Diet Survivors™ newsletter May 2006

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Are you a diet survivor?™

This means you've decided not to be a slave to diets anymore. It means you've decided you can live reasonably, eat small, delicious meals, and become the size you were always meant to be. If you're fed up with diet rules and edicts, and want to stop being told what to do, this newsletter is for you.

No longer will you have to count or weigh anything unless you feel like it. No longer will you feel you must exercise, or avoid this or that food group. With some encouragement from these newsletters, you can pick up your own autonomy and judgment off the floor and restore it to its rightful place. This month we'll discuss how exercise really fits in with weight loss, and what you really need to know and don't need to know about low GI diets.

Low-fat diets lead to obesity!

Boston University reveals a surprising study.

Or should we say that it's not so surprising? A Boston University study says extremely low-fat diets lead to obesity in children.

The study explains that children whose diets are extremely low or extremely high in fat are more prone to obesity than are children who eat an average amount of dietary fat. The study also supports the value of dairy products in preventing obesity.

Diet Survivors™ understand that the right amount of dietary fat is that which suits your tastes perfectly, and this Boston University study supports that belief. Read the public release from the American Heart Association.

How does exercise really fit with weight loss?

A new way of understanding exercise

(You'll be relieved!)

Diet Survivors™ understand the difference between technical changes and adaptive changes. You may have made many technical changes in your diet life, but perhaps adaptive change is new to you. Adaptive change is about changing the way you think about your diet and your beliefs about dieting. The field of cognitive psychology tells us that our beliefs can make all the difference in whether we succeed in our endeavors. This is something that Diet Survivors™ understand. Start thinking like a Diet Survivor™ today!

Let's face it. Dieters are targets for being told what to do. They're told they must eat certain foods, they must not eat their children's leftovers, they must exercise, and dozens of other rules that aren't necessary. Who says you have to exercise in order to lose weight? While it's certainly true that exercise is good for you, is there no benefit at all to losing weight without adding exercise? Let's be rational here. You can lose weight without exercise.

Some people love to exercise. Others don't like it at all. Yet all dieters receive the message that they must exercise. In fact, exercise is so inextricably tied to dieting advice that often dieters give up just because they can't get their arms around the exercise component of their plan! This is unfortunate, because diet and exercise don't have to be so tied together. It's quite possible, and logical, that you can lose the weight simply by embracing this idea of portion control.

Exercise is currently the choice cure offered up by the food and diet industry as your means to combat your overeating. It is profitable to package "doctored foods," which you're willing to pay extra for, in the name of losing weight, and to sell you large amounts of food. The doctored foods promise to satisfy our ever-growing appetite for large portions, and at the same time to slim us down because they've been altered in some way, usually by removing either carbohydrates or fats. Happily, there seems to be a simmering movement in the food industry toward packaging smaller portions. Let's reward their efforts by buying the small portions of real, regular, delicious food!

The truth about exercise is that it doesn't burn that many calories. You can run, cycle, ski, and trudge up and down the stairs all you want, but if you reward yourself with a triple scoop with extra syrup, you won't have much to show for it. While moderate exercise can certainly give your metabolism a bit of a boost, the only way you could exercise and maintain giant portions is to spend substantial time exercising. While running or cycling can be fun, that might not be how you'd like to spend the bulk of your time. Some dieters even go on exercise "bouts," during which time they lose the weight and feel great. But then the letdown comes when they realize how much of their lives are tied up in their exercise when they'd rather be doing something else.

If you apply logic, strenuous exercise is just not a must for losing weight. In fact, no exercise is a must. While there are plenty of benefits to exercise, including toning a once-overweight body to get it back in shape, that once-flabby body is going to have to adjust to small portions, too, with or without added exercise. And you can lose weight without exercise.

Have you ever met someone who lost weight and got into shape by exercise alone? He probably changed his lifestyle to do it. Chances are excellent that he did not get his new body from some light walking three times a week. He probably gave up some other part of his life so he can spend that time at the gym. That's fine, but only if that's what you want to do, apart from weight loss.

Most athletes love their sport and do it for the sheer fun and ambition. But a few of these athletes actually have an eating disorder. They start off innocently enough, counting the calories they're "allowed to" eat because they're planning to burn them off. They develop a diet mentality and thus a love affair with food. They overeat in huge binges, then they exercise it off. You might personally know someone who is doing this, yet you may never suspect. It turns out that "have-to" exercising to combat overeating can be a symptom of an eating disorder, not of healthy habits. According to Psych Central, "Persons with bulimia...regularly purge, fast, or engage in strenuous exercise after an episode of binge eating."

Diet Survivors™ understand that changing their beliefs will bring them success. Here's our suggested new belief for this month.

Although I know it's important for my health, I can decide separately about exercise. I'm in charge of my own body.

If I so choose, I can decide to lose weight without adding exercise.

I don't need to be preached at about the value of exercise. But I've decided to handle them as two distinct changes in myself. If I want to, I can focus right now on the fact that I am eating too much.

What is glycemic index?

Include complex carbohydrates and whole grains.

Diet Survivors™ do make technical changes, too, with the understanding that the technical changes are not their diet savior. Rather, our beliefs about food, and our willingness to eat tiny, delicious, balanced meals will save us.

The glycemic index (GI) measures how your body's sugar levels respond to certain foods. Foods are rated from 0 to 100. High GI foods (such as simple carbohydrates and refined white-flour products) will increase your body's sugar levels rapidly, while low GI foods will increase the body's sugar levels more slowly. Watching your GI is now addressed in mainstream medical literature, both for weight control and for diabetes control. For more information, view a report from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Foods that contain carbohydrates are usually higher on the glycemic index and have the greatest effect on blood sugars. Pasta dishes, bread, potatoes, carrots, corn, and sugary foods are higher on the glycemic index. The composition in the carbohydrate will also affect how the body's sugar levels react. For example, white bread will rate high on the glycemic index, whereas whole-grain bread will be lower on the glycemic index as it contains more grains and contains complex carbohydrates. Examples of low glycemic foods are many low-sugar hot and cold cereals (such as those based on oats, wheat, and barley), whole-grain bread, fruit, lentils, and beans.

You don't have to go on a very low GI diet. But learning to watch your glycemic index is a positive technical change. You could, if you want to get mathematical about it, buy a GI counter. Or, if you're more of a right-brained person, you could just as successfully embrace the idea of glycemic index. Here are a few examples of approximate glycemic index of foods. The higher the GI, the more readily the food is stored as fat on your body instead of burned as fuel.

Potatoes 85
Cornflakes 84
White bread 70
Ice cream 61
Chocolate bar 49
All Bran 42
Pumpernickel bread 41
Apples, oranges, peaches around 40
Skim milk 32
Some mixed-grain breads 30-45
Lentils 28
Whole milk 27
Soybeans 18

For further information about GI, search the Web.

You might have noticed that some of the popular diets that focus on glycemic index tell you to remove sugar. If you're on one of these diets, remember you are in charge, not the diet. So modify it to add sugar, and you will still succeed. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the glycemic index of sugar isn't as high as that of some other foods, such as potatoes. The second is that if you are aiming for tiny, delicious meals with the goal of rapid satiety, sugar will help you along.

Just the right amount of sugar, for instance in your coffee with breakfast, could be just the addition that will satisfy you. Or, try this—imagine eating a hamburger on a whole-grain roll or bread, but skipping the ketchup in the name of keeping your GI low. But what if you love ketchup? Will that meal satisfy you? You might end up reaching for a second burger, as your body seeks out the tiny amount of sugar contained within the bread. You're better off adding the ketchup.

The research seems to show thus far that combining a high GI food with a lower GI food will lower the GI. For example, jelly is a food with a high GI rating. But, when eaten with whole-grain bread, the combination of the jelly and the bread is digested more slowly and should therefore merit a lower GI rating.

That is why only a general awareness of GI is important. Don't go overboard and become black-and-white in your thinking about it. We suggest you simply reduce white-flour products, and combine low GI with high GI foods, and leave it at that.

Another way to look at it is to simply eat the way your grandmother or great-grandmother ate. Instead of a stack of eight fat-free waffles with sugar-free syrup, she ate just one or two perfectly buttered waffles with delicious sugary syrup. She spread the butter in just the right amount, then added exactly the right touch of syrup, and savored the meal.

Have you tried adding butter to your waffles lately? Fats enhance flavor. Butter or margarine actually boosts the intensity of the flavor of the syrup, thus making your tiny meal more satisfying to the appetite. Your grandmother probably ate a low GI diet without knowing it, simply because there weren't as many packaged foods made with refined flour available to her.

To keep your overall glycemic index low, make your waffle a whole-grain one, and have an egg or some sausage with it. But if you really don't like whole-grain waffles, go ahead and have the white-flour one. It's more important to make the meal small and delicious.

Here is some new thinking about glycemic index for you to meditate on. Notice that the suggested self-talk, rather than offering new rules, or "musts," uses such phrases as "would like to have."

I'd like to seek out whole-grain alternatives, and try them. I hope to incorporate the delicious ones into my meals. I'd like to be a little bit aware of glycemic index, but it doesn't have to be a dieting rule.

I now realize that low-fat dieting, along with white-flour pasta, can spike the dieter's insulin level, thereby turning the food into fat instead of fuel.

I probably won't dive into a giant bowl of white-flour pasta with fat-free sauce anytime soon. Alternatively, low GI or low-carbohydrate diets work better if they are not so extreme, and if they emphasize delicious, small portions.

Final note: Changing your beliefs requires a little work. Find a few minutes each day for some quiet contemplation time, and meditate on some new beliefs. Remember, whatever diet you are on, you are in charge, not the diet.

These Web pages provide sensible advice on healthy diets, nutrition, and weight loss. However, no advice given here is intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor when deciding to make significant dietary or lifestyle changes.

Direct all technical questions and comments about this site to webmaster

Last Modified: Wednesday, 06-Feb-2008 07:12:48 PST Betterway Press
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