Sanitarium "One Square Meal"

[Son of a Beach]

This is undeniably true. However, it is also grossly simplistic, and not of much value in isolation.

Some high calorie sources (in particular sucrose, which is half fructose) seriously messes with human metabolism in a number of dangerous ways...

The best medical treatment always adheres to the KISS principle. In this, why make it so complicated when simpler will do? Why are people taking "high calorie" sources when a simple balanced diet is the recommendation? Why bother with the various fancy explanation, excuses and diets when the removal of said calorie source should be removed? It's just illogical to go to all those fancy and often commercially expensive solutions when a far simpler solution is at hand? Think about it and get rid of all the media and commercial spins! There are no "fatties" during an African famine. If the will is there, getting the weight down is but natural.

That's exactly right. Simple is best. However, a simple diet in our culture is simply not simple to achieve.

Take away the food source that destroys the will (i.e., fructose/sucrose), and it will certainly become much easier after that!

Unfortunately, taking out this one (unnatural*) food source is very difficult to do. It is added to almost all non-raw foods in the supermarket (e.g., 33% sugar in one brand of crushed garlic, I found). So the way around it would be using only raw foods. Well, that's all well and good, but doesn't fit our culture well, and many people find this very difficult to achieve. It's also a LOT more expensive than simply buying packaged foods (with all the added sugar).

Yes, a simple balanced diet would solve the problem. But most people don't understand what a good diet is due to misinformation (from supposedly scientific backgrounds and 'authoritative' sources), and even when they do, they do not understand what is actually added to the foods they are eating.

Therefore it is not at all simple for people to keep it simple.

*Yes, sucrose is a natural thing in fruits and vegetables, and causes very little problems when consumed in raw fruits and vegetables which also include the right fibre, etc, for the body to work with it properly. The body can handle it OK in its natural state. The body does not handle it properly even in fruit juice, without the whole fruit, let alone when refined and purified and added to other foods. Of course it affects some people a lot worse than others.

[photohiker]

Burn some calories and reduce intake. It's not hard, people just need to be convinced it will work rather than be waylaid by all the excuses offered as crutches for their weight problem and they will give it a go.

[wayno]

i dont know that lot of people can cope with simple... simple can equal boring to people and many avoid that like the plague, how much time to kids spend playing outside now versus in front of electronic screens? how many would have the patience to walk an hour? look at how many pedestrian accidents there are now from people wearing ipods and not bothering to look when they cross the street.
i've seen people freak out when i suggest walking up a modest sized hill. to them you only tackle a hill in motorised transport...

[Son of a Beach]

Burn some calories and reduce intake. It's not hard, people just need to be convinced it will work rather than be waylaid by all the excuses offered as crutches for their weight problem and they will give it a go.

It just ain't that simple. Yes, using more calories than you consume is clearly the answer. But it is just not that easy for many people to do. It's dead easy for me. My body naturally processes the stuff, and I stay skinny.

However, I know people, including my wife, who works flat out to exercise, has put a huge amount of effort into reducing intake, and gotten nowhere for years. The breakthrough came with one change: Once she removed sugar from her diet (which is EXCEEDINGLY difficult to do in our culture) she started losing weight consistently for over 12 months now. She still eats plenty of fats and everything else she wants. She just doesn't want as much, due to the lack of sugar which eliminates the body's ability to know when it's had enough.

The main impact was that after eating no sugar for about a month, she stopped feeling hungry. She now eats small meals and feels full. This was never possible when the body was loaded with fructose (sugar).

So yes, you are correct, will power is all that's needed. But for some people the will power is destroyed by the sugar they consume - not psychologically, but biologically.

[wayno]

yes well sugar is after all used by plants to encourage animals as much as possible to spread their seeds around..
the most common evolutionary stress for humans has until recent times been getting enough to eat.. we are hard wired to like high energy foods like sugar, we get an endorphin hit when we eat it, its proven to be addictive.
when we get stressed we are hard wired to look for calorie dense food. because it became a good survival mechanism, chances were you were stressed you were highly likely to need food. and today we have rapidly absorbed calories on tap, day in day out....

[GPSGuided]

That's exactly right. Simple is best. However, a simple diet in our culture is simply not simple to achieve...

True and false. If accepted as true, then bugger if there's any chance of succeeding in ever more complex diet and "treatment" regimes. The only people who'll benefit will be the diet industry. How much money do they make for the simple fact that people can't stay simple?

If people feel they have to make things more complex in order for people to adhere to it (illogical already), then no one should complain about the millions to billions being wasted on the diet rollercoaster. Again, it's evidentiary support on the will factor. Better to just treat the psychology than find ever more fancy dietary plans.

[photohiker]

So yes, you are correct, will power is all that's needed. But for some people the will power is destroyed by the sugar they consume - not psychologically, but biologically.

People get so much information pushed at them that a large proportion of us cannot separate valid information from advertising or misinformation.

It is simple, but the information needs to be focussed to the individual. Your wife's success proves that.

[geoskid]

I only looked in on this thread for the first time yesterday. I thought , " how on earth are they getting 5 pages out of a thread on a museli bar". - now I know.

Interesting discussion.
I appreciate the efforts of those that follow up presented 'facts'.
I agree that the weight loss/nutrition 'industry' complicates what is really a simple mechanism to manage.

What is harder to understand ( for me) is why people don't simply manage their mechanism, and probably falls within psychology and social studies.

Having said that, I have found a couple of things in here that I am going to make a more concerted effort to change, as the cook of our house. Sugar and saturated fat. I am already conscious of both, and fairly careful, but sugar is going, and am going to look more closely how to reduce saturated fat. Already gone out and bought a bottle of Australian 2013 robust extra virgin olive oil.
So Thanks

[wayno]

people are geared towards novelty, simplicity can be boring, so marketers dress food up differently.. once apona time you just got busy in teh kitchen and made your own recipie, but now food companies are providing the novelty and people just buy it instead of make it. and they are at the mercy of what the food companies put in the food. people have grown up like this, they are now hard wired to expect sugar and fat in a lot of their food, and they dont like the taste of food without it...
also a lot of people are time poor. i'm amazed at the big queues at teh supermarket right up ti ten o clock at night on a week night, people coming straight from work late at night to get food

[photohiker]

Not so sure about that wayno. Agree that part of society works like that, and it's often the lower socio economic part, which is prey to the processed food industry.

I've got a mate that lives in one of the poorer areas, he gets a stack of fast food advertising in his letterbox every day. A drawer full per week. We would be lucky to get one pamphlet per week. There is a big following of cooking shows here, and lots of fresh ingredients in local shops, even the supermarkets have embraced fresh ingredients in the last few years - they only paid lip service to fresh food previously, and most of it was low quality.

The FDA looking at moving against trans fats is a good sign for that part of society that is dependant on processed foods - if people are so bored with preparing their own food and unable to exercise because it's too boring, then the only answers are education and regulation. Let them go for fats, then sugar and salt. It's way past time these ingredients were brought into line with accepted healthy consumption levels anyway. The reason they are in foods in the quantities they are is that they are a cheap source of palatability when compared to high quality proteins.

[wayno]

i dont live in a lower socio economic area, most of the people shopping at my supermarket are stocking up on a lot of processed foods, and not a lot of baking ingredients...

[Son of a Beach]

That's exactly right. Simple is best. However, a simple diet in our culture is simply not simple to achieve...

True and false. If accepted as true, then bugger if there's any chance of succeeding in ever more complex diet and "treatment" regimes. The only people who'll benefit will be the diet industry. How much money do they make for the simple fact that people can't stay simple?

If people feel they have to make things more complex in order for people to adhere to it (illogical already), then no one should complain about the millions to billions being wasted on the diet rollercoaster. Again, it's evidentiary support on the will factor. Better to just treat the psychology than find ever more fancy dietary plans.

I think we're getting our "simples" confused. A good diet is a simple diet. No doubt about it.

Understanding what a simple diet is, is not simple, due to the chaos of information around and the hidden extras (especially sugar) in most foods in the supermarket.

Adhering to a simple diet is also not simple because the hidden extras that most people don't realise is in most foods (i.e., sugar) actually changes the way the brain works in such a way that it makes every fibre of your being want to eat more. That's a biological reality that is too strong for the will power of most people's psychology.

A handful of food is all that's actually required for each meal. Most of us eat a large plateful at most meals. For many of us, our body is able to deal with the over-eating that we put it through. For some others, their bodies don't cope as well with the over-eating that the vast majority of us do.

The diet that would benefit most people (i.e., removing sugar) is as simple as you can get - it really doesn't get any more simple than that. But it is difficult for people to understand or adhere to due to the biological affects of sugar, and the complexities of our food industry and culture.

Once you beat your addiction to sugar, it's dead simple to stick to the lifestyle change (not a "diet" in the fad sense). But it takes a couple of months to adjust, and very few people manage to stick it out for that long, or to actually remove sugar entirely, due to it being added to virtually every packaged food they eat.

Because sugar (actually fructose) is in effect a drug, it's not a simple matter of changing diet. First you have to beat the drug addiction. Tell somebody addicted to cigarettes that it's just a matter of will power. It's just the same. Sure it's a matter of will power, but the drug is causing your biology to not just want the drug, but to need the drug.

[photohiker]

i dont live in a lower socio economic area, most of the people shopping at my supermarket are stocking up on a lot of processed foods, and not a lot of baking ingredients...

Yes, sorry wayno. I'm talking Adelaide Australia and you're in NZ somewhere.

Pity things are like that where you are. All downhill by the sound of it...

[GPSGuided]

I think that one fact in the food market these days is that merchants are trying to make more money out of the "health" market with premium prices for organic and other foods that are perceived or hyped to be healthy. As such, it's harder (in general term) for people with limited spending power to take advantage of those "healthier" foods. At this stage, it's a discretionary expenditure to go organic and other health foods.

[GPSGuided]

I think we're getting our "simples" confused. A good diet is a simple diet. No doubt about it.

Maybe. But agree with the statement here.

When I say simple, I just mean simple dietary advice on readily available basic food sources. Lots of fresh vegetable and fruits, appropriate balance of meat and carbohydrates of whatever source. Diversify. Even primary school kids have been taught and shown photos of those. If the society can follow just that, the general health of the society would have lifted by a giant step. No need for super fancy diet designs. If people have the intellect to understand the science of hydrogenation, fatty acid, caloric calculations white vs brown fat and all that, then the above primary school level teaching should be a push over.

At the end of the day, it'll be up to the will of the individual to execute. Socio-psychological issues can be addressed separately.

[geoskid]

I think we're getting our "simples" confused. A good diet is a simple diet. No doubt about it.

Maybe. But agree with the statement here.

When I say simple, I just mean simple dietary advice on readily available basic food sources. Lots of fresh vegetable and fruits, appropriate balance of meat and carbohydrates of whatever source. Diversify. Even primary school kids have been taught and shown photos of those. If the society can follow just that, the general health of the society would have lifted by a giant step. No need for super fancy diet designs. If people have the intellect to understand the science of hydrogenation, fatty acid, caloric calculations white vs brown fat and all that, then the above primary school level teaching should be a push over.

At the end of the day, it'll be up to the will of the individual to execute. Socio-psychological issues can be addressed separately.

Love your work GPS, Photohiker, and Icefest.
Take care,
Over and out

[Onestepmore]

Understanding what a simple diet is, is not simple, due to the chaos of information around and the hidden extras (especially sugar) in most foods in the supermarket.
.......
Once you beat your addiction to sugar, it's dead simple to stick to the lifestyle change (not a "diet" in the fad sense). But it takes a couple of months to adjust, and very few people manage to stick it out for that long, or to actually remove sugar entirely, due to it being added to virtually every packaged food they eat.

Because sugar (actually fructose) is in effect a drug, it's not a simple matter of changing diet. First you have to beat the drug addiction. Tell somebody addicted to cigarettes that it's just a matter of will power. It's just the same. Sure it's a matter of will power, but the drug is causing your biology to not just want the drug, but to need the drug.

So true SOAB
It's demeaning to say ' losing weight is just a matter of will power'
I've read that sugar is just as addictive as heroin, produces the same physiological and biochemical responses
And food companies, and the whole weight loss industry machine etc don't want to get you unhooked from suger - because if it's added, then they sell more
What incentive do they have to change things? (Beacuse they actually have an interest in our health to improve? Lol, I don't think so!)

And when calories are restricted, then your metabolism readjusts and your body thinks "oh oh, we're in a famine, lean times 'a comin' ". It uses what energy it has coming in much more efficiently. Then the metabolic reset stays when the body has more calories and go back to eating 'normally' which is what happens because people cannot sustain themself or keep on a very resricted calorie diet for very long (no matter how good their willpower is)
This leads to the whole weight yo yo thing

If it was just willpower that allowed people to lose weight, why have obesity levels soared, despite all the low fat and low calorie foods people consume, despite all the advice about 'eating in moderation', the healthy food pyramid etc, and all the different exercise and weight loss regimes?
Do we all just lack willpower?
No - the information we've been given by the national nutrition advisors is incorrect, and based on faulty scientific method and interpretation, and manipulation of evidence.

If it was simple, then we'd all be normal weight, type II diabetes would be almost unheard of, cardiovascular disease rates wouldn't be sky high, and all the other things being hashed around
If it was simple, then people wouldn't smoke, wouldn't have alcohol problems, wouldn't have drug addicitons, wouldn't gamble (because we'd all have great 'willpower')
There are no simple solutions because nutrition and our body's metabolism and interactions with hormones is very complicted

So you can't say weight loss is simple and you just need better willpower

OK, I've had my little say. Off to have a yummy lunch of guilt free ham and salmon and scrambled eggs (made with a little cream) on home made sourdough bread and a salad! Bon appetit

[GPSGuided]

It's demeaning to say ' losing weight is just a matter of will power'

Not at all, because it's the fact. Inability to accept has much to blame on the commercial diet industry and media, who tries to portray weight reduction is so complicated and difficult, that it's only possible to cough up the money and use their services.

Sugar is as addictive as heroin? Gosh, we are addicted to food. Fact is, heroin addicts can go cold turkey and so can sugar addicts. Yes, it's tough, but that's where will power comes in. No need to constantly depend on other people or finding biochemical excuses. Just need to do it. Eat less, exercise more, it'll fix 99% of those who are overweight. Comparing sugar to heroin is but another one of those sensationalistic portrayal for the mass media. Next, I'll say that human's addiction to water is just the same. So, how to resist the temptation of all the TV food ads, all the pastry shops, all that ice creams. Yes, will will see it through! The rest are easy.

[LandSailor]

It's demeaning to say ' losing weight is just a matter of will power'

A recent BBC doco called The Truth About Fat actually supports you on this. They dismiss the notion that getting fat is simply a "failure of willpower".
Of course you need willpower as part of the process of losing weight but apparently the latest research is saying that people have different appetite hormone profiles (if I remember correctly). So some unfortunate people can get obese due to simply experiencing a more stronger, persistent hunger compared to others.
And I suppose constantly trying to deny this stronger hunger would also mean you are more likely to experience a greater level of decision fatigue.

[photohiker]

And when calories are restricted, then your metabolism readjusts and your body thinks "oh oh, we're in a famine, lean times 'a comin' ". It uses what energy it has coming in much more efficiently. Then the metabolic reset stays when the body has more calories and go back to eating 'normally' which is what happens because people cannot sustain themself or keep on a very resricted calorie diet for very long (no matter how good their willpower is)
This leads to the whole weight yo yo thing

But we're not talking about highly restricted calories that tip the body into starvation mode, we are talking about bringing the intake down sensibly. "eat less" not "starve" If someone is overweight or obese, they have an intake vs expenditure imbalance. Correcting that imbalance wont put them into famine mode.

I have seen overweight people adopt a starvation diet to crash their weight down for an event like a wedding or something. Goes straight back on in about the same time, probably because they go ahead and eat after the event like they used to. This is not the way to do it...

What is amazing is that even in this thread we have seen many reasons not to apply willpower to putting oneself on a sensible food/exercise strategy that would lead to weight loss. No wonder people have trouble with it.

[geoskid]

No - the information we've been given by the national nutrition advisors is incorrect, and based on faulty scientific method and interpretation, and manipulation of evidence.

This is a big call, and I don't agree at all.
2 mins of searching came up with this from the Aus. Govt. National Health & Medical Research Council,

Australian Dietary Guidelines (2013):
http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines/publications/n55.

Nothing complicated or hard to understand, and pretty much what I learned at school (many years ago).
Sure, someone that hasn't been eating like this may need to re-acquaint themselves with the rest of the supermarket, spend a bit of time preparing a new shopping list and stock their pantry differently, and perhaps put a bit of effort into learning how to cook simple/quick tasty meals using healthy cooking methods, but first they have to want to, and then make it happen

[wayno]

truth is not everyone is going to have the willpower to overcome their addictions.. some people will need support from friends, family or professionals to kick whatever addictions, if addictions were that easy to kick then there wouldnt be so many people with long term addictions..
good on anyone who can kick their addictions. it can take a lot of willpower, especially if you revert to your addiction to cope with some form of regular stress. you might kick the addiction in the short term but it may be hard to stay addiction free for some people as well.
ieting really should be done with professional help if you havent done your homework, so many people go on drastic diets that dont work in the long term.. i lost a lot of weight but to start with i did it by going on a drastic diet change that wasnt healthy long term, took me a long time to really find out what a healthy diet was..

[Onestepmore]

Lol, Geoskid, I give up.

Eat your margarine and your vegetable oils and your low fat diet yoghurts, drink your fruit juices and sleep well at night knowing you're following the recommended guidelines.

[wayno]

yeah i wouldnt rate these guidelines, just does the same old bashing saturated fat routine... and makes out like all vegetable oils are saints...

Milk, yoghurt, cheese and/or their alternatives, mostly reduced fat

a. Limit intake of foods high in saturated fat such as many biscuits, cakes, pastries,
pies, processed meats, commercial burgers, pizza, fried foods, potato chips,
crisps and other savoury snacks.
• Replace high fat foods which contain predominately saturated fats such as
butter, cream, cooking margarine, coconut and palm oil with foods which contain
predominately polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats such as oils, spreads,
nut butters/pastes and avocado

[wayno]

i do the opposite of what those guidelines say and i have been for years. i'm not fat, blood pressure is low, resting heart rate is 45. i dont do massive amounts of exercise regularly. yet those guidelines would have you believe i should be unhealthy.

[wayno]

weston price travelled the world, the healthiest communities he found were ones eating reasonable quantities, of saturated fat, they could eat tens of grams a day and they were healthy strong populations living to a ripe old age...

[Son of a Beach]

No - the information we've been given by the national nutrition advisors is incorrect, and based on faulty scientific method and interpretation, and manipulation of evidence.

This is a big call, and I don't agree at all.
2 mins of searching came up with this from the Aus. Govt. National Health & Medical Research Council,

Australian Dietary Guidelines (2013):
http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines/publications/n55.

Nothing complicated or hard to understand, and pretty much what I learned at school (many years ago).
Sure, someone that hasn't been eating like this may need to re-acquaint themselves with the rest of the supermarket, spend a bit of time preparing a new shopping list and stock their pantry differently, and perhaps put a bit of effort into learning how to cook simple/quick tasty meals using healthy cooking methods, but first they have to want to, and then make it happen

The trouble is that much recent research is indicating that some of our societies accepted 'official' nutritional guidelines are wrong. In fact much of them are based on the 'Time' cover photographed Ansell Keys work on the 'Seven Countries' study. Turns out it was really a FIFTY countries study, but it didn't show anything conclusive, so he picked out seven countries that he could make look like they fitted a pattern, and published results based on that. It's one of the biggest scientific con jobs of all time, and that's what much of our current nutritional guidelines is still based on.

PS. Sorry Geoskid. I don't think my soap box stand here necessarily applies to your post that I quoted. Just getting carried away bit. Thanks photohiker for the reminder.

[LandSailor]

The trouble is that much recent research is indicating that some of our societies accepted 'official' nutritional guidelines are wrong. In fact much of them are based on the 'Time' cover photographed Ansell Keys work on the 'Seven Countries' study. Turns out it was really a FIFTY countries study, but it didn't show anything conclusive, so he picked out seven countries that he could make look like they fitted a pattern, and published results based on that. It's one of the biggest scientific con jobs of all time, and that's what much of our current nutritional guidelines is still based on.

Yes there are alot of people losing large amounts of weight, improving all their health markers by doing precisely the opposite of the recommended nutritional guidelines.

[Son of a Beach]

It's demeaning to say ' losing weight is just a matter of will power'

Not at all, because it's the fact. Inability to accept has much to blame on the commercial diet industry and media, who tries to portray weight reduction is so complicated and difficult, that it's only possible to cough up the money and use their services.

Sugar is as addictive as heroin? Gosh, we are addicted to food. Fact is, heroin addicts can go cold turkey and so can sugar addicts. Yes, it's tough, but that's where will power comes in. No need to constantly depend on other people or finding biochemical excuses. Just need to do it. Eat less, exercise more, it'll fix 99% of those who are overweight. Comparing sugar to heroin is but another one of those sensationalistic portrayal for the mass media. Next, I'll say that human's addiction to water is just the same. So, how to resist the temptation of all the TV food ads, all the pastry shops, all that ice creams. Yes, will will see it through! The rest are easy.

Sounds to me like you're saying two things here that I disagree with. Firstly, you seem to be saying that quitting heroin and cocaine is a simple matter of will power. I do agree that it's a matter of will power (although there are also other methods), but I strongly disagree that it's simple. I'd like to hear from any former or current heroin addict who says that quitting is simple.

It also seems that you think that sugar and water are comparable in their sense of being a drug, or that sugar is not an addictive drug. I also strongly disagree with this. Current research demonstrates that sugar is not just an addictive drug in the psychological addiction sense (e.g., like alcohol is), but is actually physically addictive (e.g., like nicotine, heroine, etc). This means that our bodies change the way the function when loaded up with sugar in order to do their best to continue functioning normally. They get used to functioning this way and this becomes the new 'normal'. When deprived of the substance, the body then does not function normally and desperately needs the substance in order to function 'normally. This physical (not just psychological) addiction is what makes it so hard to quit hard drugs, and also makes it hard to quit sugar. The sugar symptoms are not as severe as with hard drugs but they are real. You feel sick, you get headaches, and you get severe cravings.

You say that, "Comparing sugar to heroin is but another one of those sensationalistic portrayal for the mass media", but it's actually true. I'm not trying to say that it's as severe in symptoms as heroin, but it is effectively a real physically addictive drug. If you don't believe this, then you've simply not looked into the current research enough.

If it was as simple as you say, then people would not find it so hard to quit smoking.

PS. I haven't done the research either, so I'm willing to accept that I could be wrong. However, I'm repeating what I've been told by people who are more well read than I am, being that I've found it to match the experience of my family in quitting sugar, and of others who we know who've done the same, and others who've tried and failed.

[wayno]

in science you can often get different sides to an argument.. just look at global warming... but those running official organisations like govt depts make a decision on which side they will listen to, , western nations just almost automatically parrot what comes out of america where a lot of research is funded by commercial companies with vested interests.
local crop growers in the states lobby the govt to promote their products, ie vegetable fats as healthy and bad mouth the alternatives, like coconut oil and animal fat....