Dieting 101 - Why Dieting Is Broken and What to Do About It

November 6th, 2008         Email This Post Email This Post       Print This Post Print This Post

Most people want to lose weight and be healthier, but are generally misinformed about what eating healthy means. The general idea of a diet is temporarily limiting the foods you love. You painstakingly track your calories and fat consumption, starve yourself, fight off the cravings, try to cheat at little as possible, and hope you can hold out until the weight goes down. Then, you breathe a sigh of relief, go back to the way you normally eat, slowly (or not so slowly) gain back all the weight, and repeat the entire process.

This constant starvation/gorge cycle is hardly the way you are supposed to live. Studies show that this sort of yo-yo dieting is bad for your heart.

This diet paradigm is flawed. Like many personal development gimmicks, it tries to force change from the outside in. The results are superficial and don’t last. It relies on discipline for the entire time, without modifying any of the underlying beliefs around eating. Deeply rooted, meaningful, lasting change doesn’t happen from something as superficial as “having discipline” to not eat that piece of cake - for a few months. Instead of looking at how to diet, let us look at the relationship with food. Interestingly, I started eating a whole foods-vegan diet to increase my energy, not to lose weight, which is the source of this line of thinking. I drastically increased my energy level - and also lost 35lbs! It is pretty straightforward, actually.

So why do you eat - are you living to eat, or are you eating to live?

The general world view is that you live to eat. You buy delicious foods and you want to eat as much as you can enjoy. But as Jews, that answer is very lacking - we eat to maintain our bodies, to that we can better serve Hashem by following the Torah. That doesn’t mean we should be ascetic, only eat enough dry bread to survive on. We make brachos in appreciation of the food that Hashem gives us. We are told to enjoy food on Shabbos and Yom Tov. Enjoy your meals and dessert on Shabbos - I have 72% cocoa chocolate bars (this is significantly healthier than the normal 20% cocoa chocolate bars). During the week, I enjoy delicious fruit for breakfast each morning, and I flavor all my food so that I enjoy it. For people that enjoy spicy-hot food, they have even more options. You can enjoy food - but keep in mind its ultimate purpose. Form follows function: if food is to keep you alive and energetic, then take healthy food and make it tasty. If nutrition is only an afterthought, then you take tasty food and consider nutrition as an afterthought.

I think that most discipline issues regarding food really come from a doubt. Is this cup of soda REALLY bad for me? Is it REALLY terrible to have a piece of cake? (Take a look at: You Only Need Discipline When You Have A Choice)

Let’s look at weight: if you are 20 lbs over weight, go to the kosher gym or store, pick up 20 lbs, and walk around with it. Feel how heavy it is. Would you like to walk around with that for the entire day? Does it make living life easier? That is what you are currently doing!

If you eat until you are stuffed, and then feel that you just want to go to sleep, or eat something sugary and have an energy crash, your food has just interfered with your life, instead of helping it. Do you even notice when you crash? I don’t think most people are conscious enough of their physical energy to really notice it, especially in knowledge work. Maybe you don’t even see the connection between your body and your mind. But your body - and diet - make a huge difference on your motivation and energy your brain has available. If your body is slow and sluggish, then YOU feel slow and sluggish.

What does eating healthier actually mean? The news tells you about which supplement or fruit or vegetable is really great for you. All the fad diets… the low fat or low carb foods. It is really easy to be confused!

Simply, eating healthy means eating things that nourishes your body. Any food that has been altered to reduce the nourishment is for people that “live to eat”. The mainstream concept of diet largely ignores WHAT you are eating, instead focusing on how much. Eating less non-nutritious may help you lose weight, but won’t make you healthy! All healthy food is good for you, contributing many vitamins and minerals, not just “not bad”.

Nourishing for the body means it must be natural and unprocessed - leaving the nutrition, hydration, and fiber intact. Fruits, vegetables, greens, whole grains (whole wheat, brown rice, kasha, millet, quinoa, etc), legumes, raw nuts and seeds all meet these criteria.

  •          If it isn’t natural, such as chemicals, then your body can’t handle them well.
  •          Processing generally extracts parts such as sugar or corn syrup - leaving you with a concentrate of calories lacking nutrients. Or, processing removes the bran on wheat, rice, or sesame seeds (for techina) - taking away most of the fiber, protein, vitamins, or calcium.
  •          Your body is about 70% water, so your food should help maintain that water. Fruits and veggies are 85%+ water.
  •          Fiber helps the body flush out waste from the food and body maintenance. If your bowel movements are painful or hard, you need more fiber.

Natural sweeteners include honey, real maple syrup, stevia extract, agave nectar, date honey…

The typical unhealthy foods are processed or unnatural, most notably white flour, white sugar, oils, and chemicals. Those basic ingredients make up nearly all of the standard american diet - with the appropriate acronym of SAD. That includes white bread, every cereal, soft-drink, splenda (they add three chlorine atoms to a sugar molecule), and even soy.

You can ignore the nutrition facts and just look at the ingredients list: are they whole, natural foods? Avocados may have more calories than an energy bar, but the body knows how to handle an avocado.

Wait - you haven’t mentioned milk, cheese, eggs, fish, chicken, and meat! Unfortunately, no animal products have fiber in them, most are fatty, - and they are HEAVILY filled with chemicals. The animals are fed antibiotics and growth hormone - and then fed to you. A diet heavy in animal products is linked to heart problems and other diseases.

But don’t I need calcium? Yes - but not from milk! Milk is known to cause allergies & ear infections (the body generally stops producing lactase at age 2, but is never suited to process casein, a heavy molecule that contains the calcium in milk.)
Calcium is one of the major food myths in America. Looking at the facts: American women consume tremendous amounts of calcium, but their rates of osteoporosis are among the highest in the world. Chinese people consume half as much calcium (mostly from plant sources) and don’t even have a word for osteoporosis. A Harvard Nurses’ Study of over 77,000 women found that two or more glasses of milk per day gave you a higher risk of broken hips and arms than drinking one glass or less per day.
Greens, sesame, and nuts are all good sources of calcium. Whole sesame techina has more calcium per volume than milk does.

What about protein? Another American food myth - Americans get too MUCH protein - which also leads to osteoporosis. The Journal of Nutrition reported that doubling how much protein you eat causes your calcium loss to double. You don’t even need animal products for protein - the old food pyramid actually listed legumes as “poor man’s meat”. Most whole grains (about 10% protein by volume), greens, and nuts also have abundant protein.

So why is this kind of junk food so prevalent? Convenience and taste. It’s just easier, cheaper, and better tasting. Chemicals, taking off the bran, adding lots of salt, and hydrogenating fats increase shelf life. Frying in oil and carcinogenic microwaving is faster. Salad dressings contain sugar or corn syrup rather than a healthier sweetener, and canola oils rather than olive oil because it is cheaper. Sugar and fats just make things taste better.

Stop living to eat. Why are you eating? To live! For energy! So choose something nutritious!

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