooked, I promise!
Mo Pie,
You can also get the trader joe’s brand 0% greek yogurt which is just as good but cheaper. I LOVE both types, they’re tasty and they make awesome protein filled snacks.
Gee, is Melanie a spokeswoman for the South Beach diet or what?
Mo has clearly stated her desire to NOT diet, just make healthier decisions. While I’m sure the South Beach plan has its merits, it’s still what it is: a diet. So, the endless pushing off of a diet plan on a person who has clearly said she does not want to diet seems a bit defeatist to me.
And Melanie, what is even more disturbing and offensive is your assumption that a “bunch of fat chicks” could not possibly have any healthy eating tips to share.
Eh. I’m pretty sure Melanie will fall off that South Beach wagon eventually, and she probably won’t be racing over here to tell us about it. But for now South Beach is the ONE TRUE DIET and why can’t everyone see that and be as perfect as Melanie? It’s so SIMPLE! Until you go off the diet (blaming yourself and not the diet, of course), and the cycle starts up again.
Rachel and Spacecowgirl – the South Beach Diet can be used to lose weight but it is also designed as a healthy way to eat for life. I understand that Mo doesn’t want to “go on a diet” as she herself stated, which is why I recommended the South Beach Diet. It was developed by a cardiac surgeon to improve the bloodwork of his patients prior to surgery, the weight loss was a side effect.
If a diet (and I use the word in the sense that Mo uses it) is healthy, makes you feel good, and you enjoy the food, why would you “go off” it?
As for me falling off the wagon, you seem to have forgotten the trainwreck in July, in which I stated that I have lost around 100 pounds and kept it off for over five years now. So don’t hold your breath…
You don’t seem to get that nobody intends to “go off” a diet… they just do. People who have recently lost weight seem to have this need to believe that every dieter other than them thinks it is just a “quick fix” and figures they can go back to fries and pizza 24/7 after losing the weight. Here is a news flash: NOBODY thinks that. Everyone is just as smart about how “it has to be a lifestyle change, not a temporary diet” as you are. And they still usually go off the “plan” and gain the weight back eventually. Why? Who knows. There are complex physiological and psychological factors that seem to go into your body wanting to remain at a particular weight. I don’t pretend to understand these factors.
I myself love the Weight Watchers flex plan right now. Combined with their “good health guidelines” that encourage me to eat lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein, I have put together a diet where I get to eat pretty much anything I want in moderation, and I feel great. As you said I don’t see any reason to “go off” it because I’m not deprived of anything I really want and I can easily see myself eating this way many years into the future. No “no white bread ever again” or anything like that. It’s really just sensible, moderate eating moreso than “a diet” the way it is traditionally thought of. But the great statistical likelihood is still that I will gain the weight back. Do I intend to? No. I am determined to keep doing what I’m doing now because I love how good it makes me feel and I love that I’m not eating myself sick anymore and the prospect of going back to that makes me very sad. But nobody else who loses weight intends to ever “go back” either, and most of them do anyway.
It’s very rare to have the kind of success you have had, so congratulations, and I mean that sincerely.
It’s very rare to have the kind of success you have had, so congratulations, and I mean that sincerely.
Thanks. :-)
Hi Mo, it’s my first time commenting here, I’ve been reading the blog for a few weeks and I have to say kudos to you and the rest of the contributors. Anyways, to my point…
I think I have a pretty good relationship with food, and it’s probably 100% attributed to my family’s eating habits when I was growing up. We never really talked about food being “good” or “bad”, so I don’t have that association with food. I found that has manifested itself now in that I don’t really think about food as “good” or “bad”, but rather as “will make me feel like crap” and “will make me feel good”. I know that eating a bowl of Red River in the morning with sliced kiwi and crushed walnuts will keep me satisfied and alert until mid-morning. Likewise, I know that if I have a cinnamon bun for breakfast I’m going to be hungry again in an hour and super grumpy.
Also, we always had a big bowl of fresh fruit on the kitchen table, with at least 4 different kinds of fruit in it. That way, if you’re hungry, the food is already out on the counter and ready for you to eat. Now that I live on my own, the kitchen feels incomplete if there isn’t a big bowl of different coloured fruit on the table, not because I’m a health nut, but because I’ve just always had a bowl of fruit on the table.
My mum also taught us as kids that every meal should have as many colours in it as possible (natural occuring colours, that is) – white, green, red, brown, orange, etc, etc. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this usually ensures that you get all of the nutrients that you need without having to overly plan your meals or stress out.
Now, as an adult, if I’m about to eat a meal that only has one or two colours, it just feels wrong and I throw something in there to balance it out. I never really thought about the nutritional impact of this, but anything I’ve ever read about healthy eating seems to back this up.
I’m sure that I could be “healthier” if I took the time to count my calories and research all of the food that I eat to make sure I’m “eating right”. However, I’ve known friends who have started down this road and then become completely obsessed with what they eat and ended up having a really unhealthy relationship with food.
I think relaxing a little about what you eat and focusing on how food makes you feel is a whole other kind of health, one that deserves as much consideration as how many grams of whatever you had today.
My bad for being so long-winded, thanks for reading!
Wow… I want to be like Jnet. Your relationship with food and your way of eating both sound very healthy!
Regarding research and calorie-counting promoting an unhealthy relationship with food, I remember once I was listening to a conversation between two women, one Turkish and one Icelandic, who worked in the same lab as my husband during grad school. They both agreed that it was weird to have Nutrition Facts on everything and it “made them eat less.” I always sort of thought that was code for “messed up their relationship with food.” After all, these women were both very slim anyway… it’s not like they “needed” to be consulting Nutrition Facts and counting calories. Healthy people going down a road of getting too obsessed with nutritional data and calorie-counting doesn’t seem to lead anywhere good. Focusing on natural, whole foods like you describe and looking at the big picture and how you feel, would seem to be the way to go.
To clarify… I think they meant they were not used to having Nutrition Facts in their home countries and they found it jarring to see calorie counts on everything here in the U.S.
I see what you’re saying about the nutrition facts. I still like having them there to see the ingredients, to see what “food” is actually in my food.
Thanks for the compliment, I’ll pass it on to my mom!
Ingredients, definitely. It is way too easy to get away with shenanigans when food manufacturers don’t have to list what is actually in the food. I myself am addicted to Nutrition Facts… In the real world, I would freak out if the food were just some kind of black box. And in some ways I feel like, the more information the better. But in the weird utopia I would like to live in, the foods would list just the ingredients and I wouldn’t care how many calories they had, only whether they contained stuff that was good for me and what size portion left me satisfied and not hungry or stuffed. Oh well.
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This (literally) saved my life.
http://www.intuitiveeating.org/
I learned about it while I was IP for an eating disorder. The book was a tremendous aid in helping me learn to have a normal relationship with food.
Check it out.