Why you shouldn't worry about what people think

If you tell someone your on a diet then they normally nod approvingly. Tell someone you try to eat clean or Paleo and they look at you as if your talking another language.

I don't really like the word 'diet' - to me it implies a short-term effort, normally evolving eating lots of 'healthy' low-fat foods, staying away from fat of any kind and endless hours of boring cardio. 

If you go into a supermarket and pick-up a low-fat ready meal, have a look on the back and make a note of how much extra sugar, salt and flavourings there are compared to a normal ready meal. Even better, compare the ingredients in both to the same meal cooked at home. The ready meal may be lower calorie but the extra sugar and salt won't satisfy you  - if anything, the salt will make you thirstier and the whole thing will leave you still hungry and wanting more. Look at low-fat chocolate bars - how many times have you eaten one then thought "their low-fat, so I'll have another one"? I know I have. Surely it's better to have just one normal snack and enjoy the taste, rather then eating multiple-numbers of fake tasting food?

The low-fat ready meal industry is worth millions as people get sucked into all the claims about how their making their meals to help you lose weight - this is nonsense, their making their meals to make them money. If they really cared about your health, they would be telling you to eat veg, good quality meat & fish, fruit and drink plenty of water. But obviously, this won't make them money.

But their marketing is so powerful that when you tell someone your on a diet and that you have switched to low-fat foods, they give you a pat on the back for trying. Because it's obviously better to have low-fat food then full-fat, right? In fact, it isn't. Quite often, the only difference in calories between the two meals is about 50kcal. You may think that's good, but if you compare a can of Pepsi Max  with no kcal to an apple which has 50kcal, which is going to be better for you? Unless Pepsi have now added fibre and Vitamin C to Pepsi Max then it's a no-brainer. Also the apple has a low-GI index, meaning it will keep you fuller for longer.

If a food has more then 6 ingredients in it, then it's probably not going to do you any good if you eat it all the time. A day's food based on low-fat ready meals and snacks? No thank you. A normal diet will leave you feeling fuller, stronger and healthier. The vitamins in veg and fruit were there from the beginning, not added later in a factory.  Now I know I do have a protein bar here and there (and I do have a soft spot for Mars bar's and dark chocolate), and protein shakes after I've been to the gym but as I said before, to me most things can be allowed in moderation. Plus, if I am going to eat something processed, I would rather have a protein bar which will at least have some minor benefits (protein, BCAA's). If I do have something as a treat, I try to stick to dark chocolate with at least 70% coco solids.

Clean food will also taste better and will over time clean your palate - I certainly found this to be true and I found I enjoyed my food even more then before. And I haven't even mentioned how much good all those unprocessed vitamins and minerals will do to your body.

I get strange looks and comments sometimes when I'm sitting at lunch eating 95% meat gluten-free sausages with hard-boiled eggs and some veg, but it's doing me a lot more good then your shop-made sandwich with who-knows what added 'extras' it has, on pale looking flimsy bread. Plus, I won't be having a mid-afternoon carb-crash from the bread, which used to happen to me  a lot and something that I know many people suffer from. Just because something doesn't fit the normal concept of what is accepted as breakfast, lunch or dinner, doesn't mean you shouldn't have it. I'll rather have bacon, eggs and veg for breakfast then a bowl of cereal.

Fat also has a bad press but the truth of the matter is that your body needs good fat for fuel and energy. It's a common mistake that fat makes you fat but it doesn't - it's all the sugar hidden in today's popular food. Many years ago your body was designed to burn fat for energy but over the years agriculture has made us more reliant on carbs for energy, so now you find that we use this for energy rather then fat, and that fat ends up being stored as excess weight. The idea is to convert your body back into using fat for energy - the simplest way of doing this is to try and get all your carbs from wholesome sources, like veg and limited fruit. 

So, when you tell someone about your way of eating and they laugh or mock you - ask yourself who is the more healthier looking and the fitter. The chances are they will resent the fact that you've taken the time to do something about your health and fitness, while they just sit there feeling sorry for themselves. If you've taken the time and effort to improve your lifestyle, what's stopping them, aside from laziness?

Talk soon,

Dan

Cup Cakes, bread and listening to your body.

Been a few weeks since I last blogged. This has been through general laziness on my part (which I feel bad about) but also as I've been pretty poor lately regarding my diet and training.

Diet first - it's not been good... Those who have read my blog will know that I was trying the Paleo way of eating (see previous blogs for details) and after the first few weeks of my body getting rid of all the crap I had been feeding it, I was starting to feel good.
But then I started to become lazy with my eating - mostly through not eating enough. That led to a lack of energy and a steady decline in my overall mood.

So I started to reintroduce bread into my diet as part of my breakfast, stupidly thinking the extra carbs would help, but this turned out to be a bad mistake. I had a few slices of toast with organic butter & scrambled eggs and shortly after it felt like I had swallowed a brick - I had bad stomach cramps and horrendous bloating. Then rather then stop I carried on having this for breakfast. Over the course of a week or so my stomach slowly became used to the bread but I still wasn't feeling great. My body had done a great job in clearing itself of toxins yet here I was piling it back in. In case your thinking "it's only bread" look on the back of a packet of bread next time your shopping and tell me how many of those ingredients you would willingly eat.

Then between Christmas (when my diet hadn't been too bad aside from the bread) and New Year, my mum made a batch of Vegan Cup Cakes. These were loaded with sugar, but you have no idea how good these taste, far better then any shop-brought cake. One or two should've been enough, but over the course of 3 days I had... 16. Writing that figure down, I feel pretty embarrassed. If someone told me that, I would've read them the riot act, that really is a shocking amount. Even my mum thought so as she had eaten a fair few herself (sorry mum!) and has vowed not to make any for a while - but they did taste fantastic...

I also started to eat lots of left over chocolate, shop-brought sausage rolls, all kinds of stuff, feeling guilty while eating it all but not stopping.

Eventually I started to clean up my diet, sticking to whole, unprocessed foods but even then I was still sneaking in a Mars bar here and there.

Then the past weekend I got through a whole loaf of wholemeal bread in 2 days, and I felt dreadful. Again, my stomach felt like it had a brick in it, I started getting headaches again, feeling and looking bloated and I felt so tired. So, I made the decision to not go near bread for a very long while - it obviously wasn't doing me any favours and it wasn't even tasting nice anymore.

This is one of the things to remember though when taking a food or food group out of your diet - what may effect you might be perfectly fine for somebody else. I seem ok with milk and cheese (admittedly I only buy the organic kind) but friends of mine have had bad reactions from these. Look at my bread binge - had a bad effect on me but a good friend of mine gets through almost half a loaf a day. It really is down to how you feel.
Listen to your body and how it feels, don't think you have to eat something just because 'the experts' tell you. The ad men and the bread companies tell you how healthy their bread is. But what they don't tell you is they bleach the grains first and take out all the natural goodness within the grains, then add back the very vitamins they took out, turning the bread from something wholesome to something man made and heavily processed. Doesn't sound so great now, does it?

One other thing that I feel is best is rather then say your never eating something again (say chocolate or a Cup Cake...), allow yourself to enjoy it sometimes. By barring yourself from enjoying something, you'll only want it more. Two ways that I've adopted this: one is to sometimes allow myself a Mars bar after a heavy weights session along with my normal protein shake. This isn't as crazy as it sounds, as the carbs and sugar in the Mars will be used by your body to restore muscle glycogen that was depleted while you worked out. Without carbs , your body could break down muscle tissue for this same purpose, which is something you don't want to happen. Carbs also create an insulin spike which helps to move nutrients into your muscle tissue quicker.

Now I now protein shakes aren't clean but they are an excellent source of quick and easily digestible protein. But do read the labels as some are stacked full of sugar. I use True Whey Chocolate Mint from www.myprotein.com as it has a lot less sugar then most more expensive brands and tastes great. I normally have two scoops mixed with water after a workout giving me 40 grams of protein, BCAA (Branched-Chain Amino Acids - these help to support your recovery by helping to promote lean muscle growth along with a host of other benefits), some plus some fruit for carbs and simple sugars. But I will sometimes indulge in chocolate afterward - lots of people will scream "noooooo!" but it works for me. If it doesn't for then no worries, try something else and see how you feel.