Best diet? Start with mindful eating
People just eat. I just eat. And we sort of, kind of, think about it, but not much.
And what I mean by that, is our relationship and understanding of food has been ingrained in us at a young age. We tend to go by “principles” of what’s acceptable and what isn’t, based on what our immediate family or those in charge of us, ate.
I was raised vegan until about 13 years old. And I was always really thin - it wasn’t until Covid-19 lockdowns did I gain 80lbs (36.3kg), mostly from alcohol and carbs. I was raised always knowing the dangers of white sugar, ultra-processed foods and aspartame. And personally, I hadn’t been to a corporate fast food chain in 15 years, not even for fries.
As an adult, I had some “principles” I tended to abide by - no diet sodas, ever. No eating a candy bar except occasionally. No eating crisps (chips in the USA) on a sandwich, and if you had to have a bag with a sandwich at work (preference the “natural looking” ones).
But because bad foods aren’t the kind of thing that stops you dead in your tracks - you actually feel pretty satisfied immediately after most - your “principles” can be easily compromised. For instance, if the labelling says ‘natural’ or ‘no artificial ingredients’, or they profess a host of wonderful vitamins, etc., etc., etc., you stop thinking much about it. You're hungry, it’s there, so you eat it.
If your body has always been fairly efficient, you’ll find that even foods billed as neurotoxins (white sugar for example) may not present symptoms until years after eating it.
It’s not until something happens - ill health, weight gain or a physical goal that we fail to obtain - that we really start thinking about food. And the first thing we do is diet.
I don’t believe in any diets anywhere, which isn’t a new concept or anything. It’s trending more than any other diet fad at the moment - the “don’t diet” fad.
This has picked up traction for all the reasons we know - that diets aren’t sustainable, most aren’t nutritionally sound, and the vast majority pretty much fail. (The Journal of Health Psychology found that the most common scenario is that after people lose 10% of their body weight, in one year most will be gained back.) But those are not the only reasons I don’t believe in diets anymore …
I don’t believe in diets because we never, as human beings, until fairly recently, ever did it. The word was created in the 19th century, and the fiction around an “ideal body type” didn’t come about until the mid-1800s. If there was an issue with carrying more weight than the norm, it was dealt with as a metabolic issue - a health concern. The goal, in early medicine, was to be healthy, to have no impediments to living life to whatever was considered the “fullest” at the time.
At some point the “diet” came along, probably to counteract the unhealthy lifestyles an industrial society brings with it. From exploitation of others until their bodies literally collapsed - to heavy ingestion of intoxicants to get through the day - the body went from being a divine creation, to a liability for optimum production of non-life giving goods. And unhealthy habits made their way in. When people leave their gardens and animals to move into cities so they can spend their days pushing things down conveyor belts instead, there’s not much room for a “healthy” diet anymore.
The worst complex configurations in history was when industry, science and mass food production got together in a hellish menage a trois to create ultra-processed food. Hydrogenated palm oils, cheese that can live in a can, cream that you can store in the trunk of your car, fizzy drinks that can strip motor oil - dotted their way into diets.
These foods, that our bodies had never dealt with before were everywhere overnight. They had become the main staples in most of our grocery stores.
One of the healthiest things for the body is tomato puree. Cooked tomatoes are rich in B vitamins and release lycopene, a powerful antioxidant that improves heart health, lowers the risk of breast and prostate cancers, and protects against sun damage. But jarred tomato sauce, which should be rich in lycopene and vitamins, actually has copious amounts of sugar, sodium and processed seed oils and in some cases even PFAS, dubbed ‘forever chemicals’, linked to a multitude of health issues.
Similar to dog or cat treats, most foods we ingest are the ghosts of fresh foods we should be eating, containing processed, toxic and artificial elements that are well masked in sweet or savoury concoctions.
So exactly how would we stay healthy, or slim, eating things that seem to be good for us, or at the very least, harmless, but in fact are tearing down every metabolic process in our bodies? We’ve come to believe our weight and health is a matter of quantity over quality - which is simply not the case.
We have developed eating patterns that are adverse to our health, unknowingly. And therefore instead of “dieting” we need to find the best way to eat.
The best eating pattern for you is dependent upon your individual profile, based on your hormonal type (this is important for men and women), stress level, exercise ability and genetic background. This will be individual to you, and will need to be assessed on a 1-2-1 basis.
So before you book a metabolic coach or blindly follow the latest lifestyle fads around eating… do the following:
Keep a food and energy level diary - I can’t stress this enough, especially when you are changing your diet to healthier options, understanding what’s working, what isn’t, and what you thought would work but isn’t, is essential.
Remove toxins from your diet - Removing white sugar, ultra-processed foods and seed oils from your eating pattern will make a world of difference.
Start to move - 30 minutes of walking every day, with at least 15 minutes of vigorous movement, helps your lymphatic system detoxify. As you remove toxins and start keeping track of your health, you’ll begin to understand the link between movement and metabolism that isn’t just about slimming down.
Eat mindfully - And we’ve come full circle - don’t just shove things into your mouth because it’s there. Are you sitting? Did you prepare it? Do you understand what the ingredients mean? Do you feel happy, sad, full, bloated or “strange” after eating?
