Dark side (effects) of eating....

Well I am still feeling the effects of the "dark side" of food so I thought I would list some of the side effects.

1) Anxiety- I felt a sort of nervousness throughout the day yesterday. I noticed I was biting my nails a lot and just felt weird. I also needed to sleep in the afternoon, something I used to do a long time ago but not since changing my diet.

2) Low exercise tolerance- I did some body weight circuits yesterday and boy were they HARD. It took a lot to get going and I ached and creaked. Once I got going I felt OK but it felt like my muscles were unable to process energy. Oh yes, and afterwards during my recovery, I hit rock bottom and my body ached and ached oh my GOD!

3) Mental agility of a cabbage- I didn't exactly feel like the brain of Britain. Nuff said.

4) Hideous cravings- It has been very difficult to fast yesterday (I normally fast daily until the evening). My body just needed nourishment and I expect that the Insulin levels are still very high in my body and are not allowing the energy to be released.

One of the things I have loved about the Warrior diet lifestyle has been the amazing feeling I have throughout the day. The weight loss factor has now almost become a side issue. Having eaten like I did the other day I really appreciate my health and well being.

I also feel sympathy with people changing there diets after a lifetime of eating like I did for ONE EVENING! I am struggling and all I can think about is a lovely McDonald's breakfast....

Dammit.

I wont be doing this again in a hurry.

Junk Food Experiment

OK. I have been feeling pretty good recently and have not had much hunger during the daytime. Sometimes when your feeling good, it becomes normal and you don't appreciate it as much as you should. Kind of like how you don't appreciate your health until you get sick.

So I wanted to see what effect eating a load of junk food-specifically high carb and sugar foods would have on me today. Whether my warrior diet would protect me against the effect of these foods or not. I therefore ate some Naan bread, normal bread and several chocolate biscuits.

Within about 45mins of eating I was HUNGRY again! Honestly if I wasn't interrupted by sleep I could have continued all night I reckon.

Today I feel like I am mentally challenged. I went to the supermarket this morning and had trouble working the tills! I am also very hungry and I can feel my body craving for nutrients. Normally I don't even think about food until lunch time.

OK so this is not really a major surprise "man eats crap and feels it", isn't going to make the front page. However from a personal point of view its great for me to remind myself of why I eat and live the way I do. Its also a great reminder for me to feel how low fat dieters must feel all day long. Its like having a hungry monster inside you ready to hunt down the cookies!

Cheerios as a health food!

This article was floating around last week about Cheerios and the language they use to promote their cereals.

Apparently, the way they make claims on their cereal boxes makes them more akin to a drug rather than a breakfast cereal. Unfortunately, they have no problem with the claims, just the wording. It appears that the idea of cereals being nothing but "healthy" is taken without question.

I wonder if the FDA have actually considered whether the claims made are true at all?

Taste Buds

Hello all!

Just a quick one today to say that my taste buds appear to be changing I used to hate the taste of various vegetables (I thought they had no taste). For instance, Broccoli used to make me sick! However I now love the taste of the little blighters!!

I am also starting to crave different foods day to day. The idea of sugar now no longer appeals to me. I am craving fat and other carbs depending on what I have done physically.

Has anyone found anything similar?

Andy

Backwards Logic?

Long before I ever discovered Intermittent Fasting, one thing I never could understand was the idea that if you miss a meal, your metabolism slows down and your body breaks down precious muscle tissue and holds onto fat.

Now, I am not talking about long term starvation here. No, I refer only to missing ONE meal or so.

So lets get this straight. You eat too many calories you get fatter. Then if you miss meals, your body holds onto stored fat and breaks down muscle tissue.

My background is in health and fitness and I even did a degree in exercise science. During all of the courses I have done, this principle of metabolic breakdown was a truth unquestioned by anyone.

If its true that our bodies start to breakdown muscle when food is scarce, would we not have HUGE muscles when we stuffed ourselves? How cool woud that be?

And when you think about it, in an evolutionary sense, it doesnt make much sense does it? When we were living in caves food was scarce, and we would not necessarily eat evey day. We would need our muscles to hunt or search for food right?

So if our bodies started to break down our precious muscle tissue after short periods without food, then each day it would become PHYSICALLY more difficut to search for food. Im pretty sure the Human race would have died out long ago.

This is why I think Intermittent fasting can be so successful for people. Its not for everyone thats for sure, but I think people should not feel guilty about missing a meal if it happens.

We need to give the human survival mechanism more credit!

Snap Crackle and Pop

An article in the Brit newspapers today reported that a study by scientists in Texas have shown that breakfast cereal with milk is superior to sports drinks as a post recovery work out meal.

Apparently, the cereal caused a greater insulin response than the sports drinks which- quoting the paper- "is a good thing".

I have no doubt that it is better that Gatorade or Lucozade, but my concern here is that report is assuming that well known high carb sports drinks are "the gold standard" in exercise recovery.

I believe that the best thing post workout is all natural protein sources and some carbohydrate in the form of fruit or starch. HOWEVER...... This would all depend on the INTENSITY of my workout.

Often the aim of the workouts is to burn fat and people will be doing long steady cardio and their muscles will only deplete minimally. They then believe that they need to "replenish the engine".

It worries me when I read these sorts of things because it is a "page from the book", but not the whole story.

Feminization of men!!!

Here is a link to some new research about the feminisation of males due to chemicals. Showing that Ori Hofmekler is maybe onto something regarding estrogen in the diet!

Biggest losers

I was watching the "biggest loser" on TV yesterday and it got me thinking about how we treat obese people in general.

First though a quick bit of science.....

Like most people I used to think that weight gain was solely due to excess food (calorie) intake and therefore the obese were simply too greedy and "deserved" to be that big (to my shame). Unfortunately, the majority of the public, the obese included, are still under the delusion that eating less is just a matter of willpower and that "big people" are just weak willed.

However, I am now certain of the fact that if people are obese then there is a serious metabolic disorder going on, meaning that the body cannot access the stored body fat, and therefore essential energy, meaning the only source of fuel they have is their food intake. The bigger someone is then the higher the metabolic need of the body is and therefore the higher their calorific need.

In other words, the obese body has extreme difficulty making its own fuel from its own stores and, despite the outward appearance of corpulence, is in fact starving inside.

To put it simply :-
people are not fat because they eat more, but in fact they eat more because they are fat.

Interesting stuff eh?

OK. Back to my opening gambit about "The biggest loser". My biggest gripe about this show is that it makes it appear that the only way a person can lose weight if obese is to be put through weeks of hell, deprivation and prison camp treatment. It doesn't treat these guys with any respect and in fact they are treated as weak willed and emotionally crippled fatties. They are still people for gods sake! Not only that but when discussing with them why they got fat in the first place, the "instructors" blame the contestants for giving up on themselves, saying they "were not strong enough" and they should be ashamed for "letting themselves go".

I think there have been so many success stories of people losing fat, but in a dignified, relaxed and natural way, but because they go against the grain of normal nutritional thinking, they are not known.

I think that the weight lost by the contestants in the show could be replicated by addressing the nutritional disorders they have, without the boot camp fitness, and then measuring the results.

Hmmmm. A show called " the biggest winner" perhaps?

Number crunching

Here is a great link to a post by Tom Naughton about how we are easily scared by numbers when it comes to scientific information.

On the diet front I had a brilliant cottage pie last night (created by my talented self!) and a mass of great veg.

Normally after eating such a meal I get drowsy and miserable but last night although I was STUFFED, I didnt experience the "mental fogginess" I normally get afterwards.

Signs I feel that my Insulin resistance is getting better. Great! Ill be quaffing on jelly beans before you know it :-)

Anti-Estrogenic/warrior Diet update

Well its been 2 weeks since I started the diet and I must say I am feeling great. I feel like a warrior already!

Week 2 is all about eating fat based diet and getting your body burning fat as a fuel instead of carbs.

I have completely gotten used to the under eating phase during the day and now I hardly feel any desire for food in the daytime. At first, its all you think about especially as you go past lunchtime but it soon becomes a normal part of the day! I I think the habit of eating 3+ times per day makes you feel "time" hunger as opposed to real hunger. Its really refreshing to be free of food and not to feel the need to refuel every 3 hours.

A great side effect of this eating is that I can REALLY taste my food now when I eat it. My taste buds seem much more responsive and food just tastes fab!

Week 3 is the introduction of previously forbidden foods like meat, bread and pasta. Tonight I have eaten some chilli and will record how it makes me feel in the morning.

Not sure if I feel any more manly on this diet. After all I am already a vibrant twenty something peak specimen of a man grrrrrrrrr!!!!!

"kelloggs Frosties, they're grrrrrrrrravely bad for your kids!"

A great piece worth a read in the guardian today about nutrition for children.

Basically the consumer group WHICH pointed out that Morrison's Choco Crackles, Kellogg's Coco Pops, Moons and Stars, Frosties and Ricicles are 37% pure sugar - indeed they contain about as much per 30g serving as a Cadbury's chocolate Flake.

Not a major surprise to us, but its also points a damning finger at the same companies for marketing this crap and then having the audacity to tell us how to help stop the growing rise of childhood obesity (without blaming themselves obviously).

This article has made me think about what the rules are regarding promoting foods as healthy and nutritious. Using cereals as an example, they promote themselves as a "nutritious" start to the day just because they contain vitamins and minerals. What about all the sugar in them?

If for breakfast I presented you with a piece of rock you would not consider it a great breakfast. Yet I could tell you it contains, magnesium, calcium, iron and other essential vitamins and minerals and whats more its low in fat!

However, despite these facts (which are true) obviously eating rock for breakfast is not going to be good for the body. So why is it OK for cereals to be promoted as healthy despite how crap they are for the body?

"Angels & Demons"

I wanted to comment on some bollocks I read in the Daily Mail today.

Basically, some study determined that the brain has two parts when it comes to willpower, 1) An "angel" side and 2) a "demon" side.

Apparently, people who are fat and have trouble dieting have more of the demn side, and thinner people with stronger willpower have a stronger influence of the angel side.

Simple eh? Well thats sorted then. In other words if you are overweight you are more weak willed then you skinny friends.

Finally, the study came to the conclusion that possibly if people are reminded how bad food is before they eat it they may be less likely to indulge........

What TOTAL CRAP!

Willpower only has a small part to play inlong term dieting. Of course willpower is required to make the decision to eat better and make better food choices but willpower can only last a certain amount of time.

In typical low calorie, low fat (and therefore high carb) diets people experience constant hunger and spend all day thinking about food. Hunger is a drive that is essential for human survival and has helped keep mankind alive for thousands of years. Therefore willpower is facing a constant battle against hunger, and will eventually cave in!

A low carb, higher fat diet is great because it satisfies the bodies hunger cravings which means a person is not thinking about food all day long so willpower is not involved

Of course willpower is still important in the long term, for instance when you go out to a restaurant you need to make good choices, but this willpower is only needed short term and any cravings pass.

In conclusion, articles like this place the blame entirely on a persons mental strength, if you are fat you are simply weak willed, a loser. They fail to take into account the metabolic processes that stimulate our most basic drives. Its not fair to label people this way.

Until the media explain eating behaviours based on hard science facts and not BS people will always be fighting a losing battle with their wills!