Breaking Down Diet Myths: Embracing Mindful Eating for a Healthier You Today

Are you tired of the endless cycle of diets myths that promise results but leave you feeling confused and defeated? Join host Heather Carey, a passionate nutritionist and chef, in this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories, where she dives deep into the pitfalls of popular diets and emphasizes the importance of making peace with food. Heather shares her own personal food journey, revealing how her struggles with dieting negatively impacted her mental health and self-esteem, a reality many women can relate to, especially during midlife and menopause.

As she unpacks the latest diet myths or trends, including the keto diet, intermittent fasting, and glucose monitoring, Heather offers valuable nutrition advice that cuts through the noise of diet myths and food fads. These diets often present themselves as revolutionary solutions, but Heather argues they are merely repackaged methods of calorie restriction that can lead to more harm than good. With her expert insights, she encourages listeners to recognize the confusion these trends can create and to prioritize their well-being over fleeting diet fads that promise quick fixes.

Throughout the episode, you’ll gain healthy eating tips that empower you to develop a more sustainable relationship with food instead of diet myths. Heather advocates for larger meals, mindful eating practices, and the importance of recognizing emotional hunger, all while fostering a positive mindset towards food beliefs and culture. This episode is not just about nutrition; it’s a heartfelt call to action for women navigating the complexities of midlife health.

Discover how to embrace a healthy lifestyle that aligns with your body’s needs and trust your instincts when it comes to eating. With Heather’s culinary nutrition expertise, you’ll learn practical cooking techniques that promote wellness and family food traditions that can enrich your meals. From debunking weight loss myths to exploring the Mediterranean diet insights, this episode of Real Food Stories is a treasure trove of knowledge for anyone looking to cultivate a healthier relationship with food.

Tune in and let Heather guide you on a journey of personal food stories, encouraging you to break free from the shackles of diet culture and embrace a nourishing, fulfilling life. Your body deserves it!

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hi, everybody, and welcome back. Or if you’re just tuning in with me for the first time, it’s so nice to finally meet you at the Real Food Stories podcast, and I’m so glad you are here with me. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relationship to health, weight, in our bodies so you can finally make peace with what you eat. If you have been listening to me for all these past episodes, you might have come to the conclusion that I shun diets. And yes, you are absolutely right. If you are looking for the next magic eating bullet, I don’t think that you are going to find that here. But I can safely say… that if you are looking to make peace with food and move away from the punishing trickery of diets, you are definitely in the right place. I do not believe in diets. I have had years of personal experience going on and off diets that felt so shaming and just simply unkind. I have also listened to too many stories of clients, friends, and families is on and off their own diets, never feeling good enough, or just like they failed themselves. I’ve done too much work on myself and with my clients to ever tell myself or anyone else to try the latest way of eating. There’s definitely a better way, and it doesn’t have to come from an expensive diet plan or supplements that you need to buy. When you start to really pay attention, like I do, to the trends out there, it can be really eye-opening. Honestly, just when I think there is absolutely nothing more that can be turned into a diet, it happens. It’s unbelievable. There’s so many versions of losing weight and the quote-unquote right way to eat, as if these social media gurus have discovered another planet or something. It’s all food. It’s all calorie restriction repackaged up in pretty bows and ribbons. Even I can get temporarily dazzled with new diets because every once in a blue moon, something surfaces and it does make me wonder, is this the next best way of eating? So many diets are such a disaster. And add on to that. the obesity rates, diabetes, and heart disease numbers going through the roof, that something seems like it has to give. And then I come back to reality and remember that food is just not that complicated. The way you want to eat is right in front of you, hiding in plain sight. There is a very simple way to eat for a seemingly very complicated problem, And it’s just really not. that difficult. I talk about this a lot in past episodes, and we will always continue to talk about the right way to simply eat. But in my mission to debunk diets, I wanted to cover a few of the latest trends today and how to look for the red flags of diets so you know how to stay far away from them. I’m going to cover and hopefully answer all of those burning questions you may have about some of the latest diet trends. They are ever-changing, just by the way, so the trends I talk about today might not even be a thing tomorrow. But nonetheless, let’s get started. Now, I have a list of diets, and by no means is this list exhaustive. Seriously, every time I think it is the end of diets because there is absolutely nothing else to eliminate, add in. cut out, reduce. Just like magic, a new diet pops up. It makes my job really exciting and actually keeps me on my toes with what will come up next. Well, as of the recording of this podcast, here is what is on my radar right now, and I’ll pick some of the highlights. I actually wasn’t even sure if I was going to talk about the keto diet or paleo. Because there’s so many versions of these. types of diets now and offshoots. And they almost seem like yesterday’s news compared to some of the newer things that are coming up. Are people losing interest in these diets? Have they become unsustainable? Probably. But we are going to talk a little bit about keto because it is probably more of a newer diet than the paleo diets, which are high protein diets. So let me define what the keto diet is. In case you don’t have any idea, it sounds alluring to a lot of people. It sounds like, you know, just the next magic bullet. When I was in my clinical nutrition program years ago, the keto diet was discovered as a medical diet for people with epilepsy. Researchers back then found that a high-fat diet was effective for controlling seizures, and that was great news. Until it was discovered by others that you could also lose weight on this diet. So here’s how it works. 90% of your calories come from fat in order to use fat as your main energy source. Now, our brains and our bodies need carbohydrates from whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables as their main fuel source. But when you deprive your body of carbs, you force it to use another energy source. Using fat primarily puts your body into a state of ketosis, which can take days to achieve, by the way, and is very, very tricky to maintain. Okay, remember, 90% of your calories come from fat. So divide up the rest and you have about 5%. from protein, and 5% from carbohydrates. So if you eat a 2,000 calorie diet a day, for example, that’s about 100 carbohydrate calories. That is nothing. That is about one medium banana. You lose weight on this type of diet because when you deprive your brain of carbohydrates, it thinks you are starving. Yes, starving. Remember, you need carbohydrates to fuel your brain. Your brain then starts to use stored fat to live on. But are you really living on this type of diet? There’s so many side effects that can occur. Potential liver problems, kidney problems, fuzzy thinking, mood swings, and fatigue are just a few of them to start. Not to mention your lifestyle. This is a true diet. This is a classic. Everyone can eat what they want. I am on a diet because I have to eat a couple of avocados and sticks of butter for dinner tonight. You can’t easily eat what everyone else is eating around you. Why go through all the trouble with this diet to try and lose weight? By the way, ketosis is a physical state that you must maintain to continue losing weight. Once you waver from the proportions of fat, to carbohydrates to protein, you lose the ketosis benefits. So when I first heard that the keto diet was becoming a thing, I literally almost quit my job. I thought there couldn’t be anything worse than the keto diet. It’s a medical diet and doesn’t sound like any fun whatsoever. I felt really disheartened knowing that people were so confused with food. and so unwilling to put in the dedication to themselves that they would choose this way of eating. Nonetheless, keto doesn’t appear on my radar as much anymore because I believe that it is completely unsustainable and people are catching on to that. And there’s newer diets that have pushed the keto down the list a little bit. So the next best diet right now is intermittent fasting. And there are many, many versions of this. Just when I thought that there is nothing else to eliminate, like carbs from the keto diet, in walked a diet that just really eliminates everything. Intermittent fasting basically tells you just to stop eating food. Like I said, there have been many, many versions of this diet. Some versions have you skipping full days of food, like the 5-2 diet, which is you Five days of eating, two days of fasting. Other versions have you eliminating food during certain times of the day and only eat, for example, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. The theory behind intermittent fasting is that when you stop eating during certain days or certain times of the day, you stop producing insulin. Insulin, in basic terms, is the hormone that converts excess carbohydrates into fat that you can store and use for a later time as fuel. Now, I can understand this theory. especially when it comes to mindless eating. There are many people who simply eat all day long. We live in a very, very mindless, quick gratification society. So they might start out with a small breakfast and then have a mid-morning snack, a salad for lunch. They probably get starving by midday because they’re eating, but they’re not eating. enough calories until then. So they have another snack. And then there’s maybe a little nibbling before dinner and then dinner. And then there is what I call the, quote, I deserve these calories, like ice cream, cookies, chips, one more glass of wine before I go to bed. Because your day has been long and hard and you are looking for a break and food. soothe you. I get it. Think about how you eat through your day. And if this feels like you, and trust me, you are not alone, then your insulin levels are on high alert all day long, and you are likely eating much more than you need, and the excess is going to get stored as fat. In the era of food confusion, intermittent fasting, just like the keto diet, gives you a strict set of rules to follow. And when we are at a loss as to how to lose weight and just confused, I can understand the logic. But rather than having to tell your friends and family, again, that you are not allowed to sit down for dinner with them because you’re not allowed to eat past 6 p.m., let’s try this. Number one, eat your meals and make those meals bigger. not the size of your snacks. So meals rather than snacks. Number two, let your body and your insulin rest in between meals. No more snacking. If you eat enough at breakfast, you should be more than prepared to sustain yourself until lunchtime. If you eat enough at lunch, you should be really okay by dinner and you should eat on the earlier side. Eat when you are hungry rather than snacking through the rest of your day. So in short, you should not be hungry if you ate enough during your meals. And finally, let’s quit the late night snacking habit. Let’s recognize our emotional hunger. Okay, let’s recognize the need for wanting to eat to soothe ourselves. And recognize that the time after dinner until breakfast is fasting. We fast. That is what breakfast means. You’re breaking the fast. So to sum it up, eat during the day and not at night. Eat meals and not snacks. Now, of course, there cannot be one diet without the offshoots and the knockoffs of the original. Like I said, there’s different versions of intermittent fasting. But one offshoot diet that is interesting to me that I have seen from intermittent fasting I mean… is the circadian rhythm diet that guides you to follow your internal clock, as in eat during daylight hours, then fast, or in other words, simply don’t eat at night. This is based on the theory that your body metabolizes food differently at different times of the day. Our circadian rhythms are our internal body clock. And it is something we really do need to be paying attention to. Hormones and body temperature rise and fall all during our days. Digestion slows down at night, and we naturally want to be awake during the daylight and sleeping at night. We have been doing this for thousands of years. When we stay awake too late or sleep during daylight hours, it can really affect our health and our well-being. back. Back when we were hunters and gatherers, humans relied heavily on daylight hours for procuring food and for nighttime to rest. In today’s time, we are truly all over the map, snacking until midnight while binging Netflix, our stress causing insomnia. We have really messed up these rhythms. So while focusing on the natural rhythms of our bodies is incredibly important for health and illness prevention, let’s make this easy on ourselves by making it a priority to get at least seven to nine hours of sleep a night and making dinner your last meal of the day. Give your body a chance to rest at night. But speaking of insulin and fat storage, the next crazy diet that I wanted to bring up was the glucose monitoring diet. This is the one where you wear a glucose monitor that needs to be inserted into your skin and worn continuously. This is with the goal, again, of watching insulin levels and eating accordingly. Now, if you have diabetes, this is absolutely a requirement. This is why glucose monitoring devices were even created in the first place. You need to know your insulin levels and when and how much insulin to take during the day. But what if you don’t have diabetes? Should we be monitoring our blood sugar levels as closely? Does this matter for health and weight loss? Are we again taking something that was for medical use and turning it into our next fad? diet. Now, blood sugar levels are important for weight and health, but if you don’t have diabetes, you will likely not have that much fluctuation in your blood sugar, not to mention the cost of the continuous glucose monitors that will gouge you for hundreds of dollars. Please save your money. To say that we need to monitor our blood sugar levels like this is simply elitist, in my personal opinion, and totally misinformed. But to constantly watch your blood sugar levels can give you the illusion of being in control, just like intermittent fasting when you have to be in between a set hours of eating. And with so much diet confusion, this can be totally understandable. And when you see diet gurus and medical professionals clicking themselves with their monitors, it can be very tempting to follow suit. There are so many other diets that are all just seeming to overlap on each other. High-protein diets such as paleo and Whole30 seem like old-timers at this point. Supplements that promise to promote weight loss, such as Provitalize or Activated, are full of fear and scarcity. And of course, the old-time weight loss programs such as Weight Watchers, in which you count points, Jenny Craig, which gives you packaged food, or portion fix, which makes you allot your food into a bunch of different sized containers. Simply put, and good news, there is a diet for every food fear and confusion. Okay, so I want to save you from going on a diet, but if you feel like you must spend your precious money and time following one, let’s talk about some warning signs to look for before purchasing a diet planner book. So here are my… red flags for all things diet. Number one red flag are testimonials of people telling you what a mess they were or how out of control their weight was or their lives or how they struggled before they found their brand new diet. Let me tell you something, testimonials are not, are not science. Before and after pictures of overweight women who then transform into supermodels are not evidence that a diet works. I don’t even know if these people are real or if they’re just paid participants. Before and afters play on your emotions and your heartstrings. This is one of the oldest marketing tactics around. You can relate to their pain and struggle. You know what it feels like to feel overweight and be in struggle. The I am just like you makes you want to buy the diet. So be warned of that first red flag. Number two of the red flags of diets is witnessing the transformation, the turning point of how this said person lost weight or resolved their gut issues or have boundless energy now, and they just want to share it with you. It worked for them. Therefore, it has to be has to work for you. If they can do it, you can do it too. They might throw in words like, imagine, imagine yourself having lost the weight, feeling great, running down the beach in your bikini. Picture yourself living your best life because you finally lost the weight and life is so much better when you diet. No, but okay. Again, classic marketing tactic. Okay, so numbers three and four of the red flags of diets is the science to support the diet and the professionals who supposedly support this science. Remember when I said that Personal testimonies are not scientific studies and prove nothing. One person’s story does not mean that a diet is worthy of anything. Well, the same goes with all of those tiny studies that they try to attach to some of these diets to prove their point, like studies done on mice. Mice are not human beings. Or studies that maybe had five people in them. That doesn’t really make a credible study. The media also loves grabbing your attention with those go-nowhere studies such as saying butter is back. Remember that one? Oh, we can eat a stick of saturated fat again? No. That study was done in relation to heart disease, and it failed to talk about the relationship of sugar and processed foods. The takeaway was that you should limit sugar consumption. That was really what was the direct correlation to heart disease. But that doesn’t mean that saturated fat is not related to heart disease. That’s very well known. But they wanted to make it sound like sugar was the culprit. And therefore, let’s go have a party and have our saturated fat again. And speaking of science, there are… many, many doctors who sell a lot of unscientific diets. These doctors are not stupid. Having an MD after your name immediately qualifies you for legitimacy. And it’s dumbfounding to me how doctors such as Mark Hyman or Dr. Oz can write books and sell products on just about everything and get away with it. Whatever the latest trend, they are putting out a book about it. and selling the shakes, pills, and potions to go along with it. Doctors are very influential. We trust our doctors, right? So when a doctor writes a book, why wouldn’t it be credible? But they are out to make money just like every diet seller there is. But the most puzzling are the celebrities who endorse products and say they have done the research as if they are now medical professionals. I’m sorry, but attending conferences and getting online certificates does not make you a professional. Doctors and celebrities talk about resolving and fixing problems that in reality could be caused by hundreds of different issues. Things like digestive issues, energy, bloating, weight gain, hormone imbalance, brain fog, toxins are among some of the vague scare tactics to watch for. And my final red flag is… diets that eliminate whole food groups, such as the keto diet with carbohydrates, or that eliminate ingredients like gluten or dairy that have really no evidence to support their findings. The diet also wants you to eliminate these bad foods through buzzwords like detoxing, cleansing, clean eating, willpower, or my favorite, fast results. To sum up, I think you can see by now that diets are not for the weak of heart. They can be full of promises and loaded with disappointment. The big diets right now, as of this podcast recording, keto, intermittent fasting, and glucose monitoring are alluring. They tell you exactly what to do, and they make big guarantees. There’s so much research that needs to be done. And while… They are full of those red flags I spoke about, the elusive testimonials, the before and after pictures, the celebrity and medical endorsements, the extra money for the plan and the potions. You will likely spend a lot of money, time, and energy and disappointment when the diet fails you. because they almost always do. Thanks so much for listening today. And as always, if you have any thoughts on today’s topic, please feel free to leave a comment to continue the discussion. Also, if you loved this podcast, do not hesitate to rate and review. I would love it. Have a great week and bye for now. um