I’m looking at lifestyle changes and in particular changes to my diet. I am in the healthy weight range (just) but would like to be nearer to the bottom end than the top.
I’ve read loads of posts here, read loads of stuff online and watched a couple of documentaries on Netflix today, one about plant based diet(no animal products, basically vegan) and another about the Keto diet.
I’ve bamboozled myself , both have such convincing advocates. I do know that even small changes to my diet will be beneficial but it just set me wondering if anyone else gets a bit lost in it all. Also does anyone else feel like things are in a bit of a mess when you go to the supermarket? It’s not a very conducive environment to a whole food healthy diet is it?
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Kellyjelly
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Hi Kelly, I don't believe any of these 'diets' is appropriate if you have average health. Overall, my approach is a little bit of everything with a few increases and a few decreases.
The quality of food readily available, principally from supermarkets, is a huge scandal ready to break over the next 10 years which I believe will dwarf anything else to date. I think the food industry believes this also and to protect themselves against future lawsuits as far as possible they have embraced enthusiastically the full labelling of ingredients.
For those that agree, what do we do? My suggestion: You have first to change your mindset on food and move slowly away from processed food, be prepared to spend time & effort to going back to preparing fresh clean food yourself, progressively better sourcing local & reliable and accepting quality clean food without transport miles will cost around double the cheapest supermarket comparative. This new mindset has to come first, we did it principally by listening to regular speakers at Weston A Price conferences and in particular Dr Natasha Campbell-Mcbride.
Good luck, I am afraid no quick fixes, which as I think we all know deep down is rarely the answer.
Hi secondary, thanks so much for that, really interesting.
I agree with you on the supermarket situation, when you go and really look at what is on the shelves it is rather disturbing.
I’m lucky enough to come from a family of relatively healthy eaters and have always as much as possible cooked from scratched. I’m also lucky that I have gotten my veg from a farmer for years and so predominantly eat seasonal veg. Each veg is priced at 50p and has been for years and years. I’ve just been this morning and filled 3 carrier bags with veg for £7, all grown on their farm. I do live in Lincolnshire though,most of the UKs veg is grown in the county.
I complete agree with you that healthy eating is about going back to basics and eating whole unprocessed foods as much as you can. I think it gets really confusing if you try and adapt your diet to target specific health problems.
If only eh? I’m not sure it’s organic but it is definitely local and seasonal so better than I’ve been able to find in my local supermarket, I can get organic carrots in a plastic bag from Morrison’s that were grown in Spain. I think I will stick with the local farm.
A lot of the food in supermarkets is "less than ideal"... but, if we all stopped eating potatoes and cereals, our species could not support itself on this planet.
Hi Kelly. It really is a minefield as everyone seems to be promoting a different diet these days. I've lost weight by cutting out snacks as much as possible and reducing portion size. Dr Michael Mosley appeared at my local theatre last week and he did inspire me to go and buy his Fast 800 book. I don't think I could live on 800 calories a day for long but have decided to try it for 2 days a week. Some good recipes in there, too.
I’ve written numerous posts on this subject and help run a Health & Well-being community information service, it’s not at all confusing - but the films and the hype are out there to confuse because they are ALL promoting their own beliefs and are often sponsored by very large organisations.
Unless you are going to seek individual nutritional advice, advisable in MHO - stick to the sensible, very basic guidelines from BANT - British Association of Nutritional Therapy.
Eat all groups of foods in the right proportions - including red meat as it is the best way of absorbing iron & B12 - very, very difficult to get from plants.
Thanks for your interesting reply, I have enjoyed reading your posts regarding diet and healthy eating and you obviously are passionate and have lots of knowledge on this subject. Such a great help in a forum like this.
I do however think that if someone wants to go beyond a healthy diet and optimise their diet to target specific health problems the subject opens up and becomes very confusing indeed.
I am lucky to have come from a family where cooking from scratch has always been the way but if I hadn’t had that kind of education at home I think it could be very easy to think you are following a healthy diet when you are inadvertently eating food that is actually very unhealthy.
I think the majority of people are swayed, even if they don’t think they are, by the latest superfoods, government advice or study demonising a food group.
We have to remember when we decide to trust an organisation,whatever that may be, that information can be wrong. Look at the low fat diet rolled out as absolute fact since the 60s, that was infact completely biased and untrue. Generations of people blindly following advice from sources they trusted, all of us until very recently believing we were mAking healthy choices having low fat yoghurt and semi skimmed milk. I know nowadays we feel that could never happen and we are more informed but I don’t think that’s the case. Even BANT has to get their information and guidelines from somewhere, what if like the generation before us we realise that actually the information is wrong. It is all very subjective and the more you look into it the more conflicting and confusing it all gets.
I agree- which is exactly why I chose to take individual food prescribing based on lab testing - bloods& gut. I grew up in an era of processed food being held up as freeing women from the kitchen & it did - to the detriment of our longer term heath but food is only one part of the story.
Lifestyle Medicine works by looking at food, stress, sleep & stress management. It’s very important to be in Rest & Digest mode for instance before eating in order to be able to digest food adequately. Stress, sleep & exercise are just as important and will affect the foods you require or don’t.
There is SO much misleading information which is usually about selling a product so my take away has been to keep delving deeper and deeper by reading the original studies which are often outside of medical fraternity and ignoring the sensationalist headlines.
I do get irritated by some of the ridiculous headlines & suggestions so I’m not surprised people become confused and would always suggest we come back to basics - cook from scratch- eat a little of everything & avoid sugars as much as possible whilst not depriving yourself is very general advice, but the gold standard is individual advice from a trained Nutrtionalist.
That’s so interesting CDreamer, it is definitely an enormous area for study. I think you are 100% right that a back to basics approach is best, food in as natural a state as possible and avoid processed foods where possible ( not that easy) is the way forward.
And hope that the trained nutritionist isn’t being sold another model for health that will be revealed to be inadequate in 30 years from now. 😊
I think that is exacty what is happening with all this pushing of vegan diets -it is less health than ideology that is behind it either of an ecological / animal rights type or sadly religious -look into the influence of 7th Day Adventists on dietetics.
Small changes I made (which came unravelled last year due to not being at work) were:
Eating breakfast
Reducing portion size by a third
Not snacking in an evening
Drinking fluid when I felt hungry and if after half an hour I still felt hungry I'd eat
Exercising more (vicious circle when in PAF)
Reducing salt in cooking
Not having any alcohol not just for the AF but the empty calories (I had 5 drinks in the whole of 2018 though)
Going "caffeine free" with hot drinks
Lots of other tips are about too - some work for others and some don't. On evenings I did feel peckish I still felt a bowl of cereal was better than chocolate biscuits.
The human animal developed as a hunter gatherer and as such did not rely soley on meat, but grain, berries , roots etc with the occasional meat when they could catch and kill a small animal and fish when they could catch one of those.
Ok so today catching anything is just going to the supermarket right? Thats fine if you don't mind eating lots of chemicals pumped into the food by the producers to increase the mass say of a chicken goujon. It is the processed food which I think is the cause of many "modern " problems and one does need to go back to hunter gathering to find a way of collecting more pure foods. If one has a small holding vegetables are easy but otherwise maybe buy from a green grocer who does not wrap such as cucumber in plastic film (don't start me on that one). We have an excellent local butcher who sells proper meat when we want to buy any and their in house sausages and burgers are not full of chemicals or water.
I avoid faddy diets such as have been mentioned because diets always fail. Only permanent changes to life style work. Research (not funded by drug companies) has shown that a reduction in reliance on meat products and processed foods and consuming more plant based food has in many cases produced a reduction in AF burden and one can't really argue with that being a good idea. My wife has been vegetarian for about 28 years and is very fit and our youngest son conceived soon after she changed from meat was a huge baby . These days I do not crave meat so much and probably only eat it two or three times a week (after I have shot that monkey with my bow and arrow). I'm not very good at fishing but manage one fish a week with luck and the rest of the time I eat what Sam eats. Without trying I lost a stone last year to my amazement.
NB All diets are free for Jeanjeanies late breakfast next month.
I agree with the butchers and greengrocers. We did a week avoiding supermarkets back in January and the taste was infinitely better.... and not much price difference. Plus if they didn't have it we didn't miss it.
Thanks Bobd, I think you are right, we are hunter gatherers and need a varied diet but the problem is our needs are now being met by highly processed food. I’m not just talking about the obvious processed “junk” food I’m talking about bags of rocket being sold in the uk in January or meat farmed intensively, not just chicken but all meat. At every level the production and source of our food has changed so much,even in my lifetime never mind since my grandma was feeding her family.
Back to basics with meat occasionally makes the most sense to me. Locally sourced even better if you can get it and afford it. Grow your own if you possibly can.
On the point of locally sourced, I was in ilfracombe last year and a fishing boat came in with his catch of beautiful crabs, I asked him where he sells them and he said “oh these are all going to China”
Living in Devon I go down to our local beach where we can buy directly from the boats, nothing goe further than a few miles! Trouble is that cold water fish caught in our waters is very sought after, most of what you eat in Spain will be caught in UK waters but we Brits stopped buying fresh fish because we didn’t know how to prepare it.
Whilst in a fishmongers in Spain I asked for my fish to be gutted & cleaned & the whole shop laughed & I caused uproar. Why I asked - ‘only English would trust a shop to do it for them, no self respecting Spanish would ever do that.’
Michael Moseley has the theory that American studies show red meat to be bad for you, European studies show it to be good. If true it is presumably to do with the methods of rearing - hormone treatment, GM feed, feed lots etc,
I have irritable bowel syndrome, probably as a result of massive doses of anti-biotics for endocarditis, along with general drug side-effects. Having read lots of stuff on-line and in books, I am trying to develop ways of actually listening to my body with regards to different foods. Not easy because we are so conditioned by habit, availability, comfort eating, advice etc. I also keep a "Hypochondriac's Diary" of what I eat, symptoms etc etc. In a few years time I might be able to tell you if I can solve it !
Thank you for your really interesting reply. I love the idea of the hypochondriac diary 😊 I hope you can get a real handle on it all and I think it’s a great approach.
Thank you for your interesting reply. I can quite believe it, my dads side of the family are all very slim and all look far younger than their years although I have also known very unhealthy people that are very slim.
I suppose in basic terms I know what a healthy diet looks like but I’m not sure if I am optimising my dietary requirements in relation to my heart problems. First things first though, back to basics and lose a few pounds 😊
I’m also a member of another forum on this site called “Healthy Eating”. Whilst there’s a few zealots on there at times pushing their own ideals, I’ve found (and shared) some interesting, healthy recipes and articles.
I was telling my daughter the other day that I remember the opening of the first ever supermarket in the town we lived in when I was a child, I’m only 46. It was a Fine Fare and my brother and I couldn’t believe there could be such a shop! So while I agree 100% that we are lazier in our day to day lives I also think that our diets have changed so much since those days. Supermarkets introduced foods cheaply that were highly processed and that has had a huge impact on our health.
Thanks Barbara it’s so interesting isn’t it and seems so obvious. Regular exercise and what i would imagine was a basic natural food diet. Where I grew up In Scotland all the kids on our estate were skinny, we were raised on porridge for breakfast made with water not milk, tattie soup and steam puddings! We were literally kicked out the door to go and play first thing in the morning rain or shine and ran around all day until straggling back home for dinner. We never ever had snacks and only drank water or free milk at school. Im not saying the diet was ideal, we probably lacked some vitamins and the meat we ate was poor quality but we were never overweight and as a result didn’t suffer the health problems that brings. My niece has bee overindulged since she was a baby and as a result is very overweight, it breaks my heart.
Ha! Me too. But what amazed me was my parents, and especially my mother, totally embraced some processed food when it arrived in the shops - I think many years of preparing from scratch did it for them. Mind you, they lived to 90 and 97, and they both liked their salt!
Hello Kelly.... I Have 3 Different Doctors That Want Me On 3 Different Diets ! 2 Of Them Completely Clash & Well ?, None Of The 3 Are In Line At ALL... Instead I Decided To Start Looking At "The Foods" Themselves That Were "Key" Factors To The Good & Bad Effects On My Organs & Over All Health Instead Of Diets... I Used A BP Monitor. A Blood Sugar Monitor, & Oxygen Monitor That Helps Me Note & Connect To The Effects Of Foods... The One Thing I've Learned Is "ANYTHING" Deep Fried or/ Processed [ ready to eat ] & Pre Processed Meats [ deli ] Are BAD... It's Better To Cook or/ Smoke Your Own Meats & Get A Meat Slicer & Make Your Own. Bag'em & Freeze'em. Ect..Ect... & Veggies Are A MUST At Every Meal.... If You Have Something Fried ? No Big Deal Every Now & Then As Long As You Counter Act With A Salad & Make That "Green" Your Focal Point. Anytime You Eat Out ? Just Think "Counter Veggie". It Would Shock You At How Your Body Processes Your BP & Blood Sugar Just By Making Sure You Had That Side Salad w/ Your Burger & Fries [ But Eat The Entire Salad As Your Main Focal Point ].... Mostly Broiled, Grilled or/ Baked On Meats Are Best.... Example: I Go To Arby's & Get Their Roast Beef Sandwich. 2 to 3 Hours Later ? BP Is A Little Elevated & Blood Sugar Is Elevated. Then I Go To Subway & Get A Footlong Roast Beef Sandwich w/ Cheese & Load It Down With Most ALL The Veggies They Offer On Wheat Bread. 2 to 3 Hours Later ? BP Is Normal & Blood Sugar Is GREAT !... Why ? More Food But Better Readings & Effects ? It's The VEGGIES That Gave That Meal A "Counter" In Processing The Roast Beef [ with cheese added ]....
Wow, thanks triggerpoint what an interesting post.
Looks like you employed a real investigative approach to the whole thing. Good to see that your results have been so clear and it is certainly helpful to have that kind of evidence in connection to your body and what you put in it. I like the free thinking independent approach you have taken and it’s really given me something to think about. Thank you for that 😊
I Know It's A Different Approach But I've Seen The Results.... Oh ! Say If You Go Out To Eat... [ this is just mind framing structure ], Say You Wanna Go Out For A Steak w/ ALL The Trimmings, Maybe Even Fries w/ That Steak. Make SURE You Order The Salad & Make It Your "Counter Focal Point". BUT ! What's Even Better Is That Most Of These Places Give You A Water.... Let's Say Your Tea Comes With A Lemon Wedge. Save It & Ask For 3 More Wedges. Set Them Aside For That Water... [ if they don't have a water there ask for one ]... Now After Your Meal Is Finished ? Squeeze Those "Lemons" In That Water & Chug It Down... [ me ? i carry a few packs of stevia in my pocket to sweeten it. stevia is healthy. not the artificial's at the restaurant ]... Just Look ! You Have Enjoyed This Great Meal & At The Same Time You Doubled The Counters ! The Salads Help Process BP's & Blood Sugars Properly BUT You've Also Added A Powerful Bad Fat Grease Cutter ! That "Lemon" Water Just Countered All Those Bad Fats Breaking Them Down Thinner & Quicker For Exiting Your System & Keeping Your Intestinal Track & Liver Cleaner...."Lemons" Are GREAT For You !~*
Whoops, I’m so sorry baraba! That really did make me laugh though 😂
My sister in law regularly says that she won’t deny her daughter anything because she will have enough time in her life to worry about weight issues so she can have whatever she wants. She weirdly thinks that it shows love.
I have noticed postings from younger people and I’ve read online that it’s becoming more common in the under 30’s but I think lots of chronic conditions are. It’s very scary and sad.
Yes but what sort of a life is being hungry all the time? There is too much of this competing diet nonsense about - and a lot of it driven by ideology. The push for vegan diets is often driven by the 7th Day Adventist Church. Their links over decades with official Dietetic Associations is surprising when you do a bit of research. Most dietary "studies" are worthless as they rely on people actually remembering and telling the truth about what they eat. The main point is that you can't be healthy eating rubbish and that probably a large proportion of what us marketed as food is rubbish.
Oh, I was starting to see this on Netflix the other day, but haven’t seen all of it yet, that’s really a coincidence you also watched it 🤗. I’m watching “Forks over knives” now, very interesting too!
HI... I've messed with my diet over the years experimenting a little, but after watching What The Health on Netflix I went vegan, and my afib has vastly improved. I love to eat, (right?) and now I eat as much as I want, usually four times a day, never gain weight, and the variety of food is incredible. Although I was an omni for much of my life, I now am repulsed by the thought of eating a Dead Animal. It seems so weird and sick.
That’s really interesting Kaioatey, I’ve just watched cowspiracy and I feel like that. I watched what the health a couple of days ago and told my husband I was going to try a plant based diet for a month now I don’t know how I can go back. Have you watched it?
Quite simple to get the nourishment your body needs. Eat real food. Moderate your carb intake. Cut out the processed rubbish. You won't go too far wrong.
To make things more complicated than they already are, I'd like to add that in the book "The Circadian Code" by Satchin Panda, PhD are included studies which had shown that your meal timing might be as important as the quality of food. In the nutshell - we need to limit our eating to 10-12 hour window during day time (or even to 8 hr for a period of time if someone wants to lose weight). It's very interesting book based on clinical research.
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