Living healthy bad for emotional health

What?

That can't be right.  Isn't it true that regular exercise, healthy eating, and regular healthy sleep will infuse you with a healthy vigour?

Isn't it true that as fitness increases and weight decreases you feel more confident in your health and experience an overall increase in happiness and self esteem?

Yes, those things are true.  Here's what else is true, it's another one of those elephants in the room..

Many people face social rejection, every day, for making healthy choices.

It's an interesting irony.  We're inundated with stories in the media about how we're harming ourselves with poor eating habits and lack of exercise.  We see success stories of how people turned their lives around, reducing their cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, and increased their fitness by living healthy.

We're inspired to do better, but when people start practicing what is preached, many face ridicule and rejection from others, even from friends and family.  People bear the burden of extra stress and humiliation for making healthy choices.  How healthy is that?  Shamed for trying to be healthy.  Now that's a real shame.

To be clear, there are positive stories where a family member decides to eat healthier and in so doing influences others in the family to start eating healthy as well.  Everybody wins there.

A client of mine recently told me about experiencing some stress about how this years family Christmas dinner was going to pan out.  They're making an honest effort to eat less and felt that the typical Xmas day pig out was going to be stressful for them.

They called a family meeting to talk about it.  Turns out the rest of the family was very supportive and revealed that they also wanted to eat less and reduce the amount of junk food consumed on Christmas day; they wanted the family time, minus the overeating.

That's positive.  I like hearing stories like that one.

Come on, eat like us. Join the party!

Eating this? Get lost loser!

I also hear people telling me that since they started eating healthy, that they've found most restaurants, with their high salt, high fat, high calorie meals, have extremely limited menu choices for healthy eating.

To overcome this the healthy eater needs to order off-menu.  That's when the eyes start rolling.  That's when the comments start, "why not treat yourself?  Just eat it the way it is.  It's not going to kill you."

The thing is, eating 100% more food than you need isn't a treat, it's a trap.  Many of those who get this and are trying to escape the daily cycle of overeating begetting more overeating, are faced with peer pressure to keep overeating, and face social rejection if they don't overeat.

I've had many people tell me about how stressed they feel when they go out for food with others or are invited to dinner in someones home.  The explain how they're singled out.  They become the laughing stock as low-ball jokes about them eating less are flung at them while the whole crowd has a laugh at their expense, which is typically followed up by them being told they should suck it up.

Eating healthy is like smoking; it's not socially acceptable in many occasions.

When you're eating a chicken salad and others are eating hot-dogs, it's not uncommon for the hot-dog eaters to wave their hot-dogs around saying, "Mmmmm.. you don't know what you're missing!  Sure you don't want one?  How's that rabbit food you're eating?"

Really?  How about not saying anything?  How about respecting others?  Or maybe simply say something positive, "hey that looks tasty".

I've seen so many people stop their efforts to eat healthy because the peer pressure was too much.  It's like you have to be a closet healthy eater.. don't tell anyone you eat low sodium nutrient dense food, shield yourself from the public humiliation.

That's not good.  Many folks are making an honest attempt to reverse poor health or risk of poor health, and many are trying hard to conquer eating disorders or occasional disordered eating where food is used to deal with stress.  For those trying to overcome these challenges (more than 70% of the population overeats daily), it's overwhelming to also deal with the ridicule for trying to do the right thing, so they stop trying, and their health remains at risk.

For many people being ridiculed for eating healthy isn't pleasant.  Why would it be?

When is ridicule and rejection a positive thing?

Humiliation and ridicule is an unfortunate human behavior.  It's something we have to learn to cope with, but does that mean that such behavior is justified?  I don't think so.  It happens, but when it comes from your family and friends, it carries more emotional impact.  Words can, and often do, hurt.

You would think that making healthy choices would be celebrated and supported, and often it is, but much of the time it isn't.

I think it's weird, and also unconscionable, to put all that effort into slagging someone for eating healthy or exercising.  I think those who do so have their own issues that they don't understand, and are definitely challenged when it comes to common courtesy and respect for others.

Overall it isn't worth succumbing to the trash-talk of others, even though it may feel like that's the easiest way to make to it stop.  If you're finding yourself in this position, it may be time to reflect on who your real friends are, as well as staying true to what's best for you and your health.  Your health is worth defending, and worth making lifestyle changes for.

Food police: banning junk food

You would think that with all yammering I do about how bad overeating is that I would be immediately in favor of junk food bans like the one being implemented in New York which limits the sale of servings larger than 16 oz soda's, or pop if you're Canada.

I say limits the sale because although you won't be able to indulge your preference for ginormous servings of pop from restaurants in New York City in a single serving, you will still be able to buy 32 oz'ers and more at supermarkets and convenience stores.  So yeah they call it a ban, but it's not as slash and burn as some are making it out to be.  You can still get 54 ounce of soda at 7-11. There is no ban at 7-11, where overeating is still very convenient.

You can simply order two or more 16oz soda's at the same time if you want, if you're in a restaurant where the 'ban' is.  So not really a ban.

Here are the nutrition facts for 16 and 32 oz servings of pop from nutritiondata.com
Lot's of sugar, only traces of nutrients.

16 fl oz, 470ml, about 2 cups

32 fl oz, 9.5 ml, about 4 cups

By today's standards 2 cups of pop is hardly considered ginormous, but it isn't necessarily a good thing to have become so complacent with consuming too much that we now regard over-serving as normal.

A person is still likely to order a pop like they normally would.

Some of the arguments for these bans:

Will limit overconsumption of pop for some people.

Will support the idea that drinking lot's of pop isn't really a good idea.

If people follow through, the average weight of people should decline over time improving the health of people and saving money on health care.

May start to cause the population to make changes in how they think about buying junk food, reducing the perceived need.

Some of the cons..

Nanny state interfering with freedom of choice.

No real eating behavior change will take place as people can still buy pop at other places.

That's all great about the pro's and con's.  Except that despite the uproar about nanny state, there isn't really a ban at all in NYC, if you understand the details of the ban.  So for those crying about their rights being taken away, this has not happend.  You can still order as much soda as you want, anywhere and anytime you want in New York City.

Ok, so there isn't really a ban on soda's in NYC.  It's a political move meant to get people thinking about what they're consuming, or so they say.

So what about that; and what about the actual idea of junk food bans?

Everyone who currently consumes too much will be healthier if they consume less and lose weight.  Healthcare costs will go down if the population becomes more healthy.

This really would happen if we ate less.

So how do we get there?  By forcing people?

We've all heard the argument that individuals can make their own choices, good or bad, and that people are smart enough to choose for themselves.

Might be smart enough to choose for themselves but obviously don't.

That's just a simple reality.  One that's tough to acknowledge for many individuals.  People clearly are not making the best choices with food intake despite the argument they are fully capable of doing so without government intervention.

So this argument doesn't really seem all that valid, given the actual practical reality, which is quite removed from theory; people are not choosing very well, to the detriment of their own health and  increasing the cost of healthcare for the nation.

The majority of the population does in fact make poor choices over and over again where overeating is concerned.  That's a simple population statistic that is real and has been repeatedly measured for the past two decades, at least.

It's this true statistic that is the main drive behind pushing legislation to reduce overeating food choices.

The civil liberty argument wisely says people can choose for themselves and will naturally resolve to make the right choice because of the natural need for self preservation, and because right to choose is a constitutional choice.

Not really, and sort of.

Again, the reality is; we as a population are clearly not demonstrating our capacity to make the right choices where our health is concerned.  Not right now anyway.  Maybe we can learn.

It is true that individual freedom is a right, but we also have laws that set realistic limits.  For instance we can't get away with drunk driving because we choose to. I'm not saying drink driving is exactly the same as overeating, although more people die annually in Canada from complications due to obesity (25,000) than do from drunk driving (1300ish).  The numbers are far greater for the US, but still heavily weighted towards obesity.

What I am saying is that we take drunk driving seriously like we should, but not so much with chronic year over year overeating and excess weight gain across the population.  Nobody is MADD about overeating.  Quite the opposite.

I think there is merit to the idea that although at first people will oppose junk food bans, over time enough people will adapt.  In addition to all the public education that is out there if we simply get rid of the opportunity to overeat in many of the places where we typically overeat, then over time people get used to and appreciate the healthier choices.

Or, that could be a nice academic argument, but not necessarily the way public opinion adapts over time.

I think there is also merit to the idea that banning junk food will simply cause people to flip the bird to big brother and get their fix somewhere else.  Or that the principal of 'food police' is such a slap in the face that people will get stuck on that and ignore the actual overeating issue.

Governments appear to be at their whits end (not hard to do when you're short on whits), and are expressing that nothing else is working, people aren't getting it (which is true), so bans are in.

I really do personally have a huge problem with the fact that the vast majority of restaurant meals are over 1000 calories.  1000 + calories?  That's a joke.  A cruel joke.

I am in a very small minority.  I have been so disappointed so many times at virtually every restaurant I have been to that I have almost stopped going to restaurants all together.  From my perspective most are selling gross slop that isn't worth eating.  Oh sure, much of it tastes good, and has a nice presentation, but it is so demonstrably bad from a health perspective that for me the meal is crap and a complete let down and waste of money.

No, I don't have an anti-restaurant thing.  Just looking for some half decent product I can spend my money on. I actually want to go to restaurants because I enjoy the experience.  I also enjoy eating at home so I'm not really feeling like I'm at that much of a loss by eating out less than I have in the past.

You see, I no longer buy into the idea that part of eating out is the reward of the overindulgence.  Overindulgence isn't all that compelling to me anymore.  I want to indulge in great tasting healthy food, not in slabs of fat covered in sugar and salt, made to look nice.

Iv'e got room for a desert of chocolate badness as long as it's not too freaky big, but I don't have room for the 800 calorie appetizer, the 1200 calorie, meal, and the 500 calorie desert.  And when nearly all meals are over 1000 calories and there are only 2 or 3 choices under 1000 cals, my choices are far more limited than what the fat bomb part of the menu offers.  Further, most of the lower calorie meals are simply smallar versions of the bigger fat bombs.  The smallar meals aren't all that healthy either.

I'm not making this about me.  Ok maybe a little.. What I want to show is that demand for unhealthy meals is so large that even if you want to eat healthy, your choices are are far less compared to calorie bomb choices.  Try to ban any part of this and you'll upset a lot of people who buy into and sell the huge meals.

People want huge meals and restaurants are all too happy to promise bigger meals for better deals, and neither the seller nor buyer want's restrictions on this access to a whole lotta love.

I do see a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully it's not astigmatism. One that might not require junk food bans, or fake bans like the one in New York.

With no junk food or calorie bans, many restaurants are starting to serve healthier choices and some restaurants shtick is presenting an entirely healthy menue, and these restaurants although small in number, are typically very busy.

As much as I dislike the idea of selling calorie bomb meals because of how seriously bad they truly are, I can't get passed thinking that bans might backfire or might not be as effective as promised.

Maybe though, people will personally get sick of feeling like crap from overeating and will gradually demand healthier meals.  If this happens restaurants will respond with delivering healthier products.

The trend for overeating is currently still growing and is larger than the trend to eat and live healthy.

Maybe the junk food ban is actually part of the healthy trend and we can't see it yet because we're so into junk food right now.

Maybe the junk food ban is an act of desperation and not well thought out.

In the end though, no matter how much I write or anyone writes about how passionately they feel about their view and quoting statistics, law, and precedent, and calorie counts, eating healthy is factually dramatically better than eating too much.   Eating too much does cause personal harm.

In the end we all make our choices.  It is ultimately an individuals choice.  Right now most are willing to defend the idea that overeating is not only a personal choice, but also the preferencial choice.

When I made the switch it wasn't from someone telling me to do so or a government intervention.  It was because it seemed to me that the healthy choices had more to offer in return that the calorie bomb meals I used to adore.

If more healthy choices are made all this goes away, and for the better.

Here is a great video on the New York City 'soda ban'. It's funny and to the point.

http://laughingsquid.com/new-york-city-soda-ban-explained-by-casey-neistat/

Unhealthy habits similar or greater complexity than healthy habits

One of my favorite diet analyses websites is eatracker.ca.

You enter all the food you eat in a day and the free web-based software tells you everything you need to know about what you're eating.  I mention eatracker a lot because I really want people to use nutrition tools to rebuild their diets into nutrition powerhouses with no gimmicks.

I've rarely had a person express excitement about eatracker, or any other nutritional analyses program or app, web based or not.  In fact most of the time nobody will go near eatracker.  Even after months of suggestion most people I work with refuse to use diet analyses software, to see a registered dietitian, or to tell me what they eat.

A frank analyses of what one eats seems to be treated like a prickly porcupine, nobody want's to touch it.

The main complaints are that it takes too long (it doesn't), and that it's too complicated (it's not).

For those who enjoy baking, a new sugar-bomb, fat-bomb recipe for a cake, cookie, or muffin will be given a lot of attention.  After all, the anticipated reward of biting into fresh baked ooey gooey goodness is very appealing.

If the new recipe requires ingredients not in the house, a special shopping trip is in order. An unhealthy recipe is revered as the path to reward.  Using nutrition software is no more complicated than following a recipe, but in reverse.  However it's reviled as the path to restriction and removal of reward.

Same process, different perception.

I steam my broccoli for 4 minutes.  I read a research paper that showed that steaming broccoli for 4 minutes increases the antioxidant release from broccoli.  Sounds good to me.

I've had so many people say to me that I take it (healthy eating) too far with finicky details like steaming broccoli for 4 minutes.

Ok.

So what about brewing coffee for X minutes.

How about throwing coffee out if it stands more than 20 minutes.

What about the old standard of boiling pasta for 7 minutes.

What about the 3 minute boiled egg.

Ever set the timer for baking?

Ever pay attention to how long a 10 oz steak is cooking?

How about deep fried or oven fried french fries?

What? You mean you have a timer in the kitchen?  Whoa, whoa whoa.. Get out!  Your stove has a built in timer?  All restaurant kitchens have timers?  What the heck for?  Say what?  Timing the cooking of food?

But not broccoli.

See what I mean?

Whatever the process is, if it's applied to not so healthy food or food that isn't really considered healthy or unhealthy, the process is normal and justified.  Apply the same process to something that is perceived as 'healthy' and suddenly the process is arduous.  It's an extra step.  It's time consuming.  Maybe even a little over the top.

There is a decided prejudice against healthy choices.

I've also found that many will be hesitant to learn what they're eating because ultimately they know that it won't be all good and the outcome will be that they should eat less of the bad stuff and more of the good stuff.

Facing these plain right-in-front-of-you facts is very hard for many people as research shows most people will under-report the amount of food they eat to avoid the issue of overeating.

 Once hooked, we really, really want to keep revisiting the hyper-rewards of overeating. Diet analyses is seen as the reward blocker.

The irony is that maintaining the unhealthy diet saps our energy, makes us overweight and reduces quality of life.  That which we seek with so much tenacity just happens to be that which ultimately is making us feel like crap overall, save for those few minutes that our brain is getting a dopamine hit from overeating.

Once I personally experienced the change in how good I felt from chronic healthy eating vs chronic not so healthy eating I became hooked on healthy eating.  Eatracker and similar programs became a source of reward because I can use these tools to help make my nutrition choices better and more informed.

So what's the difference between taking the time to purposefully eat unhealthy vs purposefully eating healthy?  It doesn't take more time to make a homemade burger with lean or extra beef or ground chicken or turkey compared to regular beef.

It doesn't take more time to make the patty smallar rather than larger.  It doesn't take more time to put on less mayonnaise or skip the mayo.

Once we get down to reality it's clear that healthy choices are not complicated and not more time consuming than less healthy choices.

There is one reality that is difficult to overcome and get used to.

As rewarding as healthy food is to eat, it can't achieve the exact same level of instant gratification dopamine stimulation as food that is dense in fat, sugar, and salt.

A good way to look at this is that the hyperpalitability of calorie-bomb food is unnatural.  It's true that it clearly feels good at the moment, but it ain't good.

It really is like learning to quit smoking.  Sure, to the smoker having a smoke feels rewarding at the moment, but it's kicking the crap out of the body.  It's not worth it.

Ex smokers will tell how great it feels to not be hooked anymore and that ultimately healthier choices provide more overall reward than they ever received from the instant gratification of smoking.

Same goes for overeating.

BTW healthy eating doesn't mean not eating chocolate muffins.  It meas not eating too many chocolate muffins.

Everyone I know who has got to the place where they lose weight in a healthy way or didn't need to lose weight but started eating more healthy, have been surprised at how good they feel.

Healthy eating doesn't give you that big smack of dopamine and neither does using eatracker.  The same level of instant gratification wont happen, so let that go.  Once you feel the overall greater reward of what a healthy weight and healthy living does for you, you may get hooked on living healthy.

I hope you do :-)

Why do I gain fat when I exercise more?

A reader (KM) who is an avid cyclist asked me, "why do I gain weight only when cycling?"

She's not your average ride-the-bike-path-on-Sunday rider, she's into competitive cycling. She'll burn far more calories cycling than the average spin class enthusiast or recreational rider.

So what gives?

Whenever we have a question of weight gain we must always default to the singular reason for weight gain: eating too much. Consuming more calories than we burn off.

Once we set ourselves straight with that we start looking for where and why we're over consuming.

KM's mystery is not uncommon, and thankfully not really a mystery. What we're looking for is KM's motivation and reasoning to eat during the cycling season.

Here are the common motivations and reasons that explain weight gain during times of increased exercise:

With knowledge that the extra calorie burn is happening a reasonable increase in food intake is used to keep up with increased demand. The increase needed is simply overestimated. If this is the beginning and end of the story the situation will be remedied quickly by eating less.  More accuracy helps so a visit to eatracker.ca for food diary analyses is a good idea.  Measure the calories in and out and you'll have a better idea of what the right amount of food looks and feels like.

The extra exercise stimulates the person to get excited about overeating. This one is very common. Overeating is already a common reward that is shared socially. This is traditionally over-emphasized in sport where it isn't uncommon to celebrate post competition or post practice with excess food. The excess food is not perceived as negative but rather a positive and a necessity to complete the social experience of the physical activity. A competitor will usually be teased if they don't participate in the overeating so there is social pressure to comply with overeating.

It's also not uncommon to transfer the competitive nature from sport to eating with many athletes boasting about how much they can pound down after training or competing. This further exaggerates the reward emphasis placed on overeating.

When an expected rewarding outcome of physical activity is to overeat, the exerciser typically feels compelled to do the exercise not only to compete or train, but also to overeat afterwards. 

The deep driver for all of this is the reward association with food. It's good to have a healthy reward association with food, but research has shown that it's easy for us to miscalibrate the reward importance and develop the sense that overeating is very important.

Here's an article I did on emotional miscalibration a few years ago.  I cover interesting research on the subject.

Reward seeking is one of the most powerful motivators. Once the brain gets a sample of something rewarding it will cause behavioural adaptations to seek out the reward again.  The person will feel compelled to seek out the reward but also to generate reasoning that justifies the reward, even to the extent of irrational reasoning.

An example might be being in a fatigued state where training should be replaced with recovery but because of a special dinner where overeating is anticipated the person will choose to add exercise even though it will cause more fatigue.  The benefit of overeating is perceived as more important than proper recovery from training.

Once this becomes habituated it is often very challenging to reverse. Reversal involves self-talk, self aware cognitive processing, and outside help from friends, family or professionals doesn't hurt either.  It can take several months to overcome habituated reward, even years if there are lengthy periods of regression before a solid stint of 4 to 8 months of practice is realized.

Often we don't process the the sequence of feeling hungry and responding with eating. We just eat because we feel compelled to eat.

The steps to reversing KM's dilemma begin with being able to capture the moment and process, "I might be over serving myself here, I should eat less".

If it turns out KM is strongly influenced by the more common reward association, social pressure, and reward seeking aspect then additional self-talk steps are needed..

"I get that I really want all this food, but I now realize the reward I feel is disproportionate to how much I choose to eat. I'm going to eat less and feel good about it"

Whatever we tell ourselves will differ from person to person, but it will be something along those lines.

Beware: strong socially supported reward seeking is a tough contender. We're pretty good at employing denial and redirection to avoid correcting the behaviour.

How I survived Christmas without overeating

For regular readers you'll know that I'm always on about changing our reward association with overeating and working on making the same reward association with healthy food choices.

A favourite example of mine is; picture this, you're at the office and the boss walks in with a box of donuts and says, "you're all doing a great job and I wanted to show my appreciation". The boss presents the donuts. How do feel?

You may be thinking, "hey great! I love donuts".  Mmm..

Same scenario, boss says the same thing, but has a plate of broccoli. Are you feeling that?

No?  Not feeling the little green trees?

How about a plate of oranges and bananas?  Some feeling for this but not as much as for the donuts?

There you have it. That's what reward association does. Reward association makes you feel compelled to do things that you perceive will be rewarding in some way. The stronger the reward association the more intense the reward seeking will be.

One little snafu is that some of that which we associate reward with can also get out of hand cause negative outcomes.  Like scarfing down 1000 calories from donuts that nobody needs.

And so it goes for Christmas dinners.  Personally I've been getting better every year. I don't do three or four plates anymore, plus buns, plus desert. 

Years ago when I cut down to 2.5 plates and desert I felt like I had accomplished a lot. I was only consuming 1500 calories more than I needed instead of around twice that.  (3500 calories in a pound of fat in case you wondering about the scale impact of so much overeating)

Cutting down to two plates I felt physically much more comfortable. Not so much of a bloat-on.  I also had less of the post Christmas overeating guilt-on. Another bonus is I didn't have to think about all the extra cardio I'd have to do to repent my indulgence. 

Exercising to compensate for excessive eating is not a healthy exercise or eating strategy. 

This year I thought about how good I would feel emotionally and physically if I didn't overeat.  I knew that whenever I eat healthy I feel good about it. I didn't always feel this way. Years ago I scoffed at the idea.  I looked forward to the stuffed gut. Having to loosen your belt was a sign of success. At that time I didn't bother to think about why I believed this. It was just something you did. It was tradition. 

Then I had to go and become a cycling coach in 1987, which involves among other things, learning about proper nutrition. I learned that I didn't really know how to eat. Sure, sure, I was an expert at the selecting, chewing, and swallowing, but was pretty clueless when it came to understanding my actual nutritional needs. 

I really liked a lot of crap food that wasn't that great for me. 

Being a bit slow it took me years to gradually change my eating habits so that my eating reflected what healthy reconditions are. 

As I ate healthy more consistently I grew further from wanting unhealthy foods but still found myself feeling rewarded by overeating. Yes you can eat too much healthy food. Calories are calories. 

Over time this changed too. As overeating became less frequent each time I did dive into calorie bomb meals I was more attune to the after affects.  I was getting used to what it felt like to eat satisfying healthy meals. I didn't feel bloated or lethargic. There is no brick in the gut. I slept better.  I didn't have to deal with feeling remorseful for overeating. I actually felt pretty damn good. Better than I knew I could. 

Over time I had developed a new reward association with eating healthy to the point of instead of looking forward to overeating at holiday meals I started to regreat these meals in advance. I regretted feeling obliged to fulfill the custom of overeating. I really wanted to eat healthy but there was social pressure to overeat as well as my own pressure because some of the old reward seeking was still there. I knew the food would certainly taste good and that I could make excuses to keep eating. 

Afterwards I'd feel not so good. When you eat healthy most of the time your digestive system gets used to high fibre low fat foods. When you suddenly burden your GI tract with high fat low fibre traditional foods in large volumes, you get constipated. You feel like crap, literally. 

So this Christmas I felt compelled not to overeat because I didn't want to deal with the uncomfortable aftermath. I felt incentive to eat what I need because I knew this would feel more satisfying. 

This year was different because I had done enough work on my thoughts, feelings, and eating habits that it all came together and was easy.. And oh so satisfying. 

Christmas dinner with family was great. That value did not change. The food still tasted great and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the company and good times. I didn't feel the need for extra food being a prerequisite for enjoying Christmas with my family. 

The Christmas dinners two days in a row were the best I'd had because there was no underlying food drama. I think I have it better than many though.  Eating healthy at Christmas dinner doesn't always go over well. I've had friends tell me that when they try the same thing they get questioned by family and friends.. "Are you sick? Don't you like the food? Are you on some kind of diet?" Many are ostracized for not overeating. There is societal pressure to be thin for some but there is more social pressure to overeat and if you don't comply someone will point it out to you. 

The things that enabled me to feel completely satisfied without overeating at Christmas dinners (or whatever dinners for those who don't say Christmas), were:

  Completing a long path to adopting an appreciation and sense of reward from healthy eating while at the same time unlearning my previous reward connection with overeating. 

  Having family that is happy I'm there no matter how much I eat. 

This didn't happen overnight so don't expect instant results if you try the same. If you hang in there though change will come. You'll adapt. After a while wanting to eat healthy will feel good instead of being misinterpreted as feeling restrictive. Ironically if you think about it, chronically overeating is restrictive. We restrict ourselves to only overeating and are not open to healthy options, perhaps even offended by the idea of eating healthy because eating unhealthy is so practiced, so naturalized, that eating healthy is perceived as interfering with the status quo. 

I really had a great Christmas this year and eating healthy made it even better. 

Junk food - healthy food cost/ tax comparison

A quick follow up on my piece on the Ontario Medical Association trumpeting their bold and supposedly new recommendations on curbing obesity by reducing tax on healthy food and increasing tax on unhealthy food.

I went to a grocery store, bought some junk food and some healthy food, and compared the receipts..

WTF?  Something must be wrong with the receipt printer..  The damn thing shows NO TAX on the healthy food.  This can't be.  The Ontario Medical Association is having a hay-day in the media talking about their egalitarian concept to save Canada's overweight population by reducing tax on healthy food.

I didn't pay any tax on this healthy food.  How does a tax get less than zero?  I did pay tax on the junk food though, and the junk food was a buck more when compared to a similar number of servings of healthy food.  yes you read that right.. the junk food cost more than the healthy food.

Do the doctors at OMA ever go shopping for food?

Did they actually check what foods are currently taxed and which are not before winding up their boisterous media blitz?

No?  Whoops, minor oversight there.

As usual I do the heavy lifting and uncover the uncomfortable truth that nobody else does.

Actually I did a simple Google search; food tax Canada, and, looked at my grocery receipt.

This is not difficult to figure out, but, as usual, political hyperbole and media sensationalism distract people from the reality right in front of our faces.  More entertaining to pay attention to the dancing bear than look at actual facts.

This link will show you all the foods that are and are not taxed in Ontario. All the provinces have near identical lists for provincial taxes, as does the country as a whole for GST and HST.

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/gm/4-3/4-3-e.html

I really want Canadians to eat less and change their social norms so that healthy eating is embraced instead of scoffed at.  I wouldn't mind seeing some of our tax dollars being put to good use with useful initiatives to help reduce and prevent the ever growing number of Canadians that are overeating their way to obesity and the ensuing health problems that hurt them.

I'm not going to hold my breath..

Back to reality..

Some research suggests that 10% tax on junk food can reduce purchases of junk food.

Of course, I have a serious problem with this research as most healthy food has long been cheaper, or at least competitively priced with junk food, yet most of our population choose junk food over healthy food much of the time.

Take a look at the receipts I've posted here.  The 1 L of pop was $1.34 and the 1 L of skim milk 1.49.  That's an insignificant difference.  The pop was on sale so I payed $1.00 for it plus 12 cents tax. Still an insignificant difference.

What would the price look like with another 15% tax (30% total tax).. a doubling of the current tax?

Instead of paying $4.75 for a bag of chips and a pop I would have had to pay $5.49, 74 cents more.

I don't eat junk food (I gave away my junk food to an all too eager taker) so I don't care how much it costs.  But for those who love their chips and pop I think most will find a way to pay an extra 10% or 15% over what they're paying now.

People overeat because they enjoy it, not because healthy choices are more expensive. "I'm going back for seconds on triple cheese pizza because broccoli is expensive."  Nope, doesn't happen. You go back for seconds because it tastes so damn good you want more.  That's the way that works.  Good research shows that overeating fatty, sugary, salty food alters appetite regulation causing increased hunger and decreased satiety.  The more you eat, the more your appetite regulation adapts to eating more.

And because of how our brain organizes memories of rewarding experiences, when we're hungry again we're likely to remember that we like pizza, so that is what we seek.  These foods stimulate an above  normal excitation of reward centres in the brain.  That's why we perceive them as tasting extra good compared to a great tasting apple.  Apple tastes great, but doesn't put reward perception into overdrive.

This is one of the strongest drivers of seeking out these foods.  People are not strongly compelled to buy junk food because it's cheaper.  People seek it out because of altered appetite and reward seeking regulation, a side effect of consuming these foods.  Not to mention the fact that socially, junk food is more respected than healthy food.

This isn't about changes taxes, it's about changing behavior, and moving away from perceiving junk food as better than healthy food.

The whole add new tax to junk food thing is BS, top to bottom anyway, since it's already taxed.

So as far as the grocery store is concerned, which is where most Canadians will be spending most of their food budget, healthy food already has no tax and is cheaper than junk food which is taxed.

What about restaurants and delicatessens?  Selfishly I would like to pay no tax on deli salads, where I and everyone else currently pays GST and PST on every menu item.

Because there is tax on healthy restaurant foods there exists the potential to mess with taxes here, but I'm still not completely sold on the idea that a fat tax or healthy = no-tax is going to be a reasonable primary strategy in the reversal of obesity in Canada.

The Ontario Medical Association seems to be aloof in placing at the top of their list of anti fat commandments a fat tax and reduced tax on healthy food for the obvious reasons I've already stated.

You know, why don't we just ignore the commandments from on high and start eating less.  We'll feel much better dropping a few pounds.

Why we fall for diet and exercise myths

Slow metabolism makes weight loss difficult, preventing many from losing weight

It's hard to get vitamins and minerals from food, we need pills

To get fit, we need exercise that beats the hell out of us

Carbs make you fat

Let me demolish these four myths

The power and durability of the common urban myth is often greater than what the truth is.  While disassembling urban myths gives me personal short term gratification because it makes me feel like I'm making a difference in the world by conquering the dark side, the satisfaction I feel is undeserved because in reality I'm not making much of dent.. I'm up against something bigger than me.  Who, or what, is keeping these myths alive?

Is it big brother?  Big fast food?  A cult movement? Darth Vader?

Nope.  It's a 3 pound gelatinous mass that has infested 100% of humans, and we can't get rid of it.

The human brain.

Dum dum duuummm!  - that's dramatic music, not a slag against dumb brains.  Although that works too.

I have been told that my brain is up my um.. well you know where.   I'm not sure if this is a genetic trait or perhaps I have an advanced mutation that occurs in higher (or lower) thinking evolving humans.  Wherever the location, the brain is bit of a busybody recluse doing a heck of a lot of work behind the scenes, often to our detriment.

Don't believe me?  Ever tried finding your keys?  You would think your brain could remember this one simple value.   Even when you nail a key hook to the wall, there is no guarantee that your brain will remember that this is where keys go, and confoundingly, when keys are placed there, your brain won't remember putting them there.

Brain

Brain in denial. 

Myths play to our denials

Denial ; something we do when it's too hard to face reality. The brain is really, really good at denial.  In fact studies have shown that when we're presented with plane, easy to understand facts that refute our current beliefs our brains go into "FU" (False Understanding) mode and our belief in that which is clearly wrong is strengthened.

We humans can be somewhat stubborn when trying to get a grip on reality, and we have a lot of historical boondoggles to show for it.

It seems our natural instinct is to deny facts.  More facts?  Bring on more myths to support our denial.

"Cris, you should quit smoking".  Did I like hearing that?  My defence?

Get angry with the person (redirect away from subject of me smoking).

Make up some crap about them meddling with my life (redirect).

Claim that is hasn't hurt me so far (denial), that lot's of old people smoke and they're not dead yet (redirect/ denial of how it affects me personally).

Demonize the person delivering the message (so I could make it feel easier to discredit their quit smoking concerns).

Having been in denial of reality and a believer of some these myths myself I can say I know exactly where the myth believers are at.

If my writing style had the talent of brevity I might write something like, "You're all wrong.  Cut the crap and get real.  You'll be better off.".. I could make this would a one line blog entry.

I'm not so talented though so I make satirical references hoping that that my cro-mag humour will lull you into reading more of my stuff.

On with the myth busting..

Slow metabolism makes losing weight more difficult.

It's difficult to change our habits and eat less and exercise more to lose weight, but a slow metabolism isn't one of the things working against us; slow metabolism causing weight gain is a myth.

What's more work; walking up stairs carrying just yourself, or walking up stairs carrying 40 pounds of bricks?

Of course it could be 40 pounds of anything, but hey, bricks sound heavier.

The more we weigh the more energy we expend to move our bodies around.  Comparing our lean selves to our extra weight selves, the extra weight version will always expend more energy doing the same tasks.  Even sitting down relaxing is more energy intensive when we weigh more.

Our breathing muscles have to work harder to move the extra mass on our upper bodies to allow our ribs to expand to fill the lungs.  When resting metabolism is measured the heavier versions of ourselves will always burn more calories at rest than the leaner version.

Resting metabolism increases as body fat increases, the exact opposite of the myth that suggests weight gain slows metabolism.

"Whoa, whoa there Cris.  OK fine, calories in calories out.. whatever.  You can't seriously be in denial of true health disorders that actually do reduce metabolism can you?

Ever heard of hypothyroidism? Look who's in denial now!

Gotcha Cris!"

I put that in here because I've actually had people say those words to me.

Here's an excerpt from the American Thyroid Associations brochure on Thyroid and Weight

"In general, 5-10 pounds of body weight may be attributable to the thyroid,

depending on the severity of the hypothyroidism. Finally, if weight gain

is the only symptom of hypothyroidism that is

present, it is less likely that the weight gain is

solely due to the thyroid."

Hypothyroidism does not cause excess fat gain.  Most of the weight gain that occurs with hypothyroidism is water mass. If a persons primary complaint is excess weight gain, Hypothyroidism will not be a suspect for the weight gain, even if Hypothyroidism is diagnosed.  Eating too much and not enough physical activity will be suspect.

Here are the facts for all to deny..

[Obesity and hypothyroidism: myth or reality?]. [Rev Med Suisse. 2007] - PubMed - NCBI

Weight loss after therapy of hypothy... [J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI

The only way to gain excess body fat is to eat too much, hypothyroidism alone cannot cause extra fat to accumulate in the human body.. that is in fact, an urban myth, a myth to support the denial of overeating.  This myth drives peoples creativity to generate other myths, such as believing there are special foods or food combinations that will speed up metabolism, or special exercise routines that increase metabolism after exercise.  Admitting to ourselves and others that we eat too much can feel bad, so we deny we eat too much.

If our daily energy expenditure reduces, we need to eat less to match the reduced energy expenditure.  Hypothyroidism can make people feel tired and less likely to be active. Less activity means fewer calories expended.  If a person develops hypothyroidism and becomes less active, but doesn't eat less to compensate, fat gain will occur from eating more calories than expended.

Only about 4 to 5% of the population has hypothyroidism so thyroid problems can't be the main driver for 60 to 70% of the population being overweight.  But due to the pervasiveness of the thyroid and metabolism myth, many people will self-diagnose themselves as having some kind of metabolism challenge as the root cause of their weight gain.  When facts are presented showing that this is really not the case, many can feel like they're being attacked and dismissed . What's really happening is their brains are refusing the new information, they're in denial, and they want to stay in denial by perceiving others as picking on them.

I'm not talking about the unacceptable nonsense of teasing someone because they are overweight or skinny for that matter.  I'm talking about straight talk about why we eat too much.  I wish the social stigma of overeating wasn't so strong, that would make it feel more comfortable talking about a problem that affects so many of us.

Here's a study that revealed why diet resistant people were not losing weight.

Discrepancy between self-reported and actual ca... [N Engl J Med. 1992] - PubMed - NCBI

The study examined obese people who "perceived a genetic cause for their obesity, used thyroid medication at a high frequency, and described their eating behaviour as relatively normal." However the researchers revealed these study subjects underreported their food intake by 47% and over-reported physical activity by 51%.

Study conclusions: The failure of some obese subjects to lose weight while eating a diet they report as low in calories is due to an energy intake substantially higher than reported and an overestimation of physical activity, not to an abnormality in thermogenesis.

They ate too much and didn't exercise enough and were in denial of this reality, to support this denial they bought into the myth of a genetic problem causing slow metabolism, causing weight gain. It's a difficult place to be.  Difficult to talk about openly.  That's one of the principal assets of denial; it's a protective mechanism that allows us not to face an uncomfortable truth.

That's how myths survive.  Myths play to our denials and play up our unrealistic hopes.  Diet and exercise myths tell us that eating too much didn't cause our weight gain.  Myths tell us to engage in crazy short term exercise plans because long term plans feel too daunting and we don't want to face that reality.  Long term exercise plans are actually not daunting but in reality are continually rewarding and liberating as we continue to increase fitness long term.

Hard to get vitamins and minerals from food

Here's a nutrient profile from a day of my own eating.

Here's what I ate

I actually ate a little more than this.  I ate a banana, some dried figs and apricots, and a homemade chocolate muffin.  The reason I didn't include these in the above analyses is I wanted to show that you can get all the vitamins and minerals you need in a day by eating fewer than 2000 calories in a day.  Most people wanting to lose weight will need their daily caloric intake to be between 1500 and 2500 calories, depending on their weight and activity level.  It's important to eat healthy nutrient dense foods, especially when reducing calories to lose weight.  Less food means chance to get the nutrients you need.

I am not at all saying that people have to eat what I ate here.  I'm simply demonstrating that we can get all the vitamins and minerals we need from food we buy at the grocery store.  The food I ate here requires minimal prep time, which addresses another myth; eating healthy takes too much time.

There are many ways to change up the variety of foods to get the same or better nutrient profile.

It took me 10 minutes to enter the foods I ate into eatracker, a free online diet analyses tool.  It took me longer the first time, but I've got the hang of it now.

Vitamin D is the exception here.  Research shows that people living above the 49th parallel most likely need daily Vitamin D3 supplements.  

 To get fit, we need exercise that beats the hell out of us

This myth comes from many places, one of the more common is from athletics.  No doubt; we can't develop peak athletic ability without pushing hard, really hard.  This leads many to jump the gun and superimpose elite athlete training onto those with little or no developmental training.

To gain performance we need to push hard, but only when we're trained enough to handle it otherwise injury and overtraining occur.

Not everyone is into trying to develop performance.  Why then are the majority of fitness programs based on killer gut busting workouts?  Because that's what sells.  It's a good business model.

Many believe in the myth that you have to exercise really hard and feel really sore to get a worthy workout.  Why not sell people what they believe they want?  This keeps the myth going.

The truth is productive exercise is moderate to easy most of the time, only reserving the more challenging workouts for when we're durable enough to do hard work, or when we're recovered enough from our last hard effort.

Healthy productive exercise takes time and a gradual progression.  Since we want results yesterday, we create myths telling of fast results from "advanced" workouts.  These myths support our denial of the fact that it takes months and years to get fit, not days or weeks.

Here are a few blog entries on the subject

Young athletes forced to train too much

Runners get injured, then incur another injury before healed

Too much too soon injures pro's and 1st timers alike

Carbs make you fat

Do people ever love this myth.  It serves many purposes.  Allows us to believe that we didn't overeat to gain weight, it's those damn carbs. It allows us to make double bacon and egg sandwiches and laugh at those "nuts" eating veggies.  News flash.. only eating too much causes weight gain.  It doesn't matter if its carbs, fat, or protein.

Cut the high fructose corn syrup, pop, and high sugar snacks?  You bet, but don't toss the whole grains, fruits, veggies, beans, legumes, and potatoes.

If you cut out most of your carbs, What does that mean? No really, what is that?  Well if your daily carb rich muffin has 300 calories in it, and your daily white bread daily has another 300 calories, and that serving of rice, pasta, or potato each have 200 calories, and you're cutting all that out you're.. wait for it..

Cutting hundreds of calories per day!

Let's take a look at a typical low carb diet day..

These meals were taken off a "low carb" recipe web site. Although this day of food intake is a few hundred calories more than my own intake detailed above, it doesn't deliver all the vitamins and minerals that mine did, it comes up short on meeting daily needs.  That's what happens when you cut out or dramatically reduce carbohydrate sources; you drop a primary source of vital nutrients.  As expected though, the nutrients found in meats and fish are in abundance. Don't be going into denial and say, "look at those five nutrients! They're off the chart!  Low carb must be good."  This warped perspective is expected though, based on what we know about our ability to deny objective facts so we can sustain our current beliefs.

Sure, 5 nutrients are delivered in spades, but 8 come up short.  We will choose to deny the significance of over half of our nutrients needs not being met by focusing on information that supports our denial.

What I found most interesting is that the website I took these recipes from claimed that each day of meals delivered fewer than 20 grams of carbs per day, as 20 grams of carbs per day is supposedly the magic number for carb intake.  When analyzed though, the actual amount of carbs is double what is claimed.  Should I be surprised that a website supporting a myth based diet has incorrect data on it?

Typically low carb diets emphasize fats and proteins.  Interestingly a person would have a better chance of losing weight eating my diet compared to the low carb diet as mine had fewer calories.

My carb sources were whole grains, fruits, and veggies.  No refined sugars except what occurs in the multigrain bread, but this is insignificant.

Low carb extremists have become slightly more savvy since the typical low carb diet has been publicly eviscerated and its nutrient deprived profile revealed for all to see.  The modern low carb diet has more veggies and more carbs in it than the traditional (but still popular) variant I've used here.

So what does that mean?  Does that mean after decades of the validity of the low carb diet being hammered by the facts, the low carb'ers finally started to see past the myth and thus alter the low carb diet by what..  Increasing carbs via more veggies, grains, and fruits?  Say it ain't so.  Give it a couple more decades of maturing and the low carb diet will evolve into a normal diet.

The basic slight of hand (or mouth) scam of the low carb diet is diverting your attention from calories in/ out and focussing on carbohydrates.  In reality you're cutting calories. 

If you cut out hundreds of calories daily you're going to lose weight so long as you eat fewer calories than you expend.

The low carb restrictive diet isn't sustainable. The science shows that most people eventually gravitate back to eating the way they did before and gain back all the weight they lost plus more.

So if the low carb thing is a myth, why do so many fall for it?  Why do people keep smoking?  Why do people buy snake oil?  Why do smart people make dumb decisions?

It's the brain!  Blame it on the brain.  Once we humans believe something, it's near impossible, despite good evidence, to change that belief.  Our brains also get used to reward seeking patterns and if our brain knows we're going to feel rewarded from high doses of fat, salt, and sugar, then that is what we will crave.

If we've developed a habit, it can be very hard to quit because our brains are wired to keep it up, even if it's bad for us.  So is this denial as well?  It's not me, it's my brain?  Sure, this could definitely be used as an excuse to not change.. but it is our brain, and ultimately we can make efforts that do make for long term positive outcomes

Eating less and exercising are not actually all that difficult.  What is difficult is overcoming our prejudice, being myopic, old habits, wired in reward seeking, and our denial of reality.

I've repeated bad habits enough that they became wired in my brain; smoking, overeating, and exercising too much.  I also practiced not doing these things, and making better choices.  And like the stats suggest, I failed many times before I succeeded, but I did succeed and so have many others. It can be done.

That's the great thing about the brain, neuroplasticity is an adaptive asset of the brain.  It can change.  In fact the brain is just as good at changing as it is at maintaining the status quo.  All it needs is consistency  with the new thoughts and practices and it will change, we will change.  Living healthy can and does feel like a relief from living by these crazy urban myths.

Mealy-mouthed placations about obesity don't help

Let's get a few things straight right off the top

Fat gain happens when we eat too much.  Nothing else can cause fat gain.

We love overeating. Eating too much is a central theme in our culture.

Eating healthy is seen as a crushing blow to our enjoyment of eating too much.

Fat loss only occurs when we eat fewer calories than we burn off, but eating too much is hard to stop for many reasons, which is why fat loss can be challenging, even if we exercise (which we should).

Being overweight does not mean we're stupid, lazy, or whatever unfair, mean, denigrating prejudice is applied to being overweight.

Statistics Canada has released another report on childhood obesity.

The report sates that nearly 1/3 of 5 to 17 year old's are overweight or obese, with nearly two to three times more boys than girls being overweight. This problem can be solved and I believe will be solved some day, hopefully sooner than later.

While the study concludes that eating and exercise habits contribute to weight gain, the authors noted that the study did not investigate the complexity of variables that influence eating and exercise behavior.

The singular cause of obesity is overeating. Nothing else can cause fat gain. You can quote me on that.

Fat in fat cells can't come from nowhere.  We have to eat more than we need in order for the body to store the extra unused food as fat in our fat cells.  The excess fat will stay there until we burn it off by consuming fewer calories than we expend which places the energy demand on our stored energy (stored fat).  Little by little we can reduce our fat stores through decreasing energy intake and increasing energy expenditure.

The paths to overeating are numerous and complex. We know that poor sleep can drive up appetite and drive down satiety.  We know that large meals can alter hormone regulation that governs hunger and satiety.  It's a diabolical cyclical trap; the more we overeat the more we adapt to overeating and reward seeking through overeating.

We know that food composition, specifically high concentrations of sugar, fat, and salt, excite reward centers in the brain making eating feel more rewarding than normal, causing us to seek out repeating this rewarding feeling from eating more food.

We know that some medications are appetite stimulants causing people on these meds to feel more hungry than usual and to eat more in response.

Overeating is socialized; when we celebrate we often include eating a lot of food while we celebrate.

Overeating is situational; we'll eat food at a movie even though the physical act of watching a movie doesn't require extra food energy to get through the movie.

Food can be mood altering.  If we're feeling down we can temporarily feel good by eating.

When reports like this recent Stats Canada news release come out, one of the more popular topics discussed is the influence of screen time on our health, specifically our fitness level and our weight.

There is nothing about being in the proximity of a screen of any kind that directly affects our fat cells causing them to be filled with fat.

You cannot gain fat watching video games or watching TV.

Video screens don't deposit fat into our fat cells.

If a 15 year old played video games for 5 to 10 hours everyday but didn't overeat, that is, they did not consume more food energy than they expended during a day with lot's of video game playing, there would be no excess food energy to store.  No fat gain would occur.

For sure any person who spends so much time on their butt and not being physically active is not going to be very fit or healthy, but they wont gain fat if calories in/ out are balanced. I'm not advocating balanced calories and mega screen time, in case you were wondering.

Personally my favorite way to watch movies at home is while I'm on my bike trainer in front of the big screen TV.  No, I don't just sit idol on the bike, I ride it for the length of the movie.  My movie choices are governed mostly by time; I want more screen time because for me, more screen time means more training time.  I typically look for movies that are around two hours. If I can't fill two hours with a movie, I'll watch TV or listen to music to make up the extra time.

It's true that energy expenditure is less when seated in front of a screen, unless you make the adjustments that I mentioned above.  If a person decreases their physical activity through more screen time, but does not also decrease their food intake to compensate, they would be eating too much for how active (or inactive) they are, causing a food energy surplus, which is stored as fat.

As a side note, but a pertinent side note, if I burned off 2000 calories riding my bike watching a screen but at the end of the day consumed more calories than I expended I would gain fat (I've done this so it's not just a dumb science theory).  In such a scenario, which I have managed to reproduce more times than I care to admit, I will have eaten too much.  Only overeating can cause fat gain, and this can occur no matter how much exercise you do or don't do.

Only overeating can cause fat gain, but there are many ways that we upset our food energy balance. Sort of.. there are many ways that we increase our reward seeking association with food and decrease reward association with physical activity.

Although there is a tonne of public information on how to lose fat and not gain fat, surprisingly there is not a lot of straight talk.  There is a lot of mealy-mouthed misdirection trying apparently to unravel the complex apparatus that causes obesity.

It must be a lack of government programs

It must be some special genetic variable that isn't understood yet

It must be changing times where we behave differently than generations before, but we don't understand this behavior yet

No, no, and no.  Only overeating causes fat gain. And we love overeating.

That's the elephant in the room.  We'll talk about screen time, we'll talk about hormones, complex behavior patterns, food composition, etc, etc, which is important I believe, but don't touch the golden cow, don't bring down the holy grail of personal and social reward.. do not talk about eating too much.

We're not eating too much!  Nooo, seriously, we don't make giant calorie bomb meals to sell at restaurants, we don't overeat at tailgate parties, we don't overeat at family dinners..

It wasn't eating too much that caused my fat gain!  No, no.. uh.. it was an earthquake.. a terrible flood.. locus!!  It wasn't my fault, I swear to God!

Yes, I like the movie The Blues Brothers, for those who got that. Here's the clip..

The direction I'd like to see addressing the obesity epidemic go is this; a greater consistency of recognizing that only overeating causes fat gain, and that we place far too much importance on overeating being the reward anchor in our society.

Cut the crap with prejudice towards people due to body composition.  Stop calling people names if they're overweight or underweight.  It's hard enough trying to overcome the challenges that cause us to eat too much or too little.  People don't need the extra stress caused by judgmental chumps.

 If you gained fat it's because you ate too much.  Stop eating too much and you'll stop gaining fat.  Tried that but can't stop eating too much?  That's understandable.  Eating too much is very difficult to stop doing, but don't be wondering where the fat came from, it came from eating too much. Now work on discovering what drives you to overeat, and changing the behavior by understanding the motivation and practicing new behaviors with new reward associations.

It ain't easy to stop overeating.  I know this personally.  I used to overeat like a fiend. The only reason I didn't become obese is because I had two addictions.. eating too much and exercising too much.  Those two like each-other a lot. I kicked both habits though. I eat way less, and exercise far less, but I do eat healthy and exercise healthy.  I race mountain bikes and I do manage to win the odd race so I'm doing ok fitness wise.

Cris LaBossiere gold medal 2012 Manitoba Mountain Bike Provincial Championships men's 40+ sport

Don't tell the truth about weight loss

I like to think that I can learn from my mistakes, but there is one mistake I that I am way too thick to learn from.

I tell the truth about healthy living, about weight loss, and how to get fit.  I keep up with coaching workshops and reading the most recent research.  I've been doing this since 1987.  I'm confident I have a good grip on what is currently understood, and make an effort to pass on what I know staying true to what's published rather than relying on my own theories.

At the risk of sounding trite I want to tell you about an experience I found personally disturbing.

I received an email from a small group of people working for a company that was having a weight loss contest to raise money for cancer research.  The group needed a coach or trainer who could do a legitimate weigh-in or body fat test and sign off on the measurement, providing third party proof of weight loss for the contest.

After a brief phone call a meeting was arranged.  I told the group of 5 or 6 people that my mother is a breast cancer survivor and so I am personally motivated to donate my time to the group for any help they need with losing weight.

That was my first mistake.  They didn't say they were looking for help in losing weight, they said they were looking for a certified coach or trainer to measure their weight loss progress and sign off on it. I wanted to offer more.

I started talking about the usual points; eat less, exercise, calories in, calories out.  The group told me that they were educated and had experience losing weight; they'd lost weight several times before.. they knew what they were doing.

I asked them since they were wanting to lose weight again, what was it that had them re-gain weight from previous weight loss..  They didn't have a succinct answer so I took that moment of ambivalence to talk about what causes people to regain weight, and how this occurs in nearly 95% of those who initially lose weight.

One fellow interjected that he knew where his weight gain came from; he was prescribed prednisone from his doctor, which caused 40 pounds of weight gain.  I asked him where the weight gain came from and he re-stated, "from the prednisone! My doctor told me I would gain weight from prednisone, that's why I gained weight."

When I told him that prednisone does not cause extra fat to appear in the body, but rather the weight gain he experienced was caused by increased appetite (a side effect of prednisone) and thus over eating to satisfy the increased appetite, he didn't believe it.

The man was very confident he had not over-eaten.. ever.  I mentioned that we can't gain weight without overeating.  We can't materialize fat from nothing, we have to introduce the extra mass into our bodies. When we eat more food than we need, the extra is stored as fat.

The prednisone increased his appetite, he overate, and gained weight.

Again he insisted that he was entirely certain he had never overeaten.  A co-worker vouched for him and said, "I know he hasn't overeaten."  I said that's impossible, 40 extra pounds can't come from nowhere, he must have overeaten but was not aware because he's not keeping track of what he's eating.

The group reacted quite negatively to me saying that it was impossible the man had not overeaten. I get where they're coming from. I'm saying something that is the exact opposite of what they believe.  From their perspective I'm attacking their intelligence and most likely their sense of self worth.  From my perspective I see a man who is completely oblivious to the fact he overate enough to gain 40 pounds.

Actually he may have gained about 35 pounds of fat. Prednisone also causes water retention so he will have gained some water mass as well.  I had no opportunity to get into that detail though.

So here's what I'm thinking.. This group of well meaning people told me they are educated about weight loss and know what to do, yet they were convinced that fat gain can occur without overeating.

The group was becoming upset and agitated with me.

The man on prednisone, in an irritated tone said, "ok so I overate.  Now what?"  I'm not sure if he said that to get off the topic and move me along, or if he suddenly realized his weight gain came from overeating.  I took it as the latter.

I started talking about how we're inundated with environmental stimulants that provoke us to overeat and that in general the population is in love with overeating, which makes it hard to feel rewarded by eating less.

One of the reasons why weight loss isn't successful in the long term is because most feel comfortable and rewarded with overeating, and feel restricted and unrewarded with healthy eating.  Most will constantly battle the feeling of being deprived from the absence of overeating and eventually willpower dwindles and they return to overeating and weight gain.

The group felt strongly that their chronic weight cycling was evidence that they were very experienced at successful weight loss and knew exactly what to do.

Before I had a chance to talk about how lack of sleep drives appetite and all the other stuff I usually talk about, I was given the boot.

I was cut off. "We know how to do this.  We're educated.  We have doctors and dietitians. We don't need any help in losing weight, we just need a certified trainer to weigh us and sign off on it".

I said I was concerned that they might be repeating previous mistakes and ultimately may not lose weight in a healthy way, or they will fall back into old habits and regain weight after the contest, and that this concern would bother me and I would be uncomfortable only doing a weigh-in.

I said I couldn't get behind doing weigh-ins only, they said that's fine, thanks for coming out.

Felt like someone punched me in the chest.

From my perspective I just had a conversation with people who had a chronic struggle with weight loss and weight gain cycling, who also believed that fat gain can occur without overeating, but who wholeheartedly believed they knew everything about healthy weight loss.  How their judgment of their predicament could be so clouded had me baffled.  The denial required to ignore their multiple failed attempts at maintaining a healthy weight is profound.

Weight gain, overeating, and weight loss are very sensitive issues and difficult to speak openly about.  The act of overeating is seen as an individual irresponsibility.  There is a negative judgment attached to overeating.  No one likes to hear or acknowledge that they eat too much. Yet most people love overeating. Most will talk about the act of overeating as something to be revered.  Looking forward to that extra big juicy burger with fries, a big steak dinner, or pizza after the game or other special occasion.

If we have only one serving at a family dinner we might be asked if we're feeling ok. That's right, we actually think there is something wrong with people when they don't overeat.

You can't tell a person they overeat, and a person who just over-ate is likely to say they don't overeat or at least that they do it rarely.  Someone who eats too much is (wrongly) seen as someone who can't get a grip on their behavior and we don't want to be identified as such.

Whenever I've really overdone it with overeating I've always felt lethargic, had indigestion, and had lousy sleep.  Because of the lousy sleep I feel like crap the next day as well.  For me, that makes it not worthwhile to pig out.  So yes, overeating is a mistake. And we all make mistakes.

I used to overeat a lot.  I used to weight cycle up and down 15 pounds.  I don't anymore.  Had I kept up that behavior I would surly be quite overweight by now, 25 years later.

The prednisone man was taken aback when I said he gained weight from overeating. He frowned, rolled his eyes and said, "I don't overeat", with a dismissive and firm tone. He definitely did not want to qualify as an over-eater.  And yet he overate. 

Studies have shown that most people underestimate the amount of food they eat, and overestimate the amount of physical activity they do.  Studies also show that people believe their weight gain is caused by some factor other than overeating, such as a 'slow metabolism'.  When investigated it has always been found that people overeat to gain weight and there is no such thing as a slow metabolism that causes fat gain.  Only overeating causes fat gain, and only a negative food energy balance, eating fewer calories than expended, causes fat loss.

Study: people underestimate food intake by 47% and overestimate physical activity by 51%

I was very troubled by the experience I had with the group. I left with the concern that most of the people I just spoke with will most likely continue to be in the 90-95% failure group.  Their lives and health will be negatively affected by weight gain and they will feel frustration and angst with yo-yo dieting and cyclic weight gain, while at the same time looking forward to the next high calorie meal.

Is it wrong for me feel my own angst knowing that people are going through these experiences?  Do I need to learn more professional detachment?  I think I could benefit from learning to cope with my own feelings more effectively, but it may be just as hard for me to not feel for people as it is for people to overcome overeating.  It's hard for anyone to overcome their natural tendencies.

I've always felt pretty awful after experiences like this and have lost sleep many a time after being told where to go when having a conversation about healthy choices.  It isn't that I feel personal rejection that much.  What I feel is despair for those who refute that which will surly improve their lives.  No, I don't believe that people have to live the way I say, for me it's more matter of fact.  Being overweight increases risk of disease.  It's harder to breath.  More difficult to get a good nights sleep.  Poor nutrition and lack of exercise reduce quality of life.. whatever a person likes doing they will be able to do it better, and do more of it for more of their lives if they are healthy and fit.

Even though most don't like to hear the truth about overeating and weight gain, and even though I would stand make a lot more money by selling fad diets and exercise plans, not telling the truth about weight loss in my mind is worse.  I'm not going to commit demagoguery and tell people what they want to hear. I can't live with that either.

So to hell with my headline.  I'm going to tell the truth about weight loss.

Eating too much is the only way to gain fat, but there are many things that drive appetite leading a person to overeat including social habituation, poor sleep, peer pressure, hormonal changes, some medications, eating large meals, yo-yo dieting.. All paths lead to overeating.

The only way to lose weight is to eat less.  Consuming fewer calories than expended.  Exercise helps expend energy and can prevent bone, muscle, and water loss that can occur when cutting calories without exercise.

And above all, the most important things to work on are how we think and feel about ourselves, food choices, and healthy VS unhealthy choices. It's making these difficult but rewarding internal changes that allow for permanent changes in our habits and behaviours.  It really isn't a bad thing to gain a realistic non-judgmental perspective of why overeating is done.  It's a good thing.  It's liberating. It's healthy.