Tag Archive for Processed Food

Overweight Kids, Food Addiction, and Stupid Diet Tricks

January 26, 2014 / / Comments Off on Overweight Kids, Food Addiction, and Stupid Diet Tricks

thanksgiving groupCan you handle yet another post on Food Addiction?  Because I have one in my head, and it needs to get out.

One of my favorite radio programs is a syndicated talk show called New Life Live. it’s four psychiatrists on Christian radio, they get all kinds of questions and give great advice.  Until the other day.

A mother called in, concerned about her young, very overweight daughter.  Her description of the problem goes like this:  she’s athletic, involved in sports, is very, very heavy, eats fast, eats often, and eats more than her parents or her brothers, now she’s being teased at school and is feeling very sad about it.

Their advice:  get her to eat more slowly, it’s all about portion control, put down her fork between mouthfuls, chew more, and convince her to verbally express her feelings over the teasing and the weight.

O.M.Gosh.  Portion control?  Chew more?  Fork placement??  Oh, and how does she feel?  That’s easy: embarrassed, heavy, humiliated, starving, can’t control herself around food, wishes she looked like the skinny girls in class;  doesn’t take a mind reader.

Their advice was very well-meaning, they wanted to help; but it was horrible advice that doesn’t work, ever, for food addicts.  Food addicts are compulsively driven to eat food:  when they’re full; when they don’t need it; when they’re so stuffed they feel sick.  Telling a food addict to use portion control to lose weight and feel better about themselves is a joke.  Even the catchy buzz word “Mindfullness”, which is a practice I totally agree with and am trying to work on, is meaningless to an addict.  Mindfullness is impossible when the mind is full of buzzing neurons and hormones driving you to eat – fast,.. now,.. as much as possible.  The addicts brain isn’t “right”, and trite advice that really doesn’t work for anyone, makes them feel even worse about themselves when they can’t do it.

The Counselors didn’t spend one second examining the food situation in the house.  Not a second.  Like food doesn’t matter!

Here’s the facts:  if you’re eating processed foods, foods full of refined sugars and grains, hydrogenated oils, and chemicals, you’re eating foods that’s been chemically created in a laboratory to STIMULATE your BRAIN and MAKE YOU WANT MORE.  Honest!  Read Sugar, Fat and Salt, by Michael Moss, read The End of Overeating, by Dr. David Kessler.  These are just two books about the science and marketing behind the Food Industry.   It’s shocking and amazing, and it’s the truth:  processed food ( that includes fast food and chain restaurant food) is DESIGNED to make you want it BAD.  If they’re a regular part of your food habits, there will be no “managing” your intake.

There is no “portion control” with Doritos, Lays potato chips, commercial ice cream, fast food french fries, Keelbler cookies or CapN Crunch cereal.  If there was, they’d remake the formula. Big Food is big, serious business;  mistakes and failures are quickly corrected.  If processed food is part of your diet, even a little tiny part like just a little cereal, a few cheese crackers, or a bagel every day, then you’re stimulating your brain with substances that keep you enslaved and coming back.  Ending food addiction means 2 things: (1) giving up processed foods, it just has too.  ( Yes, breads, pastas and grain flours are “processed foods”, 100%), and (2) eating a diet of nutrient dense foods.  In other words, you have to quit eating foods that stimulate addictive neural behaviors and have bad hormonal affects, and load up on foods that don’t stimulate your brain, cause the right hormones (satiety hormones) to be released, and satisfy your bodies demand for necessary nutrients.

Are you thinking that you’ve lost weight before on Processed Foods, like frozen diet meals, diet drinks, diet candy bars, and diet ice cream?  Did you keep it off forever, or did you gain it back?  There’s almost a 100% chance you’ve gained it back.  You didn’t CHANGE YOUR BRAIN, you just white-knuckled/will powered through a period of dieting.  When your will power was gone, it ended.  Studies show that your period of dieting probably created even worse neural patterns than you had before, something called “famine brain”:  neural and hormonal patterns that make you compulsively seek out and eat food.

I’m telling you that if you change your diet to one of Real Whole Foods, and figure out how to make that work for you all the time (through work, weekends, nights out, vacations, and STRESS), your compulsive eating will end.  If you need help with this, work with me.  It’s only effort til it’s habit!

There’s so many great books out there on this, but two I recommend time after time are the Diet Cure and the Mood Cure by Julia Ross.  They’re fantastic.  Trust me, if you’re anywhere on the spectrum from full-blown addict to annoying food habits you can’t break, you’re going to need help.  These books and my blog are a great place to start:)

What should these counselors have said to this mom?  Time to change your kitchen and your pantry.  You’re going to have to use Real Whole Foods to make your breakfast, lunches, and dinners.  Everyone’ll have to get on board.  Processed bags of cereal, chips, and cookies will have to go.   You can’t control your kid’s whole world, but you can control your house.

(umm, actually, the other day I went upstairs and Shelby – who’s 17 – had bought crackers and candy, and had hidden it behind a chair!  I tossed it;  it happens in my house too!! )

If your child was addicted to cigarettes, would you smoke around them? If your child had a drinking problem, would you keep alcohol in the house?  It’s the same with food.  We all have to eat – food makes our body.  But we DON’T have to have foods in the house that cause addiction, stomach issues, bad skin, headaches, attention disorders, heart disease, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and cancer.  We don’t.  Seriously.  Fill your kitchen with meats, healthy fats, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds, good full fat dairy;  foods that have to be cooked and prepared, not just munched right out of the box.  Real Whole Foods.  Will your kids complain, whine, cry, and rebel?  Yes……Learn to tune it out.  They’ll live; and you’ll live through those first weeks of negativity flying off them and onto you.  Persevere.  Nothing is easy in the beginning, but everything gets better when it becomes the norm.  If they don’t eat, they don’t eat.  Again, they’ll live.  Take control of your own and your children’s health.  Be a leader, a role model and an example.  Don’t let your kids go down the path of obesity and poor health that’s plaguing our country and shows no signs of slowing down. Processed foods are killing people.  Don’t let this happen to your family.  Be a Real Whole Foodie.

Category: Cooking, Food Additives, Mind/Body, Psychology of Eating, RWF / Tags: , , , , , ,

Diet Miracle, or Avoid At All Costs?

January 20, 2014 / / Comments Off on Diet Miracle, or Avoid At All Costs?

ensureEvery now and then I like to rip apart a Food Product that’s somehow attained a healthy status.  We’ve all heard of “Ensure” and “Pediasure”.  These products are actually recommended by doctors and passed out in hospitals, nursing homes, and cancer centers as if they contain Magical Properties.  They don’t.  They’re pure crap, a true “Looks Healthy But Isn’t”.  Last night I saw a commercial for Ensure Protein that compared it with 4 eggs, and the Ensure came out on top.  My head exploded – you’ve got to be kidding me!  Is there NO truth in advertising at all?   Let’s take apart the ingredients in Ensure, compare it with the nutrients in eggs, and then you all can decide if you’d ever give it to someone you care about.

The ingredients in Ensure Protein:
Water, Milk Protein Concentrate, Corn Maltodextrin. Less than 2% of the Following: Calcium Caseinate, Soy Protein Isolate, Sugar (Sucrose), Short-Chain , High Oleic Safflower Oil, Natural & Artificial Flavor, Magnesium Phosphate, Potassium Citrate, Cellulose Gum, Sodium Ascorbate, Sodium Chloride, Carrageenan, Cellulose Gel, Gellan Gum, Acesulfame Potassium, Sucralose, Zinc Gluconate, dl-Alpha-Tocopheryl Acetate, Niacinamide, Manganese Gluconate, Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin A Palmitate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Thiamine Chloride Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Chromium Chloride, Folic Acid, Beta-Carotene, Vitamin D3, Biotin, Sodium Molybdate, Sodium Selenite, Potassium Iodide, Phytonadione, and Cyanocobalamin.

Ready?

Milk Protein Concentrate:  This is milk that’s been ultra-filtered; that means all liquid and ALL MINERALS and several other nutrients, have been REMOVED.  All of the MPC used in the U.S. ( and it’s in several processed foods) comes from OUT of the U.S.; New Zealand and China are the top suppliers.  There’s very, very little regulation over this product, and because it’s cheaper for Big Food to buy it overseas, it’s having an ENORMOUSLY bad impact on American Dairy Farmers.  You can read more about this here.  By the way, it’s only 40% protein, no fat, no minerals, no vitamins, what’s the other 60%?

Corn Maltodextrin: this is highly refined, super cheap, corn sugar.  It has an incredibly high glycemic index rating of 130.  Table sugar’s rating is 65.  What this means is this sugar is so highly processed and refined that once it’s in the gut it makes it into the blood stream in record time, skyrocketing blood sugar, and spiking insulin. (hello belly fat, heart disease, and diabetes)

Soy Protein Isolate:  Ugh.  Soy definitely got an undeserved reputation as a health food.  It’s not.  Soy protein is loaded with “phyto-estrogens”, that means plant compounds that mimic estrogen.  Men don’t need more estrogen, and neither do women.  Soy is “goitrogenic”.  That means it disrupts Thyroid Function, who wants that?  Soy is incredibly hard to digest and is highly allergenic.  Soy Protein Isolate has had ALL nutrients removed, just like the Milk Protein Concentrate.

Sucralose: aka, Splenda.  The links between Splenda/sucralose and CANCER are huge. Studies show it also destroys beneficial gut bacteria, and raises blood sugar – just like real sugar.

Cellulose Gel: This is not the same cellulose that’s in fiberous veggies.  This is made in a lab from Wood Pulp.  Always.  It’s cheap, it’s gives good “mouth feel”, and like every other ingredient in this gross drink, it’s in soooo many foods.

Okay, see all those long words that are hard to pronounce?  Like Pyridoxine Hydrochloride?  All of those are SYNTHETIC VITAMINS. These are ADDED because there’s NO nutrients in these ingredients; they’re devoid of nutrients, literally.  Synthetic vitamins are mostly made in CHINA, under incredibly lax and unregulated conditions. (PS, it’s important that vitamin supplements you take are made from “Whole Food Sources”) There is NOTHING remotely similar to God’s Vitamin’s that He put in actual Real Whole Food.  Please, please, I’m begging you, click on the link below and read the ingredients that are used to make these SYNTHETIC VITAMINS.  Here’s an example using the above mentioned vitamin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, (vitamin B6):

Natural Vitamin B6 – Like B1, pyridoxine is bound with phosphate in plants to make pyridoxal-phosphate. This is the biologically active form. Any other form of B6 must be converted into this phosphate combination before our body can use it.

Synthetic Vitamin B6 – Pyridoxine hydrochloride comes from petroleum ester, hydrochloric acid, and formaldehyde. It isn’t readily absorbed or converted and has been shown to actually inhibit the action of natural B6 in the body. It also has side effects not normally found with natural food sources of this vitamin.

You can learn more by clicking on this link.

What about the eggs?  What nutrients are in eggs?  The answer is really more eggslike, what nutrients AREN’T in eggs?  They’re one of natures perfect foods, and that whole cholesterol connection’s been more than put to rest.  Our bodies NEED cholesterol for hormone production, Vitamin D production, cell function and formation, and brain health.  Most of the cholesterol in our blood is from our LIVER, which MAKES cholesterol; actually, EVERY SINGLE CELL IN OUR BODY MAKES CHOLESTEROL.  It’s that important.  Back to eggs!

Just to name a FEW of the nutrients that eggs contain:  Vit. A, D, E, K, thiamin, riboflavin, B12, B6, Pantothenic Acid, Choline, Biotin, Calcium, Magnesium, Iron, Selenium, and if you want to see it all, check here.

My real point with this post:  Processed foods are Poison Crap that destroy your body and mind and make you sick, and Real Whole Foods are Loaded with Nutrients that your body needs in forms that are highly “useable”.  Even foods like Ensure, which have an Healthy Aura around them, are Crap.

It really, really matters what we put in our mouth.  It matters what our kids put in their mouths.  What we eat becomes US.  What we eat gets broken down into nutrients that either our body uses to build and repair us, or ANTI-nutrients that harm us.  There is no neutral food.  Honestly.

Feeling overwhelmed because Processed Foods like cereal, frozen meals, and boxed crackers are so easy, fast, and normal seeming?  The billions of advertising dollars spent by Big Food has just hypnotized you, it was supposed to!  Look around though, 70% of the US is overweight and sick.  ADD, ADHD, and Autism have literally infiltrated our children.  Depression and Anxiety are the most common mental illness in the US, affecting at least 20% of the population.   It’s The Food I Swear!  Take control of your life, improve the lives of your children; eat Real Whole Food.  Get in touch with me if you need help; it’s not as scary, or time consuming, or impossible as you think.  Make the change today to being a whole new you.

 

 

Category: Food Additives, Looks Healthy But Isn't, RWF / Tags: , , , , , ,
 
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