From skwigg's journal:
I read a little Amazon ebook (only 97 pages) by Dr Steve Prentice called "Wrecked: Why Your Quest for Health and Weight Loss Has Failed and What You Can Do About It." It's a bit short, informal, and stating-the-obvious for its own book thread. Still, it had some genuinely funny and helpful insights. The basic premise is that our weight and health issues are caused by stress. Our solutions, rather than helping, only add more stress and make the situation worse. Slashing calories, cutting carbs, eliminating sugar and sodium, fixating on weight, overexercising, glugging water, they only stress you out more, make you feel terrible, and put the brakes on metabolism.
We knew this, but still. I like his take. Basically, the best way to lose weight is to not focus so much on food and weight. Instead, become a stress-reduction ninja. Take care of yourself, sleep, relax, eat food you like, form healthy human connections, find a purpose, avoid social media.
It has certainly been true for me that the harder I tried to control food and weight, the more everything sucked, failed, and crumbled around me. Chilling out has done wonders. Today, I was making an epic ketchup puddle for my meatloaf and remembered how I used to be afraid of the sugar in ketchup. I'd eat ice cream by the pint but ketchup bad. We completely stress ourselves out over meaningless diet variables while the bigger picture gets lost. Hey, how about eating, sleeping, and relaxing enough that I'm no longer driven to slam whole pints of ice cream as an escape? Wow, that might work even better than restricting condiments.
This part of the book about "everything you're doing is wrong" is too funny not to share:
When it comes to attempts at improving one’s health, the diet is almost always the primary focus and is usually the gateway to other obsessive practices.
The trend over the last decade is hyperfocusing on diet when looking to assign blame and/ or find cures for any health problems. Diet and nutrition has been a growing focus for decades (which is not necessarily bad) but in the last few years it’s turned into an obsession. Food is everything. All things are caused and cured by food. In fact, some foods are assigned magical healing powers and some are even classified as “superfoods.”
The problem is that everything you’re eating is wrong. Everything.
Carbs? Nope, they cause diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease, and obesity.
Grains? Nope, they cause depression, insulin resistance, inflammation, and autoimmune disorders.
Protein? Nope, that causes cancer and diabetes.
Fat? Nope, polyunsaturated fat causes inflammation and animal fats are unhealthy because the animals were grain fed.
Fiber? Nope, damages gut flora and interferes with mineral absorption.
Vegetables? Nope, vegetarianism has not been demonstrated to have any advantage and often results in nutritional deficiencies.
Fruit? Nope, fructose will kill you, don’t cha know.
Nuts? Nope, high in phytic acid, which impedes mineral absorption.
Beans? Nope, they also have phytic acid, and since they’re carbs, will give you the diabeetus.
Sugar? Nope, haven’t you heard that sugar is addictive and is the root of all the world’s problems?
Cheese? Nope, too much saturated fat and cholesterol and causes heart disease.
Butter? Nope, high in fat and causes heart disease.
Milk? Nope, promotes inflammation and is high in fat.
And let’s not forget these other life and death considerations beyond simply what category of food we’re eating.
We should also avoid at all costs: gluten, yeast, GMO products, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, additives, dyes, trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, salt, nitrites, nitrates, and acid-forming foods.
Not only do we need to focus on what we eat and what we need to avoid, but we also must consider how much we eat and how often. Don’t eat too much, don’t eat too little, don’t eat too often, don’t eat too infrequently. Think you’re done? Oh no. We also have to consider where the food comes from and how it was processed.
For animal foods we must know: Was it free-range? Grain fed? Grass fed? Pasture fed? Seed fed? Fed antibiotics? Given hormones? Outdoor bred? Raised in a pen? How big was the pen? Were they separated from the mother? Were they happy? Is it organic? How were they processed? By machine? By hand? At a factory? At a farm? Is it sustainable? Was it line caught? Net caught? Did any dolphins get caught in the net? Did any people get caught in the net?
For anything that grows we have to know: Is it organic? Were there pesticides used? Herbicides? GMOs? Did they use Monsanto seeds? Was it fair trade? Did it come from a supermarket? A farm market? Were there folk singers at the farm market? What fertilizer did they use? Was it handpicked? Was it hand-picked with love?
So what it comes down to is this—anything you choose to eat is bad for you and will likely result in disease. In fact, depending on what you read, everything has been linked to cancer, diabetes, inflammation, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. No matter what type of food you eat, how much you eat, how often you eat, or what you avoid, you are making a grave mistake. Have a nice day.