Tuesday 26 August 2014

Sugar - The Modern Addiction | Total Diet Food - London's Fresh and Personalised Diet Delivery Service

Sugar. It’s the latest in a continuing circle of foodstuffs to be condemned, and you’ve probably heard about Dr Robert Lustig’s diatribe against it, at least in passing. It seems like common sense. We all know too many sweets or fizzy drinks are bad for you, but is it really as bad as he says? Isn’t it just about moderation?

In his book, Fat Chance: ‘The Hidden Truth About Sugar, Obesity and Disease’, Dr Lustig claims that we have underestimated the dangers of sugar. It is not just an unhealthy additive, but an addictive substance on a par with tobacco, alcohol and cocaine. The symptoms of withdrawal can be just as strong, which is why that diet can be so hard to keep up. It’s a relatively recent problem, he says, ironically caused by our own discoveries about health.

As we realized the dangers of excessive fat consumption, food producers started to create foods with less fat. But in doing so, they had to add sugar to keep it tasting good. The more sugar they added, the more we bought their foods, and so added sugar became profitable, not just a necessary replacement for the fat. And that’s why those same producers will fight so hard to tell you that a little is ok, and that you don’t need to cut it out completely – because they will lose profits if we avoid their sugary foods.

While you can’t argue with his basic premise, this is all starting to sound a bit conspiracy heavy though, isn’t it? Well, so did the tobacco story, but now the truth is out that the conspiracy really did exist. I’m not paranoid – they really are out to get me!

Certainly, there are plenty of stories out there that give anecdotal weight to his argument. There’s Michelle Allen, 47, who weighed over 26 stone at her heaviest and was a size 32. She was addicted to cake and claims to have spent £87,360 over 30 years before changing her ways. She’s now lost an impressive 17 stone and has dropped to a size 12. And Denise, who shared her story on this blog about weight loss, saying ‘The most interesting thing I’ve discovered is that in giving up sugar and starch, the “emotional eating” went with it. Speaking strictly for myself, I have concluded that it was not emotional eating, it was addiction, a very physical addiction to sugar and starch. Because it went away when I quit eating them.’

But David Katz, Director of Yale Prevention Research Centre, calls for a little calm on the matter, and says it’s unhelpful to demonise sugar like this. Of course too much is bad for you, he says in a rebuttal to Dr Lustig’s book, that’s what excess means. Anything to excess is harmful. But he says there’s a reason we crave sugar, and just because we see withdrawal symptoms doesn’t mean something is bad for you. The reason drugs are addictive is because they fool the body’s natural reward system, but that reward system operates the same way for things that we need. That’s why we’ve developed it. You’d expect to see withdrawal symptoms from giving up water, but you wouldn’t conclude that we should do that. Equally, drinking water to excess can cause headaches, nausea, fatigue, vomiting and even death.

Perhaps they’re both right – sometimes it takes a shocking exaggeration to bump us out of bad habits, so Dr Lustig’s attitude may be what we need right now. Long term, though David Katz advocates normal common sense. He still warns against processed foods with added sugars, but thinks naturally occurring sugars shouldn’t be avoided. Eat fresh, mostly plants and moderate your quantities. And that seems to be the answer to most of these ‘health scares’. Learn to recognize your unhealthy habits, and adapt to that simple rule of thumb and you can’t go far wrong.

If you think sugar is the ultimate evil, or you just need to cut down on your intake, we can help. All our food is super fresh. We use no refined or added sugar whatsoever. So if you're trying to wean yourself off gradually, or want to go cold turkey, we can tailor your diet plan specifically to your needs and personal taste.

Contact us 7 days per week on 020 86269360 between 9.00am and 21.00pm or via www.totaldietfood.com

Get our daily menus plus other food and diet based insights on our website here or via Twitter and Facebook

Sugar - The Modern Addiction | Total Diet Food - London's Fresh and Personalised Diet Delivery Service

Friday 22 August 2014

After the Holiday | Total Diet Food - London's Fresh and Personalised Diet Delivery Service

It’s been a glorious summer, even here in England, although it looks like it’s over now. Whether you’ve taken advantage of that to holiday at home, or still taken your break on the continent, chances are you’ve let your diet slip a little. And quite right too – you’re on holiday, so your priority is to enjoy yourself. A little indulgence now and then is hardly going to trouble you. As long as you’re able to return to your healthy lifestyle once you get home.

Unless you’ve gone self-catering, you’ve probably been eating out a lot. Restaurant meals are often as full of calories as fast food. You eat larger portions, you can’t control what they’ve added to the food, and you probably drink more alcohol or fizzy drinks with it.

Maybe you’ve been on a sporty holiday with lots of activity, and kept your fitness levels up, but many of you will have just lain on the beach like you deserve, and you’ll almost certainly feel out of breath when you start running again at home.

So what do you need to do to make sure this relaxed but unhealthy lifestyle doesn’t become routine?

The first thing is don’t equate relaxed with unhealthy. Stress plays a factor in weight gain and also causes you to crave foods with high sugar and fat content. So getting your stress down is really good. Try to remember that relaxed feeling even as you return to work and don’t let a wall of stress overwhelm you. Look into mindfulness and relaxation techniques to help.

Routine is also key to keeping your diet or any other resolution going. If you were well into a routine with your work and fitness life before you went on holiday, then let your return to work trigger your old routine. Easing yourself back into work by allowing yourself a few more days of eating out, or promising you’ll get back to your fitness regime once you’ve settled at work will only make it harder to kick start your routine again. Of course, you may need to lower your targets at first, eg shorter runs, smaller weights to build yourself back up, but get straight back into the routine, and adjust your targets gradually.

Drink water. If your appetite has increased while you were away, you’ll feel hunger pangs when you return to your healthy diet. Take a glass of water, it’ll help you feel fuller and often the hunger will pass in 10 minutes or so. Find something to keep you occupied for 10 or 20 minutes and you’ll find you’ve forgotten you were hungry.

If you do eat out, try setting aside a third of your meal. Ask for a doggy bag and have the leftovers for your lunch the next day. Not only is it great value for money, but you’ll be surprised how easy it is to eat a smaller portion and still feel full.

Don’t beat yourself up. It’s not easy sticking to a diet at the best of times. When you’ve had a break and are trying to get things going again, you’re likely to fail now and again. Don’t worry about it. Acknowledge it, and go easy the next day to make up for it. Feeling like a failure will only increase your stress levels and drive you to comfort eating again. If it helps, allow yourself a little splurge once a week or fortnight. If you know you’re allowed it at the weekend, it’ll help you look forward to that instead of sneaking it in during the week.

Of course, the easiest way to stick to your diet is to let us do it for you. Tell us your aims and what foods you like or don’t like, and we’ll deliver a delicious, fresh and healthy food plan to your door every day. It’s fully personalized, stress free and takes all the confusion out of what to buy and when to cook. All you have to do is eat it.

Contact us 7 days per week on 020 86269360 between 9.00am and 21.00pm or via www.totaldietfood.com

Get our daily menus plus other food and diet based insights on our website here or via Twitter and Facebook

After the Holiday | Total Diet Food - London's Fresh and Personalised Diet Delivery Service

Tuesday 12 August 2014

Paleo – Food Fact or Fallacy? | Total Diet Food - London's Fresh and Personalised Diet Delivery Service

The concept behind the Paleo diet is a simple one: let’s eat the way our ancestors did. Eat meat, fruit and veg that hunter-gatherers had easy access to, and avoid dairy, grain and processed foods that are modern inventions.

Put simply – eat natural, it’s the way our bodies are designed. Instinctively, it makes a lot of sense. And it seems to work. But there’s a growing resistance to the diet from people who say the basic claim is nonsense.

So who’s right, and does it really matter?

Anna Magee, writing for The Telegraph, only tried the diet as research for her writing. But she is still on it 3 years later. “I was back at the gym after years of desperate tiredness, had lost my afternoon crisp cravings, was sleeping better and thinking more clearly.”

Diane Sanfilippo, a blogger for Balanced Bites, believes women are embracing the diet because it gives them permission to eat fat without getting fat. The higher fat content means you are likely to be satisfied with smaller portions. The protein sustains them longer than carbohydrates, so they are less likely to be hungry between meals. And they’re not getting blood sugar spikes and crashes, so their calorie intake goes down, and they lose weight.

Simple, logical, fresh foods, sustainable results, what’s not to like?

Well, some people say the premise is based on a fantasy that all cavemen were fit and strong and lived idyllic lives. They also point out that while our eating habits have changed, so have our lives, even more drastically. We have to make appropriate choices to our own lifestyle, not that of our ancestors. Why eat like a caveman, if you don’t live like one? Obviously not in the sense of actually living in a cave, but in terms of the activity involved in hunting wild animals, the miles they would have walked each day to collect fruits and water. They certainly didn’t spend their days curled up on a sofa with the latest box set!

The idea that there was a single healthy diet regime that hunter-gatherers followed is shown to be flawed by the fact that modern tribes around the world have massively variable diets according to their location and local resources. Meat content varies from less than 10% to nearly 90%.

Then there’s the question of evolution. Paleo advocates claim humans haven’t evolved enough in the 10,000 years since agriculture began to adapt to our new foods. But this is to misunderstand evolution. Organisms that survive are ones that are already adapted to deal with different conditions. And we can point to several examples of human evolution that have occurred within the last 10,000 years. Blue eyes and malaria resistance, even lactose tolerance. The gene that allowed us to break down lactose used to shut down after infancy, but now remains turned on for life. Lactose intolerance exists in the very small percentage of people for whom this mutation hasn’t happened.

Marlene Zuk, evolutionary biologist from the University of California, writes that “‘Paleofantasies’ call to mind a time when everything about us—body, mind, and behavior—was in sync with the environment…but no such time existed.”

Does it matter that the logic is flawed if people see the kind of results that Anna Magee did in her trial? After all, it encourages eating fresh foods over processed, and surely the reasoning is only a form of motivation. Whatever works, right?

Anna Magee concedes that it’s a difficult diet to stick to and can be difficult to deal with in restaurants: “I succumb to the odd chickpea curry, eat porridge made with water and salt every few days, the occasional chip off my partner’s plate and anything I am served at dinner parties. Otherwise I couldn’t keep paleo going.”

Ferris Jabr in Scientific American concludes that “the Paleo diet is founded more on privilege than on logic. Hunter–gatherers in the Paleolithic hunted and gathered because they had to. Paleo dieters attempt to eat like hunter–gatherers because they want to.”

And there’s nothing wrong with that. If it appeals to you, and helps you achieve your goals, then we can help you by preparing the meals for you. That might seem a step further removed from the caveman lifestyle, but here’s how we look at it – while we worry about your stomach, you have more time to go out hunting and gathering your heart’s desires.

Contact us 7 days per week on 020 86269360 between 9.00am and 21.00pm or via www.totaldietfood.com

Get our daily menus plus other food and diet based insights on our website here or via Twitter and Facebook

Paleo – Food Fact or Fallacy? | Total Diet Food - London's Fresh and Personalised Diet Delivery Service

Friday 8 August 2014