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June 21, 2005
Bizarre Diet Advice
Last night I was in the Chicago airport enjoying a glass of pinot noir between one long flight and the next and chatting with a friend who watches her diet carefully, stays in great shape, and is one of those people others look to for diet advice. She had just gotten some very bizarre diet advice from an acquaintance of hers. I think it went something like this:
1) Drink a glass of water with the juice of half a lemon upon rising.
2) Eat a tablespoon of organic apple cider vinegar before every meal.
3) Drink two glasses of water before every meal.
4) Eat two tablespoons full a day of some bizarre ground vegetable meal.
My friend was asking me if this advice really was as goofy as it sounds, and once I stopped laughing I agreed that it sounded pretty goofy to me. I mean, if you like lemon in your water, that seems fine, but I doubt that it will accelerate weight loss. And I love vinegar more than almost anyone on the planet, but I can't see the point of eating a tablespoon before a meal. If anything, I think that would make a normal person feel a bit ill, and not eating because you are sick on vinegar all the time is definitely NOT CRON.
The explanation offered was something about vinegar making toxins not stick to the colon. Huh? Anybody want to take a stab at making sense out of this one?
I thought I might start collecting bizarre diet advice that we have all gotten over the years. I bet my bloggiefriends have some stories to tell, so comment away! If you know how to cook a bug, I'm sure you know lots of other weird stuff too.
On to my very own, hopefully not too bizarre CRON advice... I will address some of the questions from my commenters.
Re: artificial sweeteners: The CR community is divided on this but the CR community is divided on almost everything. There's very little we agree on, other than that fewer calories = more life, and that we should pack as much nutrition as possible into every calorie. Beyond that, it's all over the map. I tend to follow MR's advice because a) he always backs up his advice with whacks of evidence from real studies b) he lives by what he preaches, and it's working on him c) every time I've made a change that he recommended, it's made me feel dramatically better d) he's really cute. So as to artificial sweeteners: some people won't touch them, some think they're no big deal. I used to drink tons of diet soda and now just drink some, and I occasionally use Splenda in my tea. MR uses only real sucralose, which is very hard to get and must be ordered from a guy named Warren and served with spoons that you use to feed baby sea monkeys. But MR will occasionally have a sip of my Diet Dr. Pepper and he doesn't freak out about me drinking it in moderate amounts, so I figure it's okay. Like anything, if you have a bad reaction to something, by all means, avoid it. My Light and Fit is the plain, so it's not sweetened. I like to make a savory Indian-ish dish out of it by squeezing in the juice of a lemon plus some garlic powder, chipoltle Tabasco, salsa, etc. It's great on a bed of strong greens. For my fruit yogurt, I eat Stoneyfield Farms fruit on bottom, which doesn't have artificial sweeteners.
MR did freak out about my sodium intake when we first met, so I switched to half salt. I probably use too much of that, but it's a lot less than I used to consume.
Re: processed foods: Most CR folk will not eat too much processed food, but then you get into a question of what that means. Some would call cottage cheese processed, but it's a very good food (assuming you're not allergic to milk). Some CR folks prefer not to cook their food much, and I imagine that those of us who do steam our veggies cook them a lot less than our grandmothers did. Lots of veggies become more nutritionally available (that sounds like a pick up line in the making... "Hey baby, are you nutritionally available?") once they're cooked. Tomatoes are a good example of this. Adding a bit of fat, IIRC, increases the absorbability of most veggie nutrients too.
When starting CR, it helps to cut back on or entirely eliminate most of what most people will consider "processed" foods because you'll make yourself insanely hungry if you try to eat a calorie restricted diet that isn't nutritionally sound. I feel like an odd treat here and there is no big deal, as long as you're getting the basics covered and are comfortable with your pattern. MR eats sugar free jello for dessert sometimes... we're thinking of stocking our fridge with little jars of sugar free jello to feed to our friends for treats when they come over. The image of lots of serious, grown up people sitting on the deck discussing important topics and eating sugar free jello out of jars is really amusing to me.
Re: dealing with setbacks. Wow, do I know that feeling. I am exactly like that. I really hate that feeling that I didn't do it right, no matter what *it* is at the moment. Ick. It's really hard. I had to deal with a spell when some of the people around me gave me trouble about my weight loss, and it's always awkward when people act like the price of admission to the social club is willingness to eat gak. Since finding a partner who also does CR is not a practical solution for everyone, the best advice I have is to confront the situation directly. When I first decided to start CR, I told my closest friends and family that I would be making some changes and that I needed their support. I also made it clear that I didn't expect them to adopt CR or even healthier eating habits... I just wanted their understanding when I made different choices. Overall, this worked really well. But there have been problems... a very close friend of long standing who dealt with serious eating disorder issues in her life felt sufficiently ambivilent about my CR that she didn't think it was a good idea for us to see each other. That was definitely very hard for me. Ideas around food are so messed up in our culture that it's hard for a calorie to be just a calorie... it's too bound up in people's heads with all sorts of emotions. It's hard, I think, for some people to understand how very happy and healthy we can be once we stop seeing food as the enemy and start seeing it as something we can use to nourish our bodies, not beat ourselves up with. I feel like I have found a pretty good balance in my life, but it's taken a long time to come to, and I still have days when I think to myself, "Why did I eat that???" The pressure is HARD to deal with, and I find myself gravitating towards other people who have a live and let live attitude towards feeding practices. It's so incredibly nice to have a CR'd partner... we really have fun cooking for each other, enjoying our food together, etc. Food really is an important part of life.
Glad the the weekdays on, weekends off starting approach worked for you Emma! It really is good to prove to yourself how much better you feel doing CRON, rather than to feel like you're just following a set of rules. Maybe I'll republish Girl's Guide to Starting CR... it's around here somewhere.
As much as I love and am fairly comfortable with my CR practice now, I do occasionally get nostalgic for those early days. The excitement of feeling so radically better when I dropped my calories... the weird euphoria that everyone seems to feel during the fat loss stage... the massive infusion of strength when I upped my protein intake... the calming feeling of Omega 3 and 6 balancing... all without hunger cause I was burning off my 35 pound tank of fat fuel. Watching the scale go down and my clothes get too loose to wear and gradually figuring out that I was turning into one of those thin girls. Now we know that I was burning mostly fat, as my body fat percentage has gone from 33% to 18.1%. I had little lean body mass to start with, so it's good that I'm doing some strength training now as well as walking/treadmilling. Gotta keep strong bones!
It's harder now that I get really hungry if I go too low on my calories, and I have to pay more attention to packing up good food so that I don't hit that "ready to eat the neighbors" point while I'm on the road or working, etc. It's good to reach for a megamuffin in times of need... like a bridge over troubled water, it will calm, soothe and satisfy.
Posted by april at June 21, 2005 9:09 AM
Comments
Recent research shows that vinegar pre-meal (or in your dinner salad) has a significant dampening effect on insulin product during the remaining meal, and this is very important to long-term health. In general, the less insulin you release during your life-time, the better off you are. (This is simplistic, because you need insulin, but it's a general guide for today's under-active society. When we used to spend all day foraging or hunting, it was a different matter.)
Drinking water pre-meal simply reduces your hunger. Unfortunately, it also dilutes your stomach enzymes, reducing the effectiveness of your digestive system. I personally never drink pre-meal or during a meal, to maximize nutritional extraction -- I tend not only drink 20 mins pre-meal through 20 mins post-meal.
Another important strategy is to thoroughly chew food, as this reduces hunger, and maximizes nutritional absorption. The body doesn't register being satisfied for 15-20 mins after it truly is, and so eating slowly (and chewing food to an almost liquid state -- typically 30 chews per mouthful) helps that process register before we overeat.
Eating two spoons of "bizarre ground vegetable meal" is nothing different than taking a vegetable supplement...nothing wrong with that at all, in fact, if it's a good mix of vegetables it's a really good thing to do.
On sweeteners, the only safe one is saccharin. Sucralose in any form is harmful, despite claims that it's "made from real sugar," which people seem to be biting hook, line and sinker as an endorsement to its safety. Brilliantly effective marketing -- toxic product.
http://tinyurl.com/5utdt
But on the scale of things, aspartame is far, far more dangerous -- you get three proven poisons in one sweetener. Heck of a deal.
Posted by: Scott Miller at June 21, 2005 11:38 AM
that's interesting about vinegar - i wonder how many people have used that bit of information to rationalize eating french fries with vinegar?
(yum!)probably every bit of absurd diet advice has worked for someone, but i won't find the courage to do vinegar shots on an empty stomach any time soon. most ridiculous (to me) diets i've seen lately: (1) the apples in my un-safeway come in bags advertizing a diet that involves eating one apple before every meal. i'm sure that would get really old quickly, and ultimately might put you off apples forever. (2) the diets on the back of cereal boxes that suggest eating two small bowls of cereal per day followed by a "sensible" dinner. after eating nothing but 2 bowls of cereal all day it would seem sensible to eat the entire contents of the refrigerator. but that's just me!
Posted by: emma at June 21, 2005 2:22 PM
I don't take a spoonful of vinegar pre-meal, I only use it on dinner salad in which case I always use vinegar and olive oil. But then, I eat low GI-load (different than GI) foods, avoiding any simple or processed carbs. Plus, I eat a bowl of oatmeal each morning topped with a gram of organic cinnamon, both of which reduce insulin throughout the day. I also do other things to reduce insulin, as this is one of the most beneficial long-term health tactics available to us.
Regarding cereals, I love the ads that say such and such cereal is "part of a healthy breakfast." Yeah, the unhealthy part! All cereal is over-processed, and should be avoided.
Apples are great, but I only eat the top one-quarter inch including the skin, where are the phyto-nutrients are located (versus the meat of the apple, where all the fructose is located to feed the seeds).
Posted by: Scott Miller at June 21, 2005 3:42 PM
Scott, I would be really pleased if you email me or post a comment in my blog showing your point of wiew about how a healthy diet / exercise pattern is. I'm really interested in it, and not being ironic here.
Posted by: Willie at June 22, 2005 2:06 AM
Scott, it would be really helpful if you would post a reference or at least indicate a source when you say "recent research." Thanks.
April, welcome home. Hope your trip was great.
-Liz
Posted by: Elizabeth at June 22, 2005 6:04 AM
Willie, where's your blog?
Posted by: Scott Miiler at June 22, 2005 8:05 AM
Hi April, lemon juice and water first thing in the morning, according to natural health types, is supposed to "flush out" the liver. Probably better than coffee (the first thing my poor liver gets in the AM). As for apple cider vinegar before meals, the point is to increase stomach acidity and therefore the absorption of nutrients. Two glasses of water before every meal, however, would work against this, I would think. Anyways, I mostly wanted to mention that I love your blog and thank you for always posting such helpful suggestions--following your CR experience has been very interesting for me.
Scott: exactly how is saccharin the only safe sweetener? In fact it is the ONLY sweetener that is required to be labeled as known to cause cancer in laboratory mice. I also enjoy your comments/perspective but would appreciate supporting evidence as well...
Posted by: Suzy at June 22, 2005 9:18 AM
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/549saccharin.html
Suzy, there are numerous studies and books I've read supporting saccharin's safety. Keep in mind, vitamin A and D and many other healthy nutrients, when taken in similarly outrageous large quantities as the oft-quoted saccharin mouse study, will lead to cancer production. This should not be a surprise. Trans fat will absolutely destroy our liver (Super Size Me demonstrated this perfectly) in large quantities, yet where's the FDA warning label?!
Bottom-line, do not trust the lobbyist manipulated FDA for nuthin' when it comes to your health.
Saccharin has been around for 120 years and without ANY reported human health problems. Aspartame, meanwhile, has caused 10's or 1000's of reported health problems. (I highly recommend the documentary, Sweet Misery: http://www.soundandfuryproductions.com/ )
BTW, saccharin no longer carries that cancer warning, as there was NEVER any actual incidence of health degradation attributed to it. That said, you still do not want to overuse it. In a full glass of tea, for example, I only use half a package.
Of the man-made sweeteners, it's by far the safest, and the best alternative for those of us who do not like the taste of stevia.
Posted by: Scott Miller at June 22, 2005 9:44 AM
Scott, don't know how you're getting from the site you mention to the assertion that sucralose/Splenda is "harmful." The site itself doesn't even make any assertions that the stuff is dangerous, but rather that it hasn't been proven safe in extensive human trials.
The site goes on to assert that research that might show the dangers of Splenda is being suppressed by the US sugar industry, which is rather laughable, given the industry's consistent _attacks_ on Splenda (including suing McNeil, the product's manufacturer, and hiring a PR firm to create websites attacking sucralose as unsafe). http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3669 (Yeah, April, the column's written by a guy from Cato, relax and breathe. ;) )
We _know_ eating sizable quantities of sugar is bad for you. Given that the vast majority of folks don't have the motivation/willpower/belief/etc. to follow a rigorous CR diet, it seems irresponsible to me to be attacking a product that delivers clear benefits (when used instead of sugar) without any actual evidence. Remember, nothing (including saccharin), can be proved "safe" - it's impossible to prove a negative.
Posted by: James at June 22, 2005 12:53 PM
Hi April!
I've been reading your blog for quite some time and I really enjoy reading your thoughts on CR. I've considered doing CRON for a few years now, and am still undecided, but I think the time has come to make a change in my diet towards at least ON, if not full CRON.. a way overdue change. I know in general how to do CR/CRON, but I'm kindof overwhelmed with all the detail even when I enjoy reading it, so I'm not sure how to approach all this. I hate cooking, and most recipes seem way complex (even when I know they're not), so I want to keep things very simple if I can. And so I don't know where to start. I'd really prefer to avoid dairy and eggs.. I like the taste of soya, but it doesn't agree with me (A pity, since I really like Silk soymilk). I like the taste of nearly everything else including sushi, though I know eating fish means certain issues (potential mercury ingestion etc.)
I'm open to input for anyone who wants to comment, and feel free to email me. Scott, I'm also interested in what you have to say, your input interests me too.
If I decide to take the plunge and do ON or CRON (and I know I should do one or the other), then I'll start a diet blog myself.. it's the only way I'll probably be able to keep myself honest: the public eye! *laughs*
Oh, and what do you all think of my favorite drink? (1 tsp of pure baking cocoa, 1.5 tsp of blackstrap molasses, all in a cup of hot water).. I love the stuff, if you like dark chocolate, you'll probably love it too! (but does it make sense from a ON or CRON point of view?)
Thanks!
Gregg
Posted by: Gregg M. at June 22, 2005 4:11 PM
(Sorry April!) Scott, you left me a comment a few days ago at croning.blospot.com!
Posted by: Willie at June 23, 2005 4:20 AM
Gregg,
I know what you mean about blogging your new diet, if you go forward with it.
That's the main reason I decided to blog mine, so that it'd be *out there* for others to see and critique, and for me to be embarrassed by when I binge on bad stuff. Like I did on Saturday, Day Sixteen on my blog, I ate about a thousand calories worth of junk food, maybe even a little more, in one "meal". Having to write about it made me feel bad twice about doing it, once when I did it, and once when I had to "relive" it and write it down.
Posted by: Jay Fox at June 27, 2005 11:58 AM
hi , i want to know that i live in india so wht is the proper cr diet according to indian foods . and is saccharin the only safe sweetener i se another sucralosse base sweetner. plz help. tnkx ...... nila
Posted by: Nila at June 17, 2008 12:52 PM