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Posts tagged ‘Junk food’

Jan 1

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It’s never a matter of education…

It’s never a matter of education.
It’s always a matter of motivation.

I have been on my own health journey for the last 27 years, and I have spoken to many hundreds of people around the subject of weight loss and healthy living, pretty much every day for the last 11 years, and I have directly worked with people and tried to help people with weight loss just about every day for the last 5 or 6 years, and in all that time and contact, I have never met one single person who didn’t understand that eating vegetables is good for you.

I have never met anyone who thought smoking was good for you.
I didn’t meet one single person who thought beer and pizza was healthy, slimming food.
I have not met a single soul who thought ‘eat more veg, drink more water and get some exercise’ was bad advice.

You see, we all know what to do, we just don’t do what we know.

It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I revisit this topic, it remains an undeniable truth. These days, everyone knows what they should be doing. We know we shouldn’t smoke, we know we should drink less, we know six pints per night is not healthy. We know two bottles of wine on a Saturday evening is too much and we are going to regret it the next morning. We know that we shouldn’t order take-away food four nights per week. We know we should eat more salad, more oily fish, and watch less TV.

But still we do all of these things. I work with people every day who know the things they should be doing to lose weight, have more energy, and feel better, yet they still engage in those things they know they shouldn’t.

And so it is.
Success in our health endeavours is almost never a matter of education, and almost always a matter of motivation. Read more

May 7

1 Comment

Are all calories created equal?

As I wrote yesterday, to help you get through my long posts, from now on I will put bullet points at the start, telling you in brief what the post is about, and in brief, the main conclusions or points that I come to.

This way, if you are short of time, you can read the bullet points, which only takes 30 seconds, and it should tell you the essence of the post – if it sounds interesting, you will find the 5 minutes you need to read the whole thing, but otherwise, the bullet points tell you enough to get the main idea.

I will try to remember to summarize all future posts this way. I hope this is helpful!

What is this post about?

  • So-called ‘flexible eating’ seems to be the latest popular diet fad
  • The idea is that you can eat pretty much whatever you like, providing you still burn more calories than you eat, so you don’t get fat
  • Here at MND HQ, I think that is downright wrong, and down right ignorant
  • This post looks at the main arguments, between ‘flexible eating’ - “a calorie is a calorie”, and ‘clean eating’ - “all calories are not created equal”

Main conclusions:

  • In my opinion, all calories are NOT created equal
  • Many factors affect your body’s absorption of the calories you consume, and the speed of that absorption, and the chemical make-up of those calories, affect HOW your body absorbs those calories
  • In my opinion, this ‘flexible eating’ is just the latest modern version od calorie counting

Read on to learn more.

Paleo diet, flexible dieting and clean eating

In 2013, the most searched for ‘diet’ online was the Paleo diet. In 2014, I am seeing a rising trend in ‘flexible dieting’ or ‘flexible eating’.

I’m very active in a number of online discussion groups, and in one of those online groups, the subject of flexible dieting comes up as a regular topic. It’s an area I have been looking at for some time now.

The main point of the flexible dieting fraternity is “a calorie is a calorie” and you can eat roughly what you like providing you stay in caloric deficit, then you won’t get fat. They do ‘mostly’ suggest you eat ‘mostly’ good real foods, but there are many proponents of flexible dieting out there suggesting you can eat pizza, chips, ice cream, chocolate bars, white bread, cake and more on a regular basis, daily indeed, providing you stay in caloric deficit - I.E. you burn more calories that you eat. I’m not a fan of this way of thinking, as you know. Read more

Mar 24

Processed food, your mitochondria, and ageing

I was reading a research paper over breakfast this morning, and yet again found ANOTHER good reason to eat clean and avoid processed foods and junk foods. I’ll quickly share it with you before I get stuck into my learning for the day.

A vast majority of processed foods broadly tend to be:

  • made from processed grains
  • they have had components of their original make-up removed (often natural fats) in order to extend their shelf life (leave the natural fats in, and the foods would go rancid)
  • for these reasons, they tend to be energy-dense (lots of calories, mostly carbs) and nutrient-poor (lacking vitamins and minerals)

This is a gross over-simplification, but it reasonably accurately describes foods such as bread, pasta, white rice, cakes, pastries, burger buns, snack bars, cereals and almost all packaged convenience food and almost all non-perishable snack foods.

So the food delivers energy, I.E. it gives you calories, but it fails to deliver nutrients the way Mother Nature intended. If you eat 600 grams of cabbage or broccoli you get some calories, but you get a bunch of vitamins, minerals and enzymes too. If you eat 600 grams of white bread, you get the calories, but very little of the nutrients (and those you do get, are synthetic, added in a factory, and hence far less bio-available to your body, because they are not ‘packaged’ naturally in balance with their relevant digestive enzymes, etc.).  Read more

Feb 6

3 Comments

Act BEFORE disaster strikes…don’t wait UNTIL it happens

Earlier today, a friend reminded me just how hard it is to convince people to make healthier diet choices while those people are seemingly healthy and active.

The trouble is, the net effect of poor dietary and lifestyle choices may be doing harm on the inside for many years, without those ill effects showing up on the outside. The body may be doing it’s job, keeping things working inside, but the damage is likely accumulating, out of sight, out of mind.

I really want to help people, long term, to understand this point. Ignoring health advice and warnings (about sugar, alcohol, nicotine, processed food, additives, the sodium nitrite in processed meats, etc.) now, can and almost certainly will, cause an accumulation of toxic side effects inside the body. In time, these affect “gene expression”, and rising cancer rates, among other major health problems, are a direct effect of this scenario. I want people to understand that waiting til the Dr says “I’m sorry Mr/Mrs X, but we have found a mass on your scan.” is TOO LATE. People get the bad news, then start shouting “why me?” And “it’s not fair” and “help me NOW”

They are right, it’s sad and not fair, but it happens, and global cancer rates are forecast to more than double over the next 30 years or so.

Diet is not the sole cause, but diet and lifestyle largely determines the state of the ‘biological environment’ inside the body. This environment then affects ‘gene expression’. In over-simplified terms, think of it like this: if you have any kind of genetic pre-disposition to a condition, such as breast, cervical, lung, liver or prostate cancer, that genetic pre-disposition may NOT come to reality if your inner environment is super-clean…however, a ‘dirty’ inner environment is far more likely to promote that pre-disposition to express itself.

Waiting until you are diagnosed to say “oh God please help me now” is like asking for a band aid after the cut has been made and blood is gushing out. I want to help people see the knife coming and avoid that cut in the first place.

Prevention is better, less painful, and more effective, than cure.

Over the next decade, as I develop MND into a business, from Day One, 10 percent of all profits MND ever makes will go to a non-profit foundation, the MND Health Foundation. Once funds permit research to begin, this not-for-profit will research links between diet and cancer prevalence, among other topics. I hope, in some way, that MND will one day help to reverse these rising cancer rates, through prevention and education.

I have written on related topics before. For more, please see:
Pills are not the answer!

Drinking bleach…and other bright ideas…

Focus on what really matters