Miss Dropsie's food principles for maintaining a healthy weight

I was chatting with a friend this week, who from what she tells me, is a slave to calorie counting. I told her that since I changed the way I eat, I don't ever worry about calories and fat. Ever.  She seemed surprised. Instead of counting calories, I eat a certain way, and until I'm full. I monitor how my clothes are fitting and if I've had a bad patch of "cheating" I move more, and eat more plants until it settles again. If you catch it when it's a minor slip, it's a lot easier than waiting till you're looking at 10-20lbs.

Just for a little context, since I fully altered my eating habits one year ago, I initially lost and have since maintained my weight. I am lean, have energy, and am finally happy with my body.

Okay, so I've been thinking about this, trying to put into words what my "food rules" or principles are.  Let me try and sum it up:

1- Most of your food should not have an ingredient list.
The majority of what you eat should be plants (vegetable, fruit, whole grains) and should represent all the colours of the rainbow. When you start adding items that have been cooked, baked, etc.—unless in your own kitchen—the chances of it being a nutritious component of your day are slim. Limit your animal consumption to once daily- preferably at dinner.

2- Don't be afraid of fat
North America went through a "low fat" revolution several decades ago. Know what happened? We all got really fat. Know why? Diet products. Low fat products substitute sugar and other simple carbohydrates for fat to make them palatable. What happens then? You eat them, your blood sugar rises, you get an insulin spike, and the glucose surging through your blood stream gets stored as fat. Ta da! Instant spare tire. Love avocado? I eat them by the truckload. Love nuts? I eat LOADS of raw nuts. Not roasted, not salted. Raw. Sure, lots of fat and calories, but trust me, it doesn't matter when you focus on the quality of food in your diet, rather than the quantity (which brings me to my next point...).

3- Focus on the quality, not quantity of your food
Eat food with dense nutritive properties; limit food with neutral nutritive properties; avoid food with nutrient deficiencies. What you eat should contain vitamins, minerals, protein, fibre... I told you that I don't worry about calories and fat- it's true. What I DO worry about, is the nutrient-density of my food. Unless it is a food that follows my first principle, I check to see what's in it.

Here's what I avoid:

• no significant nutrients listed (2% daily recommended calcium doesn't wow me, yanno?)
• anything with refined sugar (except dark chocolate... :)
• anything with strange ingredients I don't recognize and know are at least neutral (this goes back to why you HAVE to read and understand your food labels)

Here's what I limit but still occasionally indulge in:

• food that provides only a little nutritive value (brown rice pasta is a good example of this- it's not super dense, but it's not horrible either- I eat it in moderation)
• junk food with short ingredient lists (plain potato chips fall into this category...they are my weakness).

4- All calories are not created equal anyway
If someone asked you whether they should eat 100 calories of crackers made with hydrogenated oils, enriched wheat flour and loaded with salt, or 100 calories of apples and carrots, what would you tell them would be the wiser choice? Enough said.

5- Find acceptable "treats" and eat them every day
There should be some part of your day that involves a lovely little treat for yourself. Whether it's a few medjool dates (which I see as somewhere between nutrient-neutral, and nutrient-dense, but taste like CANDY- especially from the fridge), some dark chocolate (70% cocoa and up), a SMALL container of short-ingredient-list chips, or a treat you discovered and love, have a little each day. Just enough to pat yourself on the back for a job well done. It's all about small concessions, not being unnaturally superhero-like. Superheroes have a short life span- we're looking for a way to eat forever not just until you fit into a wedding dress, or a bathing suit.

Note: I also eat organic food whenever possible. I really believe this to be a healthier option, and once you ditch the processed food, not that cost prohibitive. However, I don't think that—in and of itself—helps me maintain my weight. I agree with the health and environmental impacts of organic farming, in the treatment of organically farmed animals, and I believe in the safety of the food. This choice is not for everyone, but it works for us.

There. Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to provide a fulsome response. What are your food rules? Did I miss anything?
K

Miss Dropsie's food principles for maintaining a healthy weight

Running...for dummies...and lazy butts like me

My friend Alyson, one of the most accomplished multi-taskers the world has ever known, has now added "running teacher" to her repertoire. Her qualifications stem from a degree in kinesiology, her accreditation as an army medic and paramedic, then of course the fact that she is a life-long runner (kind of hate her for that...given that I tend toward sloth-like myself). I asked if she would put together a "running for dummies" post for those of us...recreationally-challenged folks out there. I was kind of hoping it might motivate me to get off my butt.

So for an idea of how this works, see her post entitled "Running: How to START" on her blog.
http://proudtobeafitmom.blogspot.com/

Thanks Aly!

Running...for dummies...and lazy butts like me

Grocery store gross-out

When I go shopping for groceries, I go to a local chain of grocery stores that has very little of what you'd find in the "centre section" of the supermarket. It's got fruit, veg, meat, dairy, fish, deli, bread, baked goods, coffee and some staples like a few "healthier" cereals, hand made pasta sauces and noodles, etc. There is also a small dried goods section where you can get rice, lentils, etc., one section of bagged chips and popcorn and a small smattering of bulk sweets and nuts. They also have a huge selection of organic produce, chicken and beef.

For the most part, what they have are basics, and really, over the last year, what has become most of what my family needs. Occasionally we'll run to Costco for things like juice boxes, bulk bags of raw nuts, big jugs of honey, or other things we can buy much cheaper, but for the most part this local "farm" type grocery store is more than sufficient. Since making the switch to organic, our grocery bills are certainly higher than they used to be at this store but we also used to shop more at the traditional grocery store nearby, so in the end, I still think we're saving money by cutting processed garbage out of our diets.

Mr. Pick-it-up is away visiting his brother at the other end of the country right now, so in an attempt to cut corners and stuff down the anxiety I always feel when he leaves and I'm alone with the kids for a number of days (anxiety that is usually unfounded as I almost always surprise myself by establishing a little rhythm in his absence) I decided to visit the traditional grocery store, and get some convenience foods. The first thing I did when I walked in was to go clear over to their organic section in order to stock up on produce. Here's the thing: they maybe had 10 fruits or veggies in said "section". Very disappointing. Very.  I got what I could, and very little else from rest of the shelves.

Next I walked over to the breads section. Every label had the usual "glucose-fructose" label, even if it was marketed as 100% whole grain. Sigh.  I chose the least-bad version of it and kept moving. Next I passed the fish (farmed, with only one wild choice, which was cod or some other white fish I'm not crazy about) then the meat section. All trimmed, no bones, no skin, every breast the same size, same colour...it was like going to South Beach in Miami. Chickens should not all be exactly the same size. However, if they're from a factory instead of a farm (like all the silicone in South Beach) they are scarily the same...one after the next. Gross.

So I decided I would comb the centre aisles for ideas, and as I walked by brightly-coloured packages I kept hearing Michael Pollack's words from Food Inc. in my head "the illusion of variety". It's so true. That entire store had thousands of products with the same repeated ingredients in each one: hydrogenated X oil, enriched wheat flour, sugar, salt, dextrose, sodium benzoate. It is like looking at a store with a thousand muffins, all made with the same base, but they have a different special ingredient: some are chocolate chip, some are dried cranberry, but in the end, it's the same muffin mix in each one. And that mix is full of salt, sugar, chemicals and nutritionless crap.

Really I tried. I did. I ended up with two convenience items: plain potato chips (my weakness), and Annie's organic mac'n cheese. Whole wheat noodles and cheese, all organic. It's as close as I can come. As much as I thought I could stuff down my values and my strong belief in eating REAL, NUTRITIOUS food, in the end, I just couldn't. My kids eat elsewhere (aside from my home). I know that they will get garbage food on occasion. I totally get that. So my philosophy is just not to give it to them at home. What they get other than from me, is more than enough, thank you.  And the more they see what is "the norm" in my house, the more they think it's normal. Little man was telling his sister that she should eat fruit because it's healthy and she'll grow big and strong if she does. I'm really glad it's sinking in; it makes it all worthwhile.

Grocery store gross-out

Great blog post on "Weighty Matters"

Oh how I love Yoni Friedhoff from Weighty Matters and his no-nonsense take on nutrition, or lack thereof, in processed foods and the way he grumbles aloud about things I silently choke on. Like this...for instance. Yet another example of why you can't just trust advertising and why you have to keep reading those labels!!!

My favourite quote from his post:

"...Of course making an argument that Bagel Bites are better to give your kids than Totinos or vice-versa is like making the argument that it'd be better to get kicked in the nuts than get punched in the nuts.

Don't buy your kids either!
Make them actual food. "

You said it.

http://www.weightymatters.ca/2010/05/badvertising-bagel-bites.html

Great blog post on "Weighty Matters"