Freedom from the Diet Trap: Slim for Life. Jason Vale

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СКАЧАТЬ on a plate next to her. To be honest I was quite glad because I know what a complete waste of mental torture time diets are. I asked her if she was still on her diet (assuming she wasn’t) and to my surprise she said ‘yes’. I said what about the half-eaten cake? What I heard next has gone down in history: ‘It’s okay’, she explained ‘because I weighed myself before I ate it and I weighed myself afterwards and guess what? – there was not an ounce of difference’. I wish I was joking, but that really is a true story.

      I realize that most people haven’t done something as bats as that in order to justify their intake of food, but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of perfectly intelligent people going places on a weekly basis and actually paying for someone to weigh them – paying for someone to tell them what is already painfully obvious to them and everyone else. Although it may not seem like it at first glance, weighing yourself all the time is certainly on a par with the half a cake thing.

      I went to Weight Watchers many years ago for a couple of meetings. The ‘leader’ was actually very good. But seriously, what the hell were we all doing there? We were standing in line waiting to be weighed. At the time I attended if someone had lost weight from the week before, they would ring a bell and the group would do what I call a ‘Ricky Lake’; they would literally clap and yell. Now I am all for encouraging and giving praise, but what about those who hadn’t lost any weight. You feel bad enough as it is going in to one of those places – the last thing you need is to be made an object of pity. I am aware that Weight Watchers no longer do the bell thing, but they do still weigh you, along with nearly every other diet group.

      Scales chain you to a diet mentality and they can be deceptive. Sometimes people look slimmer and feel healthier, but when they jump on the scales they see little or no change and so start to feel depressed. But we should sod the scales, it’s how you look and feel that is the real measure of success. What many people fail to take into account, and the reason I am so against the antiquated BMI scale, is that:

      Fat takes up five times more room on the body than muscle but muscle is a lot heavier than fat

      If you drop fat but increase your muscle, your scales could well stay the same, but your shape is so much thinner. Weight is not the issue, it’s all about the physical shape you are in. To free yourself of diet mentality you will also need to free yourself from the scales. Go for the ‘look and feel’ measure of success, it’s a lot more accurate. Throwing away your scales can be one of the most liberating processes in gaining freedom from the diet trap.

      We not only use scales to weigh ourselves, but also to weigh the food we eat in order to try to control our calories – and again we have been doing this for so long we don’t question the sanity of it. But seriously, what are we doing? You don’t ever see a gorilla weigh bananas before it eats them to check it’s not overeating and you certainly never see a squirrel weighing its nuts (OK perhaps a bad analogy).

      ‘A CALORIE IS A CALORIE’ IS A LOAD OF OLD TOSH

      The problem is that we have seen people doing these things for years so we just tend to follow suit without questioning what we are doing. Calories are a great example. Calories are one of if not the most meaningless gauges for health we have ever obsessed over. Unfortunately, the ‘how many calories does that contain’ mantra is so ingrained in us, that many people find it difficult to nigh on impossible to let it go. What is a calorie anyway? Do you know? Does anyone who hasn’t studied this subject in depth know? It’s actually the amount of energy (heat) needed to raise one gram of water by one degree centigrade. In other words – we really don’t need to know. Again there is not one wild animal alive that knows how many calories are in the food they are eating for the same simple reason – they do not need to know. They don’t know the recommended daily calorie intake for a female or male version of their species either, they just seem to know what to do – how very odd. I wouldn’t mind if the amount of calories we consume is a guaranteed way of controlling obesity, but it isn’t. Between 1976 and 2000, Americans lowered their fat consumption by 11 per cent and also lowered their calorie intake by 4 per cent. Yet what has happened to the weight of that particular nation? Obesity has risen by 31 per cent in the same period, proving two major misconceptions:

      A) The fat you eat doesn’t add up to fat on you, and

      B) The more calories one eats doesn’t always mean more fat on you

      I do realize that because we have been in the ‘calories are king’ mentality for so long there will no doubt be many people (particularly those in the nutritional field) who will be barking at the book at this moment. I did say an open mind was required for this book and that I would be challenging some strong beliefs. The point, however, is not so much to disprove the calorie theory, but to illustrate the nonsense of it all: intelligent humans staring at packets of snacks at lunch time declaring to whoever will listen its calorie content. In truth, knowing about calories, even if it were true, hasn’t got us anywhere. Other than obsession and obesity.

      If you are thinking that we are better off knowing about all aspects of nutrition and calories, ask yourself why? We apparently know more about ‘nutrition’ now than ever in history, yet heart disease is still the number one killer disease in Western society and we suffer from more self inflicted diseases than any wild animal on earth.

      We not only worry about this nutrition ‘stuff’ but industries have been built on our fears. We spend millions of pounds on vitamin and mineral tablets every year in the UK alone. And why are we popping pills and rattling down the street? Simply to try and counter the effects of the processed and de-natured food we are consuming. But what about the pills themselves, haven’t they also been processed in some way? Aren’t they also de-natured? I had a journalist from a famous magazine recently ask me as I was making a wonderful smoothie, ‘Is this a good replacement for vitamin pills?’ I thought she was joking, but no. It appears we are so far removed from nature that some people now think fresh fruit and veg are the ‘alternative’ to vitamin pills. I did point out that vitamin pills are indeed meant as an alternative to real nutrition, but it went completely over her head. I am not against all supplements or indeed all vitamin and mineral pills – with over farming unfortunately in twenty-first century Britain it’s often the only way to make up for the shortfall of vital minerals in our food. What I find crazy is the fact we have bastardised our food so much that we now have vitamin pills – when you think about it is kind of crazy. The danger here more than anything is that people believe as long as they get some vitamin pills down them they are free to eat crap. This is the real potential danger of such pills.

      Blinded by Science

      Did you know there are 40,000 phytochemicals in one tomato? What is a phytochemical? It’s a name for a vitamin that they haven’t formally named yet. Are there really 40,000 vitamins in one tomato? I don’t actually know and I don’t care because as long as I get it into my body, I don’t need to know. Who counted them anyway? Your body doesn’t care whether you call them vitamins, minerals, bioflavonoids, or zookinoids – it simply wants them and desperately needs them.

      Fruits and vegetables, as a whole, contain every single vitamin and mineral that we have found a name for and God knows how many more we haven’t. They apparently keep finding new and amazing disease-fighting agents in all fruit and veg. Recently they’ve discovered some real beauties. Ever heard of beta-carotene? Well now they’ve found alpha-carotene. They have also discovered phenols, indoles, aromatic isothiocyanates, terpenes, and organo-sulphur: all of which are part of the new category of ‘anutrients’. NEW? These scientists can shove together whatever letters they like but what they have found is far from new. They seem to want to get the credit for something nature produces. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds have been the same since the dawn of time and everything we need to furnish our bodies is to be found within them. СКАЧАТЬ