In the last month or so, I’ve talked a bit about emotional eating (which is as much physiology as emotion) and added my two cents to the recent discussions of food reward and obesity.
And while I’m blogging about it, I’m also trying to figure out what will work for me. Over the last few months, one of the things I’ve been experimenting with is how to fit modern, industrial foods into a long-term eating plan. Or to put it another way, how to cheat.
Two kinds of people…
You know the old joke right? There are two kinds of people in the world: those those who divide the world into two types and those who do not.
Well, when it comes to food, there are clearly two (or more) camps. Those who are strict with regard to diet, and those who think all things in moderation (or health at every size, or intuitive eating, and so on).
I’m torn. On the one hand, there’s something to be said for giving up neolithic foods and going all paleo, all the time (or depending on your diet preference, giving up carbs, or meat, or whatever). On the other, there’s the question of long-term compliance — and whether or not staying “clean” would involve white-knuckling it.
Clearly there’s no need for these foods. And I think the evidence is compelling that some of these — wheat, vegetable oils, sugar — are potentially harmful. So the less of these the better.
Alas, not all of us have the conviction of a Kurt Harris, avoiding the “candy cigarettes” lest we be “nurturing the seed of the dominant industrial agriculture-based dietary paradigm, an unconscious conscript in the sugar-is-innocent-and-fat-is-evil reserve army.”
Oops. My bad!
Actually, I totally get it. However, we need to come to this where we are. And I really like Yoni Freedhoff’s perspective:
The only goal that’s fair to set is to live the healthiest life that you can enjoy. Why? Because there’s simply no point in you trying to live a life you can’t sustain.
So while I accept the whole wheat/gluten/lectin/autoimmune connection, that doesn’t mean I won’t ever eat pasta again.
Of course, the trick here is to be able to sustain over the long haul. How do we eat these foods in a way that doesn’t lead right back to the path of unhealthy consumption and weight gain? I think that the trick is to, as commenter Harry said, practice “intelligent control of a very specific sub-set of foods.”
So I was struck by scene from the film The Art of Getting By … it was curiously relevant!
The four rules to cutting school?
- Cutting school is fun
- Cut rarely to preserve the specialness
- Do something culturally rewarding with your time to earn it more
- Noodles
So how about four rules for modern, industrial food?
- Eating [sweets, grains, chocolate ... fill in your faves] is fun
- Eat these rarely to preserve the specialness
- Do something culturally rewarding with your time to earn it more
- Noodles
This is already long, so I won’t go into all the details, but for now, let me just say that I think rule 2 is CRITICAL.
It’s not just a question of preserving the specialness, I suspect it’s an essential matter of avoiding pinging the various parts of the brain in a way that triggers compulsive or even addictive behavior (related to dopamine and beta-endorphin pathways, among others).
Translating into practice
Your mileage may vary, but what has been problematic for me in the past has been being away from home and routine (e.g., trips home for the holidays). It’s a completely different thing from the one-offs (e.g., going out to lunch with the boss or attending someone’s birthday party).
Me, I find the one-offs fairly easy to handle as a matter of routine (where routine == mostly “clean” eating).
But travel, oy. I call this travel pattern of eating the “cruise ship phenomena.” These are the kind of occasions that lets me string multiple meals together full of SAD foods … and after some number of days, before I know it: bam, weeks or months of cleaner eating is down the tubes.
So where I am right now is that at home, eating off-plan is rare. It’s typically been dinner out after my every-other-week weigh-in. Traveling is a little trickier, but mostly I’m avoiding stringing multiple SAD meals together. I ate dinner out for four nights in a row while doing Memorial Day with my family, but I still lost 5 lbs over that two weeks.
So, if you’ve got Kurt Harris’ conviction, props to you! But if you’re someone on the fence because you can’t imagine giving up whole food groups, maybe this tweak on the 80-20 rule might work for you.
If you’re like me, eating paleo (or some similar plan that’s based on whole foods) will make you feel so much better you’ll likely find yourself choosing that more often than not.
But it’s always nice to be able to be flexible if that’s what you want.
Beth, thanks for this good post. I’m linking to you in one I’m making right now! :-) nutritarianrecipes.blogspot.com .
I’ve never been fond of cheating, but given the facts you’ve pointed out, I can never stay strict paleo. There are simply too many family trips which I can’t prepare for without some sausages and such, though I typically do about a 95-5 rule, as I do eat bacon on a regular basis.
I think you pointed out exactly what we’re wanting- results. Anthony Colpo - despite me not being too fond of his attitude with a lot of things- had an interesting topic about health fanatics vs health nuts, and I think there is a place for dieting, and a place for being reasonable when presented with nothing but horrible choices, and choosing the most bearable one.
If I allow some deviation from paleo in my everyday life, I think I could up that margin to 80-20 as you’ve said if needbe.
Congratulations on losing 5 pounds in 2 weeks! As for travel eating, when I find out the answer, I’ll let you know. I found this link on the paleo “template,” which may be of interest: http://thehealthyskeptic.org/beyond-paleo-moving-from-a-paleo-diet-to-a-paleo-template.
I love Chris Kresser’s blog! BTW, here’s what I did for my Memorial Day weekend. I decided that the foods I really wanted to avoid while traveling were Kurt Harris’ neolithic agents of disease (wheat, sugar, and veggie oil).
So I made it a rule that if I had any of the NADs at a meal, I needed to have at least that many “clean” meals afterwards (i.e., one NAD, one clean meal; two NADs, two clean meals).
In practice, it turned out that 3 of the 4 nights I ate out, I was able to choose options that were either low-carb or included a veggie starch like potato. But since veggie oil is hard to avoid at restaurants, I made sure that the next meal was on plan (I also did some intermittent fasting as well).
I’m heading to Nags Head in late July and Los Angeles in early August, so will be able to experiment with this again then!
John Mortimer wisely said, “There is no pleasure worth foregoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.” Some pleasures, though, are worth foregoing most of the time for an extra 10 or 15 years outside the geriatric ward. I treat candy like champagne: a glorious indulgence for very special occasions (e.g., Easter and Christmas). Once or twice a month I go off-plan, intentionally, for one meal, then resume the low-carb way of eating.
Yoni Freedhoff is too much of a nanny-state kind of guy for me to consider him a kindred soul, but that quote from him is right on the money.
This all works for me. :-) I follow a (rough) 80/20 rule. Not daily, but over time. It’s worked for me, for more than 7 years.
If I know I can have it any time I want, it no longer sings a siren song.