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Excerpt: Runaway Eating:
The 8-Point Plan to Conquer Adult Food & Weight Obsessions
- By Cynthia M. Bulik, Ph.D., & Nadine Taylor, M.S., R.D.
Are All Diets Unhealthy?
Want the short answer? Yes.
Now, you may be
thinking, "If I don't stay on some kind of diet, I'll just blow up like a balloon. I need to be on a program just to keep
control of myself."
But consider that
any kind of dieting involves a diet mentality, which ensures failure, encourages you to ignore hunger & satiety signals
& promotes a negative relationship with food, because you have to give up "forbidden" foods & often, eat foods you
don't really like.
This inevitably results
in giving in, which often means bingeing & feeling terrible about yourself. So, though this idea may sound radical, we
firmly believe there's no good diet.
By "diet," we mean
the conscious restriction of the amounts or kind of foods you're allowed to eat for the express purpose of losing weight.
A diet is something that you go on when you want to change your body & go off once you've reached a certain goal.
Though we certainly do
endorse consuming a wide variety of healthful foods, paying attention to portion sizes & thinking twice before
eating a lot of foods that are high in calories but low in nutrition, we don't recommend following any kind of plan that tells
you what, how much & how often you should eat, without regard for your body's hunger & satiety signals.
And we definitely don't
recommend any eating plan that you go on & then go off.
Although it may sound
surprising, the negative effects of dieting also hold true even if you aren't following a formal diet but still think
like a dieter.
If you count grams of
fat, opt for high-protein foods while shunning carbs, rely on "safe" foods, beat yourself up for eating "bad" foods,
consciously or unconsciously undereat (which can trigger overeating later),
use diet soft drinks or coffee to quell your hunger, or decide what you can eat based on what you've already eaten today,
you're dieting.
The Physical & Psychological Effects of Dieting
Have
you ever noticed that as soon as you go on a diet, all you want to do is eat?
Even if you weren't particularly concerned about
food prior to dieting, all of a sudden you become obsessed with it.
You find yourself preoccupied with what you'll have
for your next meal, whether you can have a snack, what others are eating, or even what you'll allow yourself to eat tomorrow.
What's going on?
The mind & the body are inextricably linked & never is this more apparent than when you go
on a diet.
Geared to survive during feast or famine, both body
& mind switch into survival mode when the food supply is radically diminished.
While the body turns down the metabolism & becomes
a "slow burner" in an attempt to hang on to every single calorie, the mind gears itself to one overriding purpose: getting
food. The result?
Suddenly, you may find yourself clipping recipes,
planning menus, cooking elaborate meals or dishes for others (neither of which you'll eat yourself), or even dreaming about
food at night.
The message is clear: Your body wants food
& your mind does, too.
After a few days of extremely restricting your food, you'll probably become more depressed
& anxious.
Although this may be due to changes in neurotransmitters
like serotonin, it may also occur because you're depriving yourself of things that are very pleasurable that aren't replaced
by anything else - leaving a pleasure void.
You may suddenly prefer to spend more time alone
- it takes too much energy to deal with others - & your self-esteem may start to drop.
Unfortunately, the more depressed, anxious &
isolated you become, the more you'll obsess about food.
Some people can hold out longer than others, but the result
is eventually the same: a binge. You eat something you "shouldn't," which makes you feel as if you've blown it. So you let
go & eat.
During the binge you feel relief - at last you can
relax & do what you've wanted to do all along.
But you may also feel as if you're in a trance &
can't stop yourself. It's almost as if your body has developed a will of its own; it's going to feed itself whether you like
it or not.
As a result, you can end up eating more food in one
sitting than you ever did when you weren't dieting.
Are you crazy? Absolutely not.
This is a normal, even healthy reaction to a period of semi-starvation, a reaction that made good sense during primitive times.
After a period of famine, it was natural & necessary
for our ancient ancestors to overeat. They needed to be able to take advantage of a feast when they had the chance, because
the food supply was uncertain.
To make this possible, their appetites increased
after a period of famine.
So the same amount of food that would have satisfied
them during times of plenty left them feeling hungry after a period of semi-starvation. The same thing happens to you when
you restrict food.
Suddenly, you develop the urge & the capacity
to binge & you no longer feel satisfied after eating what you used to consider a normal meal.
In short, restrictive dieting can trigger binges
& leave you hungry even after you've eaten normal amounts of food.
This is true for most Runaway Eaters & even for
those dieters who don't develop Runaway Eating problems.
The
psychological consequences of dieting were clearly illustrated in a classic study
of the effects of semi-starvation done in 1950 by Ancel Keys, Ph.D., & his colleagues at the Univ. of Minnesota.
In the study,
36 healthy, young, psychologically sound males were observed over a period of 1 year.
During the first 3 months,
the men ate normal amounts of food; during the next 6 months, they were given half as much food & during the last 3 months,
their food allotment was gradually increased.
During the semi-starvation
period, the men became preoccupied with food & constantly talked about it, read cookbooks, clipped recipes &
daydreamed about eating.
When a meal was served,
many took an inordinately long time to eat it, trying to make it last. Over time, the men became extremely depressed, anxious
& irritable.
Once they made it thru the period of semi-starvation, the men ate
nearly continuously, with some indulging in 8,000 to 10,000 calorie binges.
The men reported
that their hunger actually increased right after meals & some of them continued to eat to the point of being sick without
feeling satisfied.
Although most of
the men finally reverted to normal eating patterns within 5 months of the study's end, some continued with their new patterns
of "extreme overconsumption."
We see these same patterns in
dieters:
-
the preoccupation with food
-
the anxiety, depression
-
irritability
-
the tendency to go off the diet & eat more than one would have in the pre-diet days
-
a propensity toward bingeing even after the diet has ended
Reprinted from: Runaway
Eating: The 8-Point Plan to Conquer Adult Food and Weight Obsessions by Cynthia M. Bulik, Ph.D., and Nadine Taylor, M.S.,
R.D. © 2005 Cynthia M. Bulik, Ph.D., and Nadine Taylor, M.S., R.D. (January 2005; $14.95US/$20.95CAN; 1-59486-038-6) Permission
granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098. Available wherever books are sold or directly from the publisher by calling (800)
848-4735 or visit their website at www.rodalestore.com
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Does calorie restriction lead to weight loss? - By Rajesh Shetty
Yes and no. Moderate calorie restriction helps in controlling and
getting rid of fat to a certain extent.
In fact the so called low carbohydrate diets are low calorie diets.
Research
proves that the weight loss in these weight loss programs is on account of calorie restriction and not due to the virtues
of a low carbohydrate-high protein diet.
But the real fact about these diets is.. calorie restriction is bad for health.
Firstly,
these diet plans induce ketosis which according to many experts is bad for health.
Secondly, calorie restriction deprives
the vital organs like lever, thyroid and adrenals etc. of required nutrition.
What this means in effect is, the very
organs which are supposed to burn fat and keep you lean and healthy are making you sick because of wrong diet!
The
reason? Well, very simple...
Say for example, you eat 1200 calories of fruit daily,-which is very good for the fat
burning and filtering organs in your body. Now,if you suddenly you reduce it by 500 calories...what is the result? deprivation.
Now let's take another scenario..you are regularly eating 1500 calories of fast food(processed foods) and you bring
it down by 500..result? great!
These junk foods were causing damage to your organs and a shift in your diet pattern
wiill increase the efficiency of your body's fat burning organs.
So, you will see that it's not calorie restriction
alone that was responsible for weight loss in the above example, the restriction of unwanted processed foods in your diet
has a more profound effect on your health and weight loss goals.
You can get more cutting edge fat burning secrets
in my Free 5 day email e-course by subscribing to my newsletter at: www.eweightlosstips.com
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Its Not What You Eat but How Much
By Rob. Jager
Most people who set out to lose weight will usually do two things to achieve their
goal. They'll try to eat less food & at the same time switch from so-called "bad" to "good" food "Burgers & Fries"
are swapped for "Lettuce & Lentils" in an effort to get the weight down.
Lifestyle changes
of this magnitude will of course have to be made in the long term, but in the initial stages of weight loss it may not be
the best approach.
The first priority for people who live in affluent Western societies,
where food is available in such abundance, is to cut down on the amount of food they eat rather than change the type. The
sheer volume of food consumed, both "good" & "bad" is the first problem that needs to be dealt with.
Yes, we do eat the wrong food a lot of the time, but unless the amount of food eaten is dealt with we will not
lose weight. A person can lose weight by eating less of their normal diet but they can't lose weight when they over-consume,
whether it be "good" or "bad" food.
It's therefore a better approach, initially,
to reduce the amount of food consumed rather than make radical changes to the type. Large amounts of weight can be lost using
this strategy & you will be more comfortable doing it. For all their bad press, fat & sugar are very effective at
satisfying hunger and providing energy so a sudden switch to "Lettuce & Lentils" is going to leave you feeling mighty
hungry & lacking in energy.
When the habit of eating less has become ingrained
the shift to foods that'll help you to maintain the weight loss can commence. This will mean seeking out & experimenting
with foods that deliver similar hunger satisfaction & energy to the "bad" food that you used to consume. This becomes
a priority when the type of food eaten is changed because the amount of energy available is going to be lessened by both the
reduction in volume & change of food type..
Making changes to your overall diet
in a gradual manner allows you to investigate which foods satisfy your hunger & energy requirements best. Low G.I. is
an obvious way to go, but so are nuts, fresh & dried fruits, raw vegetable sticks & other food of this order. When
changes are made in this way the tiredness & irritability that can result from a reduction in food consumption can be
avoided.
Experimenting with food in this manner will also enable you to adjust your
diet to what best suits you rather than impose a "one-size-fits-all" regime upon yourself. This in turn will result in lifestyle
changes that you should be able to live with to maintain long term weight loss.
We
should also keep in mind that there are no "bad" foods as such. It's the amount they're consumed in that makes them "bad"
We need some fat & sugar in our diets so leave room for the occassional indulgence because your body & psyche need
them. As I said earlier, it's the amount more than the type that is the cause of our problems.
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