A 5 step (slightly sweary!) plan to make healthier changes

Apparently people like posts with lists and action points of things to do so I am obliging.

One of my hobbies (bordering on obsessions) is reading books about health, nutrition, food etc, (as I guess you would expect!).  This has a two-fold bonus of helping me with my studies and also improving my knowledge about the subject generally so I can actually hold a pretty good conversation (or argument if necessary!) on all things nutrition.  Some people seem to have an issue with taking advice from non-professionals, even if those non-professionals have researched the topic more than the professionals are likely to have done, so I always like to have evidence up my sleeve.  

Excuses are rampant for why people can't make changes to improve their health or lose a bit of weight, and yes, some are more valid than others, but I would argue that a large percentage of people are just scared/wary/apprehensive of making changes to their habits, even if these habits are dragging them down to negative places they don't want to be.  It's easier just to keep doing what you've always done, even if you're slowly killing yourself.

This is probably a good time to reiterate that nothing on this site has a focus of weight loss or dieting.  I believe that improving your health needs to be the first step to losing weight if that is the ultimate goal you have.  I don't feel that there is any point being 2/3/4 stone lighter if you still have niggling health issues which stop you from living your life.  If losing weight is something you've been trying to do for a long time, then spending a few weeks getting healthy first isn't going to put you in any worse a position than you were in before, and is actually likely to help you lose the weight when you move onto that as your focus.  Just getting that out there :-)

So, onwards towards to the point of the post, the list.  There is a pre-list point which I feel is important to make first:

Acknowledge you need to change

There's a quote I saw (randomly!) on a local accountant's board which said something along the lines of:
'The definition of insanity is doing what you have always done and expecting different results'
I love this!
If you're even reading this then it's likely you know (even in the deep dark depths of your brain) that you can't keep going as you are, but it may well be you don't know how to start.  Well consider this the kick up the arse you need to be honest with yourself in that you need to make changes.  What those changes actually are can follow (a bit further down the page!) but an important first step is admitting that it needs to happen.  So a big high 5 and ridiculously over-enthusiastic 'woop' to you.  Now keep reading...

So, on to the actual list.  There are obviously more than 5 things you can do to be healthier (which I may expand upon during later posts) but these are good for starters:

1) Don't try and do it all at once

An easy way to fail is to try and change every single aspect of your life at once.  There's nothing wrong with a slow, steady approach as you will still get there in the end, and maybe even more likely to get there as you as less likely to give up.  Pick 1 or 2 things to change, get those sorted and then move onto other things.  It may be that your initial things have to be big ones, if you have imminent health problems for example, but if this isn't an issue for you, just start with something.  It's also good for morale and motivation if you can successfully keep up with a couple of new things over a prolonged period as you're more likely to think 'I can do it'.  

2)  Learn about real nutrition that isn't government sponsored

Ooh, getting a bit political now!  Over the last few years, having increased my knowledge about food and nutrition, the main thing I have learned is that the government guidelines on what we should eat are a load of old, sweaty bollocks.  I don't believe it's coincidence that since the nutrition guidelines of the late 1970s/early 1980s were introduced which told us fat was evil and to eat loads of grains, people have started getting fatter and more unhealthy.  Or, that the foods we are being told to eat more of are processed, and generate money for food companies.  Cynical, me?!

The best thing you can do for you and your family is to spend a bit of time researching alternative and better ways of eating from independent sources.  Some good starting points would be from some people I have a lot of time for and refer to often:  Zoe Harcombe (including a paper she wrote about dietary advice available here), Mark Hyman, Marion Nestle, Robert Lustig and Mark Sissons.  I would also suggest you avoid anything from Nutrition Councils/Foundations, charities or government agencies which seems totally mental to say, but they are still churning out the same old nonsense.  Its incredibly depressing to see that the British Nutrition Federation are sponsored (with actual money) from companies like Unilever and Pepsi, yet still expect us to believe that they can come out with impartial advice about what we should be buying or eating.  I would never be sponsored or influenced by anyone that involved any possibility of a conflict of interest as I value my integrity too much (unlike some others).

3) Don’t be a baby

If you're gonna whinge and bitch every time you get a suggestion of changing what you are eating and doing then you're never gonna get anywhere.  You know it's got you in a bad place, you know you need to change it so stop being a pussy and get it done.
"But I like having a whole pizza on a Friday night" - carry on being fat and diabetic then.
"I don't like vegetables" - your Gran's attempts to nuclearise sprouts at Christmas do not class as cooking vegetables, and you have not tried every vegetable in the shop so pick something, leave your preconceptions in the saucepan and cook it and eat it.  If you truly don't like it after a few tries, fine, try something else.
"My mates will take the piss out of me" - they're probably just jealous that you're taking the plunge cos they can't, and if they do take the piss, then they're not worth having as friends anyway.  Grow a pair.

4) Forget about weight and focus on nourishment

The trouble with worrying about weight is that it often leads to a focus on calories in foods rather than the goodness that they provide.  Food is meant to nourish the body and to give it what it needs to work properly and in balance, which means that it should have calories in it.  Anything that has been manufactured to have no calories isn’t food so steer clear.

Similarly, forget any notion of ‘syn’ or ‘point’ bollocks.  This subject is something I could harp on about for hours, but choosing to eat pretend food because it’s low in calories/syns/points is part of the reason we’re getting fatter and unhealthier.  So don’t.

Doesn’t mean that you can stuff your face with as much as you want though just because it might be ‘good for you’; use a dose of common sense.

5) Keep it real

Once you stop worrying about how some foods can affect your weight, it can make it easier to choose the right foods.    Again, doesn’t mean you can stuff your face, and you need to be mindful of portions etc, but you don’t need to miss out on brilliant foods such as avocado, good quality meat or eggs just because they might have some fat and calories in them. 

Anything that’s labelled ‘fat free’, ‘diet’, ‘lite’ etc should be viewed with scepticism.  Read the ingredients to see what the fat that should be in it has been replaced with (often sugar), or to see if it is full of unpronounceable chemical nonsense.

The only reduced fat things you should be considering are cheese or plain yoghurt, and even then there’s no need to go for the less fat version

No sorry, I won't trust you just because you're a doctor

As it’s the last day before the summer holidays for my kids, I was hoping for a nice chilled out day where I can get some work done so I don’t need to worry about it so much over the coming weeks, so I thought I’d watch some TV I’d recorded whilst I get on.  Well now that’s not happening!  There are not many times I absolutely despair at a TV programme (although quite a few when I do threaten to throw things!) but last night’s ‘Trust Me I’m A Doctor’ has got me to that point, hence dropping all the work and chilled out-ness I had planned to write this blog post instead before I implode and make even more of a mess than there is already in my living room.

Takes a bit more than that I'm afraid!

I always watch these kind of programmes for research purposes, as I like to know what I’m up against. And like to torture myself too evidently.  Now obviously I’m not a doctor so people wouldn’t necessarily come to someone like me for advice, but in an ideal world they wouldn’t need to look elsewhere as doctors and the powers that be would give good advice that is actually going to help people rather than just churning out the same old stuff year in year out, despite building evidence to the contrary.  As I am talking about advice which probably goes against that of a doctor, you will find links to a selection of information and studies that I have used so you can at least make your own mind up.  Just to cover myself a bit for the ‘this does not constitute medical advice’ disclaimer type thing you normally see on health type websites.

What’s my beef this time?  Cholesterol.  Again.  It really does seem to be one of the most misunderstood aspects in health.  We’re constantly told that it shouldn’t be high and that we need to reduce it and if we’re really unlucky, we’ll be told we need to take statins to sort it out.  I have mentioned this before to some extent in a previous blog post but will try and give a bit of a basic explanation (remember, I’m no doctor so this is just how I understand it! Chris Kresser gives a good explanation with further info in his ebook which is mentioned at the bottom of this post).

Cholesterol is split into 2 main types, HDL (high density lipoproteins) and LDL (low density lipoproteins).  We are told that HDL = good and LDL = bad which is sort of true, but it isn’t that simple as there is one more aspect to it that doesn’t get mentioned but is important.  LDL comes in 2 different particle sizes; large and fluffy, and small and dense.  It’s the small dense ones which are more likely to cause plaque in the arteries which leads to heart attacks.  You can have a high LDL number but if it’s made up of the large fluffy particles then there’s no real health risk.  The trouble is, this doesn’t get measured as part of a cholesterol test so you don’t know what you’re actually working with.  Maybe it’s just too much effort or seen as too expensive to look deeper, but if it happened then maybe it could actually save time and money by giving people the correct information to be able to choose the correct solution for them based on their actual detailed cholesterol profile?  There is plenty of evidence (you can find a lot of it from the links at the end) which shows that cholesterol and heart disease aren’t actually linked.  My favourite analogy is that just because a fireman (cholesterol) is at a fire (a heart attack), doesn’t mean they caused it.

So onto the programme.  I shall start with a positive to try and weigh up against plenty of negatives!  The general premise was to see if they could reduce cholesterol levels by changing diet rather than using something like statins.  An honourable cause.  After the usual incomplete explanation of what cholesterol is and why we need to keep it low, they move on to the dietary interventions which make up their experiment. 

The first group are cutting out foods traditionally said to raise cholesterol so eggs, red meat and high fat dairy products such as cheese.  Oh. My. Actual. God.  Are they really still saying that?  This is possibly the part that infuriates me the most, that highly nutritious foods such as eggs (which some people have heralded as the perfect food) are still being demonised as they contain cholesterol.  How outdated can their advice actually get?!! Then they actually say to replace these with things like vegetable oil spreads.  I nearly passed out at this point.  Moving on…

The second group are still eating normally (with no information as to what their ‘normal’ actually is) but adding in oats to their diet.  This has been recommended because of the beta-glucan which is in oats and as they explained, attaches itself to the cholesterol in the stomach before it can be absorbed into the blood stream.  This has been shown to reduce cholesterol levels, especially LDL so could well be helpful.

The third group are also eating normally (again, no info as to what that means) but are adding in almonds.  These were chosen because “they are rich in fibre and plant sterols which may delay fat and cholesterol absorption” (from BBC article).  Can’t say anything negative about almonds really.

Michael (Mosley) chose a fourth option of the “Portfolio Diet” which is based on trying all of the so-called cholesterol lowering approaches at once, as well as including soya, vegetables and plant sterol-enriched margarines (Flora Pro-Activ played quite a big part in this #justsaying).

So onto the results.

The “cholesterol-lowering approach” group’s average reduction was 11.1% in general cholesterol and 13.2% of ‘bad’ cholesterol.  Pretty good on the face of it.  But without knowing more about the LDL particle size it’s pretty much useless as they could have reduced the useful particles instead of the damaging ones; the whole problem of measuring cholesterol in this way.  Plus, as we don’t know what they were eating instead of and alongside the foods they cut out, then we can’t accurately know what produced the results.  Had they had a group eating the opposite, lots of bacon, eggs and cheese, then the results may have meant a bit more as they could be compared.  But it still doesn’t solve the issue of us not knowing what else they were eating!

 

The oat group’s average reduction was 8.7% general and 10.2% of bad so pretty good.  But again, we don’t know what else they were eating to be able to attribute the results solely to the oats.  And if the rest of their diet wasn’t great, then they may have increased their risk factors for other conditions or diseases even though their cholesterol is now lower.

The almonds’ group showed no significant change, but this was expanded upon to show that about half the people showed a reduction but half showed an increase which cancelled each other out in effect.  Not massively useful then apart from to emphasise that different approaches can work differently for people.

My main issues:

      No information as to what else the groups were eating apart from the ‘less cholesterol-causing foods’, added oats or almonds.  There could be a wild difference in results if they were chowing down on microwave ready meals, or eating their bodyweight in bread and marg, or following a high fat low carb diet.  With any good scientific test, you need to have some kind of control group to measure results against and also know what other factors are involved that may affect the results.  Without knowing what else they were eating, the results have less validity as it can’t be shown that the changes for the programme were the thing that caused the difference in cholesterol levels.  They may well have done, but we don’t know.

          Why no group on a low carb high fat diet (or some variation of this) for comparison?  A significant amount of research over the last few years has shown that this type of diet (including Paleo/Primal) doesn’t raise cholesterol, although it may not especially reduce it either, however it does come with other health benefits such as reducing metabolic syndrome (this increases your risk factors for heart disease, strokes etc).  An example I often use is from the film/documentary Cereal Killers where Donal O’Neill ate a diet very high in saturated fat including a huge amount of eggs yet had one of the best cholesterol profiles you can have.  Yes this is just the results for one person, but it shows it can be done and would have been good to see it used as a comparison and alternative option for the approaches used in the programme (which also admits that results can be very personal).  Why can’t any health-related TV programme bring themselves to step out of the box and say that fat can be OK?!

.       A complete absence of any mention of what a good general diet should be based on more modern research and opinions.  It wouldn’t have been that hard to say that the optimal diet for general health (yes, in my opinion) is something along the lines of being based on real, non-processed foods which limit starchy carbs, includes plenty of fruit and veg, and includes all types of fat from a variety of sources.  Instead, it came across that if you just eat almonds and oats as well as your crisps/cakes/bread/sweets/ready meals/fizzy drinks you’ll probably be OK.

           Pandering to food companies by still adopting an annoying middle ground.  They may have effectively said that you don’t need statins which may have not pleased drugs companies (although there’s a bit of a caveat on the website which says some people may still need to consider them) but they just can’t bring themselves to say that you shouldn’t limit food that requires factories, processing and packets as there is just too much influence and money from food companies.  In my general internet wanderings, it never ceases to amaze me how many places companies such as PepsiCo, Kelloggs, Nestle etc pop up when looking at ‘partnerships’ for events and programmes or funding for research; no doubt there’s some kind of influence with TV companies too which may well affect what they can say or advise in their programmes. Or maybe I’m just getting a bit too cynical, but it's not just me!

My overall conclusion:

Another ‘health’ TV programme that produced something a bit half arsed and didn’t show the whole picture.  The extra info that they didn’t mention plays a very important part in understanding the cholesterol issue, and how to effectively deal with it without opening yourself up to other potential health problems.  As ever, take this kind of thing with a pocketful of salt and use it as a starting point to do your own research.  I do agree that different approaches can work for different people, but for the majority of the population, a diet based on what I (and the experts on my links) favour is likely to be a good base; a small percentage of people may just need some tweaks.  Sorry, I still don’t trust you even if you are a doctor.

Anyway, if you haven’t watched it yet, give it a look and see what you think.  If you have, maybe watch it again with fresh eyes and see if you get anything different from it.

If you want some advice from experts in the field of food and health that might actually do you some good, then look at these links rather than anything from the NHS or your doctor, including ones on TV (ooh, controversial!):

https://chriskresser.com/heart-disease/

http://authoritynutrition.com/top-9-biggest-lies-about-dietary-fat-and-cholesterol/ 

http://drhyman.com/blog/2011/01/28/seven-tips-to-fix-your-cholesterol-without-medication/

http://www.cerealkillersmovie.com/

http://realmealrevolution.com/the-facts - Dr Tim Noakes from Cereal Killers

Clean Eating Challenge - My thoughts

I'm always looking for new topics for my blog posts so when a friend mentioned a post she'd seen on Facebook about an article on a clean eating challenge, I had to write about it.

This is the article in question: Clean Eating Challenge.  The author took part in a 2 week Clean Eating Challenge (info here) which she found hard going and posed the question of whether it was worth it.  As clean eating is an aspect of my plan, it seems pertinent that I address this opinion.  So is it worth it and what do I make of her reasons for finding it difficult?

• "I may be used to eating healthy food, but I'm used to eating a little more of it".

First thing that springs to mind is what it her idea of healthy; it doesn't specifically say so it could well be that she follows the Government recommendations and the EatWell Plate (or similar).  Which isn't healthy.  It still drones on about low fat, wholegrains, lean meat, un/poly-saturated fats only etc etc which is both outdated and (in my, and others' in the field's, opinion) what has made the world so fat and unhealthy in the first place.

The Challenge itself gives a calorie count of 1300-1600 calories a day so yes, it is quite possible that she feels she needs to eat more.  I took part in a Body Transformation last year and was on no less than 1750 calories a day throughout it (and successfully lost 9lbs of pure lard in 9 weeks).  Yes every body is different and needs a different calorie amount but if you are nearer the 1300 end, then you're a few steps away from a starvation diet which = holding on to fat.  But in the article she says that "eating clean doesn't mean you're on a diet.  It's not about counting calories or cutting carbs..."  Er, but this challenge is calorie controlled and low-carb?!

Real food (as opposed to processed pretend food) naturally fills you up more; your body knows what to do with it and is able to use it as nourishment.  Therefore you often need to eat less to feel full.  But you need to follow your body's cues to do this rather than simply limiting your calories.  Yes portion sizes are important and smaller portions are likely to be necessary, but don't do it just because you have hit your allotted calories for the meal/day.

There is no calorie counting on our plans and you can eat plenty :-)

•  It costs more.

Quite possibly yes; if your weekly shop consists of a trolley full of non-food from Iceland or Tesco's best selection of their interpretation of healthy food (which will often have offers on it) then you may find that you spend more when you make the switch to clean eating.  However, following set recipes may not have helped this.  Coconut water, almond butter, asparagus, quinoa and parmesan (to choose a few from the meal plans) aren't the cheapest ingredients to buy, especially if you're only following this plan for 2 weeks.

A better idea is to just know which foods (or types/sorts) of foods are on the menu and choose the best value ones you can.  There are ways of getting cheaper fruit and veg (Aldi and local markets to name 2), and you don't need lots of fancy ingredients to start with.  Our plans give some recipe ideas to help with inspiration but generally let you choose what to eat within guidelines so you can make it work for you.  Our Weekly Words of Wisdom newsletter has a section on food offers each week as well as tips on how to keep it realistic and affordable.

You will probably go out to eat a bit less too initially; this can save £20/30+ each time and isn't necessarily a bad thing either.  There's nothing wrong with going out to eat for a celebration or special occasion and you shouldn't expect to have to give this up.  But there is also nothing wrong with finding a non food-related way of celebrating or not associating food with reward quite so often either.

And anyway, is spending a bit more on improving your health a bad thing?  I know before I changed my eating and lifestyle I would have to spend loads on plasters, painkillers etc to control my health problem including time off work (see here for details) and I still paid for the gym, takeaways etc too so we're probably not really spending a great deal more balanced out over a year.  No doubt if you were honest with yourself then you probably spend quite a bit on handbags/shoes/posh coffees/other vice which you could easily reduce a bit to cover any extra in the short term.

• "My social life suffered."

This will be different for everyone depending on what your social life consists of; mine was pretty limited anyway due to having 2 kids and a boyfriend who sometimes worked away for long periods so it wasn't such a problem for me.  Luckily I also quite like being on my own at home!  If you are one who goes out boozing every weekend then yes it may well dwindle this, but again, it's not necessarily a bad consequence.  There is more to life than pubs and clubs so maybe it's a kick start to find this out?  But you can still go out; it will just involve being a bit more disciplined and selective.  You may even appreciate going out more if you do it less?

Not every clean eating plan involves hours of cooking; this part did seem a bit misleading.  Again it can depend on your starting point as cooking from scratch does take more time than the 'stab stab ping' of microwave delicacies but it doesn't have to take the hours that she detailed.  This may be another negative side effect of following a strict meal plan as there's less room for manoeuvre, so if you have a wider range of food/meals to choose from, then this is likely to be less of an issue.  There are ways of working around the extra time too.  Spending an hour at the weekend cooking a big pot of something like chilli, or a load of chicken breasts to use during the week can certainly cut cooking time down.

• "I had to use a lot of willpower."

Yep, suck it up buttercup.  It's not necessarily going to be easy but things that are worth having/doing often aren't.  "I had to say no to doughnuts, I couldn't even have a bite."  Diddums.

This topic is often tricky for me as I generally just want to say 'quit whinging and get on with it' but I know that it is a lot harder for some people than it is for me to refuse foods that they are used to enjoying.  Once I realised that cutting out (or severely reducing) things like cakes or takeaways stopped me being ill and feeling like crap then it was a lot easier as it simply wasn't worth eating them.  But not everyone has such a big motivator which makes it harder to pass those foods buy.  It does get easier every time you do it and after a while you don't even want them in the first place (honestly!).  Once you get into a new habit of not eating that kind of food then it becomes less of an issue to avoid it.  Fish and chips was my favourite takeaway, and oven chips with chilli was my ultimate comfort food but now a potato product has not passed my lips for nearly 2 years and it's no longer an issue; I just don't eat them.

I include some extra information on willpower and motivation during Week 2 of my plan; it includes some info/points from here amongst other sources.

• It's a 2 week plan with an end date

Problems arise when you embark on something which you know has an end date as you will often be thinking 'but I've only got to do this for 10 more days' or 'I can get back to normal next week' or 'I can't wait until next week when I can have a massive slice of cake'.  If there's one thing that people really need to understand it's that short term diets are pointless and can also make things worse.  If you look at clean eating as a new diet you're trying for a couple of weeks then it may well end up being pointless.

The trouble is, it's not sexy, glamourous, exciting or especially new, but if you embark on eating clean as the beginning of a lifestyle change then it works.  You're unlikely to lose a stone in a couple of weeks like you might on whichever cleanse/detox/shake/gel/bar nonsense your mate is flogging which instantly makes it less appealing; quick fixes sell better than long, slow (better) ones do.

Even things like Slimming World / Weight Watchers have some version of end date with them; it's called a target weight.  You spend weeks/months/years even following the plan, going to meetings, getting your certificates and then you reach that sometimes elusive target weight; hallelujah I'm done, where the cake?  Anything you start needs to be something that you intend to stick with for the long term and preferably forever.

Our plan is 6 weeks long but the focus is always on taking your newly learned habits forward for the long term.

• Is it worth it?

Clean eating in general?  Yes yes and thrice yes.  This challenge?  Probably not so much.

For all the flaws mentioned above you may decide that eating better is too much hassle/too expensive/too restrictive so you go back to where you were after the challenge period is over.  The general idea is certainly good, but I would suggest that choosing meals from a wide selection of foods is better than a limited meal plan (although some people will certainly appreciate not having to think as much about what to eat).

If you want a plan that takes the principles of clean eating but gives you a wide choice of meals/snacks/foods, focuses on embedding habits to take forward, is flexible enough to not have to take all you money or social time and is full of support throughout, then our Online Plan is probably for you.  Have a look around the rest of our website to see what we offer and get in touch if you think it's for you.

LHB gets personal

So I was planning for this to be the first blog post of my shiny new website but it’s having a few technical niggles at the moment so rather than lose the momentum of my new blogging efforts, I’m posting it anyway.  I’ve loving my new enthusiasm for blogging, but he trouble is there are a million things I want to cover so I shall have to resist the urge to waffle on about everything and attempt to keep some focus.

It's all about me...

I’ve generally tried to keep personal and business stuff separate so far but maybe more about me and why I’m doing what I’m doing may help with building an online rapport and bring more of a personality to the business so why not!

A girly girl I am not; never have been.  No brothers or sisters so male cousins were my usual playmates when I was younger.  I was much happier rooting around in the pond for frogs than dressing dolls so maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise when I found a love for heavy music and heavy weights!  I’m also not a subscriber to the princess mentality; I need to make and take responsibility for my own future rather than wait around for someone to ride in on a rainbow unicorn and hand it to me on a sparkly platter.

So here I am.  Been into lifting heavy iron things since 2008, and whilst I’m not ready to step on stage in a sparkly bikini (and realistically never will be!) I’m reasonably happy with where I have got to.  There a lot of phases of motivation where I want to live in the gym mixed with periods where I’m a lot more random with it.  But the one thing that stays pretty constant is food and what I call my non-negotiables.

Random illness issues a challenge

Obligatory random cartoon reference

Let’s back up a bit, to 2008 when I’d recently found my love for the gym, was doing well at uni and had also found a good bloke too (which is always a bonus!).  All was going smoothly when I acquired a random lump on my bum.  Never a great thing to find, especially when you have no idea what the heck it is and it keeps growing to the size of a golf ball!  Eventually it went, but then more appeared in other places too.  Cue numerous trips to the docs and a variety of suggestions as to what it was (insect bite, bed bugs, MRSA(!)) but nothing to actually help apart from various courses of long term antibiotics. Which didn’t actually help.  Brilliant.  So after a few months of putting up with more random lumpiness in various places I did what any self-respecting inhabitant of the 21^st Century does and consulted Dr Google.  Always a bit of a 50/50 scenario as to whether you’ll find the info you need or just convince yourself you’re one of the 8 people in the world with a rare tropical disease.  Luckily for me it was the former and I knew what I was dealing with.  Well it was good and bad at the same time as it turned out to be something potentially very horrible, lifelong and painful generally without any successful cures.  Again, brilliant.  I had a new nemesis which I needed to deal with; Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS) was it’s name and I knew that I needed to move away from conventional medicine to beat it into submission.  Which I did.  Go me (*shakes pom poms).

Food is power

Again, anyone who knows me knows that I love to eat.  Lots.  If I went out for a meal there would generally be 3 courses usually with a pint of lager (just in case you were doubting my non-girliness).  I could eat a lot of people under the table and I liked it; food made me happy.  But having this hideous illness didn’t so something had to give and I took that hard initial first step of realising things had to change and made the conscious decision to change what I ate.  I started off fairly conventionally by just cutting down on the ‘obvious’ junk stuff, followed the general healthy eating guidelines but kept on with bread, diet drinks, margarine, 1% fat milk etc.  That didn’t really cut it though so I consulted Dr Google again and came across some HS groups where people had realised that a certain group of foods had been affecting them and cutting them out had seen results.  So it was bye bye nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers mainly) along with continuing to cut out the junk and there were results.  I was a lot less lumpy than I had been in a few years.  As elimination diets recommend, I tried to reintroduce these foods over time and it turned out that it was just potatoes which affected me so tomatoes and peppers were back on the menu again.  I’m sure a lot of people can relate to the feeling I had of ‘yay I know how to sort my problems’ mixed with ‘wwwaaahhh, I can never eat my all time favourite food (chips) again’.  But my non-princessiness kicked in, I took a dose of Woman Up and just got on with it.  We are now at 16 months since a chip last passed my lips.

However, although the lumpiness was definitely less frequent, for some bizarre reason it had moved to my eyelash follicles (I know, WTF is that all about!) and whenever I got a lump it was right there for all to see (quite literally!) so there was still work to be done.  I decided just to go for broke and cut out anything processed and hey presto; Me 1, HS 0.  That is how I have stayed for the last year and a bit and I can honestly say that 99% of the time I really don’t miss my old way of eating.  Why would I when it came with such horrible baggage?  The 1% is just the time when I really fancy fish and chips, or a bakewell tart or a chunk of French stick to accompany my butter, but I very rarely give in because it just isn’t worth it.  Case in point, we went on a caravan holiday last year so food options were a bit limited.  I went along with everyone else’s food a few times (Shreddies, wholemeal bread and wholemeal pasta – nothing major) and a couple of days after coming home I had a new eye beastie which took over a week to get rid of.  Not doing that again!

Which brings me back to my non-negotiables I mentioned earlier.  No matter how tired I am, how many hundreds of jobs I have to do, how little food there seems to be in the house, I will not eat rubbish.  It just isn’t worth it to me.  Instead of having a cheese sandwich, bag of crisps and a bar of chocolate for lunch, I’d rather play a game of ‘freezer bingo’ and end up with a random assortment of frozen leftovers because I know it won’t make me ill. 

6 months post baby - plus about 2 stone

It’s probably also worth mentioning that I have had a weight loss journey in the past too.  Whilst pregnant with my now 3 year old daughter, I ate anything that wasn’t nailed now.  I was allowed to right?!  So when she was born I had an extra 3 stone of lard I needed to lose.  I tried a few different things; Weight Watchers (my previous blog post lets you know how I feel about WW now!), the 5:2 diet and general calorie counting which got me so far, but it still didn’t solve the health problems even if I had lost a couple of stone.  In March 2014 I embarked on a 9 week Body Transformation which I got on pretty well with and it helped me realise the way I need and want to eat long term.  Ideally, I’d probably go with a Paleo approach but as I do still love food I tend to go about 80% Paleo and just add in a few carb options too.

So that’s my history and the reason why I started LHB; to try and help other people improve their health and get elements of their life back by changing what they eat and how they live.  I’m not going to pretend it’s plain sailing for everyone; there are demons and circumstances which make it hard but I’m also not going to make excuses.  You’ve just got to suck it up and get on with it.  The person in charge of your future health is you and you are the one who will make or break it.  If you need help then that is what LHB is here for; to give you a programme to make the changes in a way which maximises the chances of you keeping it going long term.  We are also here to get the word out that healthy is the new skinny.  What’s the point of fitting into that size 8 bikini if you feel rubbish inside? Our programmes focus on getting you to a healthy place first, and then looking at the weight loss once you have got the right habits embedded to take forward.

Anyhoo, enough of the marketing spiel, I’m off to turn up the Rammstein, throw some heavy things around and eat some good food.  Wanna join me?

Slimming World vs Weight Watchers vs LHB

Before we start, let me make it clear that I'm not slating SW or WW for the sake of it.  They have been successful for a lot of people and have lost people a lot of weight, but I have issues with aspects of their approaches.  People may not be aware of these aspects when they sign up so I feel I need to add my opinion so they can make an informed choice, rather than just going with something which is popular or just because their friends do it.  There are other (potentially better) options out there.

Firstly, the basic point of a diet is an issue for me.  To make short term changes to lose some weight without any thought about the wider picture of your health is not a great place to start.  Yes some people can manage to keep the weight off after a diet, but for a great number of people, they lose the weight then put it back on (and often more) so look for a new diet to try next time to lose that weight again.  Here at LHB we're all about getting healthy first, then making tweaks to move into weight loss.  
SW do say that 'it's not a diet' and WW say they want people to 'change their relationship with food' which are promising starts, but what about if you look deeper?

I've never tried SW so am only able to base my opinions on their online literature, comments from people who have tried it, and information from their pack which I have seen.

To talk about every aspect of their plan(s) would be the longest blog post ever, so I will keep it brief and only look at some aspects which I have the most issue with.

Syns

The idea of syns puts me off before I even look into it.  Saying that certain foods are OK to eat but considered a syn/sin is not a good attitude to have.  Some foods shouldn't even be on your radar when you are looking to eat healthily; promoting them as low or no syn isn't helpful.  For example:

Mug Shots are something I would never recommend; in fact you should steer well clear!  
Let's have a look at the Chinese Style as they are 'free' so must be a good choice, right?

Ingredients list from their website:
Dried Noodles (60%) [Durum Wheat Semolina, Salt, Egg White], Dried Glucose Syrup, Potato Starch, Flavourings (contains wheat, soya, celery), Dried Vegetables (1.5%) (Sweetcorn, Mushrooms), Yeast Extract, Palm Oil, Milk Protein, Acid (Citric Acid), Dried Chives, Emulsifiers (Dipotassium Phosphate, Mono- and Di-glycerides of Fatty Acids).

Nutritional info (selection): 167 cals, 5.3g protein, 2.7g sugars, 0.7g fat.

So the main ingredient is processed wheat which is something I would recommend staying away from where possible as it has virtually no nutritional benefit and raises blood sugar pretty heftily.  There is the grand total of 1.5% dried vegetables in the form of mushrooms and sweetcorn which isn't worth mentioning and then a selection of other yummy things like dried glucose syrup and a selection of emulsifiers.  This is not food!  

And then we have recommendations for Alpen Light 
bars for a 'breakfast on the go'.  Another product I would never recommend.

Ingredients from Weetabix's website (Chocolate Fudge):
Cereals (37%) (Whole Oats, Rice, Whole Wheat), Oligofructose Syrup (30%), Fudge Pieces (12%) (Sugar, sweetened condensed milk, glucose syrup, humectant: glycerol, vegetable oil, Milk Butter Fat, Emulsifier: Mono and Diglycerides of fatty acids, salt), Plain Chocolate (8%) (Sugar, Cocoa Mass, Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Powder, Emulsifier: Soya Lecithin, Flavouring), Cereal Flours (Rice, Wheat), Sugar, Grape Juice Concentrate, Glucose Syrup, Humectant: Glycerol, Vegetable Oil, Malted Barley Extract, Flavouring, Dextrose, Salt, Emulsifier: Soya Lecithin, Antioxidant: Tocopherols.

Nutritional Info (selection) per 19g bar: 65 cals,  1.2g fat, 4g sugar, 0.9g protein.

Wow that's a long ingredients list!  Again processed wheat plays a major part, as do a large selection of sugars or sugar products (unsurprisingly as the product is 20% sugar).  30% oligofructose syrup didn't sound particularly appetising and I had to look it up to find out what it was.  Added fibre for those who are interested but too much can cause bloating and diarrhoea and it only takes 3 of these bars to reach these levels so beware!  Only 65 calories, practically no protein and 20% sugar;all in all, not what I could consider anywhere near a healthy breakfast, on the go or not.

Fats

Annoyingly (although unsurprising), fat is still demonised by SW despite plenty of evidence showing that it is not the evil we were previously led to believe it was.  They recommend using unsaturated fats high in Omega 6 such as sunflower and corn oil whilst saying that "fats have a lot to answer for".  Yes some of them do, but not in the way that they are implying.  A good quality beef burger (which contains saturated fat) is a mile away from a McDonalds Big Mac for example.

If there is one thing I would like tattooed on my forehead it would probably be "fat does not make you fat" as there are LOTS of studies now showing that fat is fine (even saturated fat), that it doesn't clog arteries, isn't as responsible for heart disease as earlier thought, and that raised cholesterol isn't necessarily a bad thing either.  Don't just take my word for it, check out these links too:
http://authoritynutrition.com/top-9-biggest-lies-about-dietary-fat-and-cholesterol/
http://authoritynutrition.com/top-8-reasons-not-to-fear-saturated-fats/
http://www.zoeharcombe.com/the-knowledge/saturated-fat-does-not-cause-heart-disease/

In Summary

Pros                                                                     Cons

Better than just staying with your normal             Processed foods allowed/recommended.
rubbish way of eating.                                          Outdated advice on fat.
Group support works for some people.                Can be confusing to follow for some.
Doesn't have to be super expensive.                   Syns doesn't promote healthier habits
Idea of 1/3 veg/salad/fruit for a meal is                relating to food choices.
a good basis.                                                       OK to have artificial sweetener.
                                                                            Focus on weight rather than health.

3 years ago after I had my daughter, I had about 3st I wanted to lose so I gave WW a try.  I did the online plan and got on OK with it; it gave me a start to my weight loss.  However, even when doing it I had some concerns about some of the features and recommendations so I didn't last longer than the 3 months I had signed up for and moved on by changing to standard healthy eating to lose the rest (which I did).

Again to cover everything would be unrealistic so I shall stick to my major issues.

Points

The basic concept of Points isn't bad as such, but leaves it open to abuse in that you can theoretically eat whatever you like as long as it is within your points allowance.  Yes if you have a Mars bar for breakfast and lunch you won't have many points left for dinner so are likely to be hungry, and I would hope this isn't a realistic situation!
My main issue with Points is the 49 (or so) which you get as an extra over the week.  My Points amount was around 27 a day, so it was OK and encouraged to eat almost 2 days worth of food on top of your normal daily allowance.  That makes no sense to me!  I appreciate it is supposed to cover treats, eating out, special occasions etc but I don't feel that's an adequate enough excuse for eating that much extra.

WW Brand Products

Weight Watchers have a vast range of their own products which tend to be a lower calorie/fat version of other foods.  A small selection of these products include yoghurts, bread, cakes, ready meals, soup, beans and cheese.  My issue is that I cannot see how advocating or recommending cake bars, white bread, ice cream or chocolate biscuits can be a part of any self-respecting weight loss programme.  One of my fundamental philosophies as part of all of my plans is that you should not eat low-fat, diet or light products as they can't be considered food and provide limited (if any) actual nutrition.

Case in point, fruit yoghurts:

This is the ingredients list for a 4 pack of 'Weight Watchers Fat Free Yoghurt - Dessert Recipe'.  Admittedly all 4 flavours are covered in the 1 ingredients list which is why it looks so long but let's pick out the high(low)lights.

Apple flavour - 2nd ingredient on the list glucose-fructose syrup, followed by caramel, biscuit which includes sugar, 2 types of sweetener and caramelised sugar.  As well as carrageenan which should be avoided (http://www.prevention.com/food/healthy-eating-tips/carrageenan-natural-ingredient-you-should-ban-your-diet) 
How can this be promoted as a good thing to eat?


By way of comparison, this is the ingredients list for greek yoghurt (which you could add fresh fruit or fruit puree to).

Next up 'Weight Watchers Caramel Mallows'.  I can't imagine a parallel universe in which I would ever dream of telling someone to eat these voids of nutritional nothingness.  It's quite telling that the ingredients are hard, if not impossible, to find online (as with most WW products) and the MySupermarket nutritional info listing is somewhat brief.


Each one weighs 16.7g and contains 6.5g of sugar which equates to 39% sugar.  I have no words so need to move on!


In summary:

Pros                                                                     Cons
More recently included a variety of plans.            Outdated low calorie/low fat advice.
Good support network.                                         Processed foods allowed/recommended.
Plenty of information.                                           Points system open to abuse.
Doesn't have to be expensive.                             Weight focused rather than health.
Online option too.                                                 

Now it's my turn!  If you've looked at the website then you should have got the general idea of the programme I offer.  In a nutshell, it focuses on getting healthy first before looking at weight loss by using a personalised programme based on real food and plenty of support.  The most common approach is making small changes over 6 weeks so by the end, you have made enough changes to be eating healthily.


The plans follow the same basic principles but can be tailored to each person as the weeks go by.  There is up to 90 minutes a week of face to face support time, plus access to your Buddy by phone/email/text/FB message at other times to ask advice or questions.

The main difference is that calories are not mentioned, low fat is considered a swear word, and you are able to eat foods which have traditionally been scrubbed from healthy eating plans (butter, full fat milk etc).  The plans are based on up to date research rather than just a new regurgitation of the low fat/eat less information over the past 30/40 years.

Yes the plans can be more expensive than SW or WW, but work out at less than 1 personal training session a week (which people are often willing to shell out for with no problem).  The point is, as we look at the bigger picture and include issues such as sleep, stress, toxicity etc, it doesn't need to be a continuous plan and therefore could work out cheaper in the long run. Once you get the correct healthy habits ingrained and can make the right choices, there should be no need to start again every January.  If you need some extra help after the initial plan has ended, then there is a Maintenance Plan which still gives you access to your Buddy (but without the face to face sessions) as well as emails and newsletters to keep up the motivation.

If you prefer group support then you can start up or join a Group Plan which is available for up to 4 people to be able to continue the personalised aspect.

But what can I eat?
It's true that Caramel Mallows and Mug Shots won't be on the menu (thank God!) but there are plenty of foods for you to enjoy.  For example:

Sweet potato and sprout hash with eggs

Baked Apples

These are all foods I personally eat on a regular basis; yes I do follow my own plan!

 

Steak with mushroom and onion sauce,
 sweet potato chips and veg

Generally the only foods that are not recommended are anything processed or fake.  That opens up a whole world of foods for you to try or get back to eating!

In summary

Pros                                                                 Cons

Focus on health first.                                       Can be more expensive short term, but 

Aim for long term not short term gain.              better value long term.

Lots of support available.                                 New service, not as established as others.

Personalised plans available.

Based on recent research.

No calorie or points counting or food

combinations needed.

So there you have it.  Obviously I think my service is better (although I am willing to acknowledge some issues) but now you can have a more informed idea of the different options.

I look forward to getting some of you on board for a healthy 2015 and beyond!