Did that title catch your attention? Do you think I would advocate for eating poor foods? No way. But others keep saying it is ok if you do it in moderation.
Before it was replaced with a new ad, I wish I had taken a photo of this billboard for a fitness club in our city that left me half laughing, half aghast. No doubt they are doing a good job helping people get fit, but I was saddened at the way they tried to appeal to the common but erroneous wishes of people in our society.
Picture a fit, attractive gal in the middle of a squat. Above her is the quote, “I want to be hot, and eat my tacos and pizza too.”
I think this business was saying what they knew people want to hear in the hope of drawing them into the gym where there may be chance of changing their view on exercise and nutrition. But it is sad because this belief is perpetuated everywhere in media: enough exercise will cover a multitude of lifestyle sins.
Nope. It won’t.
Plant-Based Athletics
Probably not many of you are aware that I turned into a (mostly) herbivore almost two years ago. After nearly 30 years of athletic training and dabbling with a random assortment of ideas to compose my own motley nutrition approach, several things finally converged to urge me over the edge into a well-reasoned, well-supported strategy. Thanks to the poor example of loved ones with crumbling health, the good example of others achieving better things on a clean diet, and a few inspiring resources I begin a serious study of this complex and intimidating topic of nutrition – and particularly, whole-food-plant-based nutrition.
I have kept fairly quiet about it so far because there is so much yet to learn and test out. I feel I have only scratched the surface and net yet sure how to organize and simplify it all for your benefit. But I can say that I feel wonderful – light and clean – even after moving back to the very junky American food scene. I say ‘mostly’ plant-based because I do maintain some flexibility to choose the best options available to me at any given moment, when my options are less than ideal. And fasting remains one of those options when the others are bleak.
I love the way my body feels so I am highly motivated to protect it. The system feels clean enough at this point that if I ‘splurge’ I soon feel the unpleasant effects of less-ideal foods that I wouldn’t have noticed when those were more regular part of my diet – my nervous system is more clear and sensitive now. Purity has that effect.
I am feeling strong and am training (swimming and running) at a higher level than I have in years. I slimmed down even more yet compensated with more lean muscle mass. My immune system is robust. I avoid processed sugar and I very rarely drink caffeine – yet I have consistent energy and alertness through my day. I see many ways I could improve my nutrition further – I anticipate this with eagerness rather than with reluctance. Though it was initially a bit complicated to set up a new eating lifestyle against the flow of our culture, I really appreciate the simplicity in mind that my decisiveness about plant-based nutrition has brought. And, I’ve found a growing tribe of plant-based people to be encouraged by.
I need to point out that there is more to the essential health equation – like sleeping patterns and breathing habits, for example – but I understand nutrition to be a massive player in this. It’s the one area that we make choices about several times a day and so easy to make small but powerful improvements in… if we would only slow down enough to be aware of what our patterns really are, then get guidance and accountability for making better choices.
The Myth Of Moderation
What troubled me about that billboard is that is has become so glaringly bright and crystal clear from a wide range of authorities on nutrition and healing: no, we cannot exercise enough to compensate for a crappy nutrition. And splurge days only serve to support the addictions. We cannot workout harder to earn freedom from consequence to splurge on junk food occasionally. If we eat foods that cause more metabolic stress, we will pay the price for it somewhere, somehow. In this modern world with deeply compromised and dirty food supplies, that drag on the metabolism, organs and immune systems adds up. They all seem to work fine until one day we wake up and they don’t. It all gets accounted for one day when the body starts failing well before it should have, and it’s quite difficult to make up for lost time then.
A few months ago my friend and colleague-in-health-promotion was giving a presentation on better nutrition. I was there to support him and sat with some other fitness trainers in the audience. After all he said on the consequences of eating poor foods, one trainer gave the classic defense of her questionable habits: “Well, it’s all about moderation, isn’t it?”
No, it’s not. Moderation is a wicked policy when the baseline we measure against is already a disaster. The policy of moderation in America is killing us sooner than we should die, but slow enough that we don’t notice until its too late. The evidence of this fiction is all around us.
Stack The Deck
However, health is a statistical game – there are several things I can’t control and can’t foresee that may sink my boat, but there are a ton of things I can do to stack my deck in favor of longevity. Eating tacos and pizza is not one of them.
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would you mind giving some specifics on what you do eat? thanks
I started by just removing meat (I still occasionally eat fish when I sense my body needing more protein, but not often). Maybe a year later I drastically reduced dairy products and eggs. To replace the way those fill up the tummy, I eat a lot of beans, lentils, whole grains (brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat) as the base for many meals, and make sauces to go on top. I have a fruit/veggie green smoothy every morning and a bowl of oatmeal infused with other stuff. Sometimes I fry a few slices of tofu with some spices. I make a big salad for lunch most days. I’ve got raw nuts and dried fruit in my car, in my snack bag, on the kitchen counter. I kinda prefer things to be simple and routine, and so I just equipped my kitchen with all the supplies I needed and established new routines, and now I don’t have to put so much thought into what I make each day. I make big batches of beans in the pressure cooker, bake big batches of sweet potatoes, and make big batches of soups (I love soups!) and store portions in the freezer. I create my own ‘fast’ food. I am content to eat leftovers for a couple days.
I recently immersed myself in this highly controversial subject of nutrition. Even though my specific conclusions are slightly different than yours, the general approach is similar, including the flexibility. Sometimes, I worry that I am too preoccupied with this topic, but if the alternative is the norm around us, than I prefer to err in this direction. Some say that this preoccupation is driven by an irrational need to avoid death. I prefer to think of it as a rational attempt to stay healthy until that event arrives.
I think the resistance to thinking about nutrition is more suspicious than the interest in the topic, now that I can view my position on both sides of the situation.
I agree, we can accept that death will come, and then choose to make the experience unto that point better. The interest in improving quality of life unto the end is not necessarily joined with a desire to avoid death. A person’s unwillingness to lift a finger to improve quality of life through daily food choices – when the knowledge of what to do and how to do this is readily available to everyone – is really what should be examined as extraordinary and strange. It is likely that your occupation with this topic makes others feel less comfortable about their denial of responsibility for their own health.
Did you have to adjust to feeling hungry much of the time? Or do you feel satiated from eating this way?
When I’m on my game, I allow myself to finish a meal feeling not quite full. After a while the hunger fades. And I feel I can do other things besides feeling too full and under the influence of what I ate.
But if I eat only plants I feel hungry and distracted much of the time. Maybe there’s a way to slowly ease into it?
I did notice that satiation by plants feels a bit different than satiation by animal products, and once I could define it this way I could then train myself to be satisfied with being full with plants.
Another part of this is that I realized my body was craving nutrients more than calories, and if I supplied more nutrients my body didn’t crave as many calories. If the calories we eat are nutrient-poor, then the body will keep craving food until it gets the nutrients. This mistake I made was interpreting the craving as ‘more mass’ (more calories), but once I started experimenting with first filling myself with nutrient-rich foods, I found the cravings subsided. This was a profound shift in my understanding and habits.
And, another part of this is that the less I confuse my brain with artificial, stress-inducing ‘food’ substances the more I can trust the cravings of my body to tell me what I need to eat. The more I purify my diet, the more sensitive I become to the subtle signals and the more I experiment the better I am at interpreting and supplying the right materials at the right time.
I re-iterate that I do occasionally eat fish when I feel my body wants a bit more protein. But this is not often – maybe once in two weeks. I don’t feel bad if I eat an organic egg from time to time, but I prefer tofu or to fill up on more protein-laden whole grains. I am not religious about it, but I do have a bullseye of what I believe to be best for my body and I am highly motivated to stay close to that as I reasonably can.
I only started flossing about a decade ago when I got “educated” about it. Interestingly, my cavities all occurred during this. Recently, the medical community has now affirmed that flossing does nothing.
At some point, it would prudent the expert to contemplate the notion that how you feel and how you feel about what you eat, play an intergral role. They are part of your diet. I do believe that the stress and attitude are also key and paramount in westernized societies.
I remember when eggs where really bad and now they are good for you. (My body composition fat, lean mass etc., is what some would call excellent.) I try not to get too caught in these “findings” from experts.
If I feel I need to be awake, then caffeine serves as a tool to keep me awake for that instant. But I do concur with the notion of healthy and natural foods being ingested.