Food sensitivities and weight gain

It seems to me that the key to successfully losing weight is eating quality food that my body likes rather than being intolerant to. That’s because you tend to put on weight when your body goes into hoarding mode, which it does when you give it some that, to it, is unpalatable. And when it stores food it doesn’t know what to do with, it stores it as fat.

The other problem is that your body can react rather negatively to food it doesn’t like. You could find yourself with sudden and unexplained energy loss, highly irritated with strange mood swings or generally feeling out of sorts. We don’t usually associate these difficulties with what we eat but they are closely connected.

My body has made it quite clear that it is not a fan of high carb food – potatoes, rice, bread, sugars etc – so I tend to avoid them, especially when I’m dieting. This is much easier to do when you’re in the right mindset and focused on dieting, but move away from the diet and it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking “just one won’t hurt me”. Now, when people try to cajole me into breaking my diet by saying exactly that, I tell them it will hurt me; actually, it will make me very sick. They don’t have any comeback to that, and to some degree it’s true. I will certainly feel pain, whether it’s stomach pain or pain on the scales the next morning.

One thing I have learned to do – belatedly – is to listen much more to what my body is telling me. It is very hard to do because we generally have strayed so far from being able to hear the messages our bodies are giving us. However, as I have lost weight I have found it easier to hear because my body reacts much more quickly to what is put into it. Recently, I added banana to my breakfast fruit, the first time I had eaten bananas for some months. Within two hours I experienced the most excruciating stomach pain, lasting 20 minutes or so before disappearing. It was hard to believe that something that is relatively low carb, a fruit, and so good for you could have that effect. I was devastated because I love smoothies, and they don’t seem like smoothies without banana. But you can be sure I won’t be eating them again!

I also tend to steer away from foods where I’m not sure about the contents or ingredients. This is quite difficult to do in restaurants where you can be fooled by the descriptions into thinking you’re ordering something quite safe, when what is delivered is contrary to what you want to be eating. Many cafes are difficult places for non-carb eaters, like me, but restaurants are usually fine because you can order a steak, omelette or fish that is not coated in batter or breadcrumbs.

I think the most important aspect of eating well is knowing what is in your food. And with anything processed you simply don’t unless you’re an expert on all the numbers the food industry uses to disguise the identity of what you’re eating. Reading labels simply isn’t enough, you need to make your food from scratch to be absolutely certain of what you’re eating.

The argument against this is, of course, time. But it takes no longer to cook a healthy meal from scratch than it does to get in the car, go to the supermarket or takeaway, buy your food, come home and then cook it or reheat and serve it. In fact, it often takes longer merely to take the food out of the packet, prepare and cook, than it does to make something from scratch. And making it yourself is a great deal cheaper too. At the time of writing – mid-winter 2011 – the world’s economies were in financial meltdown, the impact of which could be felt on food prices. Even fruit and vegetables have become hideously expensive, which gives additional ammunition to those companies producing processed food. People who naturally gravitate toward unwholesome food (and isn’t that most of us?) instead of fresh food, find it even harder to make the best choices. It’s hard to turn away from something that’s cheap and quick and easy.

But I believe for our own long-term health, and for the long-term health of the planet, this is exactly the choice we need to make. And, where possible, we need to be growing our own food, too. That way you know exactly what is going into it. Plus you can be certain that it’s not been inundated with unwanted herbicides, pesticides and waxes.

Nutritionally, today’s soils are very poor. A combination of intensive farming, chemical rather than natural fertilizers and no rest for the soil (in earlier times called being left fallow) means our agricultural soils are depleted of the essential nutrients our bodies need for survival. But because the effects are subtle rather than overt, we don’t notice the gradual decline in different aspects of our health. And often once we do we notice, we don’t take action or the correct action. We try to blame it on something else, but I’m convinced that not eating good quality fresh food (preferably organic) is a major contributor to many of the diseases and disabilities we struggle with today.

Over the year it has taken to lose my 30kg, my diet has changed enormously. First to go (or be cut down on, if I’m honest, I still have the odd glass) was alcohol. And that alone made a big difference to both my weight (probably accounting for much of the first 10kg) and my state of mind.

Next to exit was caffeine. Always a big coffee and, more latterly, tea drinker, this was a biggie. I had not realized how much of this drug I was putting into my body, but the reaction when I stopped was astonishing. Not someone usually given to suffering from headaches or migraines, it took two weeks for the headaches to disappear to my utter astonishment.

Cutting down on tea drinking had the automatic corollary of increasing my water intake which, like most people, is never enough. Two litres of fresh water a day is the widely accepted recommended daily intake and is hugely important in the weight loss process. That’s because when the water is eliminated from the body it takes with it the fat cells which have been broken down in the dieting process. In other words, it’s crucial to detoxification, which is what weight loss is all about.

The next major step was saying goodbye to simple carbohydrates – pasta, rice, bread, cakes, biscuits, and even high starch vegetables (although some of these are back now albeit in their raw form). Everything I read about nutrition, from authors I respect, leads me to the conclusion that starches are no good for the body. Any body, but particularly mine. I don’t intend to go into the scientific reasons for this here when so many others (eg Leslie Kenton) explain it so much better, but suffice to say that a high carb diet is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of mankind. It is highly likely no coincidence that in today’s high-carb world the incidences of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer are rising. Certainly, obesity and high carb eating are closely connected.

I should point out here that some bodies are better able to assimilate carbs than others. Some react immediately, while others take longer to show the effects, which makes it much more difficult to be certain of the cause. The more in tune you are with your body (and that includes daily weighing), the more likely you are to notice when you eat something that your body does not handle well.

Once carbs had gone, the next to follow was dairy. This was a touchy one for me because I’m not naturally a sweet lover but I adore cheese and consider yoghurt a breakfast essential. I gave up milk when the tea went, using only one tablespoon a day in the one cup of tea I still allow myself (although this has now been replaced by hot water, lemon, freshly grated ginger and a cinnamon stick). I noticed that mostly in the monthly milk bill, which has dropped by $20. My problem is that I find the mucous that milk generates to be quite comforting, so losing this has been quite difficult. I do, from time to time, have feta cheese and low fat cottage cheese, but I watch the portions quite closely. Dairy, too, my research shows, is not something that mankind has always partaken of in such large quantities. In earlier times our calcium needs were met through fish, nuts, fruits and vegetables. And we are the only mammal that drinks the milk of other species through our entire lives.

All this may sound to you like huge deprivation. I admit it’s not been easy. But the news is just about to get a whole lot worse because now that I am at my goal weight (famous last words!) I am discovering the joys and benefits of raw food.

One of the problems anyone who is trying to lose weight suffers from is feeling hungry. For a time we’re able to live with it and maybe even get used to it. But it is a fundamental human need to eat when we feel hunger, which is what makes it very difficult to stick to a diet for any length of time. When you’ve lost a great deal of weight you need to change your eating habits in order to keep it off. The combination of these two problems – feeling hungry and needing to adopt new ways of eating – has led me to raw food.

Like most effective eating regimes, raw food is not new, nor is it a fad. In fact, our earliest ancestors ate a great deal of their food raw so the human body is well adapted to it. But as we have become more industrialized, more sedentary and generally less hardy, raw food has slowly but surely exited the dietary landscape. Many people no longer eat any raw food except in the form of fruit. Others also eat salads, but usually as an adjunct to a meal, rather than forming the basis of it. Even the word ‘salad’ has negative connotations for many who equate it to “rabbit food” and refuse to eat it.

The toughest time of year to eat salads is, naturally, winter. And this year has been the first that I have been living in the cold deep south during which I have been able to eat salads in the chilly months. It has been a revelation. Far from feeling cold, they warm me up, they fill me up and – most miraculously of all – they keep those hunger pangs at bay. Plus there’s the advantage of being able to eat as much as you like. Always a bonus.

I liven up basic salads by including such moreish tidbits as eggs, feta or cottage cheese, chicken or tuna (for protein), sesame, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, avocado (either chunked or turned into a dressing), and a super-yummy dressing made from either olive oil, flax oil, avocado oil or even sesame oil. I tend to steer clear of mayonnaise because I cannot be trusted to have only a small amount! I often add fruit, too, especially to a coleslaw when grapes, kiwifruit, mandarin or apple make a yummy addition.

I tend to have two types of salad: a lettuce, spinach or other light leaved base or a cabbage base. This is for main dish salads, if I’m looking at a side-salad I use fewer ingredients. Me, I tend to throw in everything that takes my fancy!

The idea of a eating a high proportion of my meals raw is a very new concept to me so the jury is still out. But as I read recently, “no-one ever got fat eating fruit and vegetables”, I’m hoping it will continue to provide the benefits I’ve already noticed – a long, slow energy burst and a much happier digestive system.