Extreme food… Why black and white thinking is bad.

I’ll confess, I’m a bit of an extremist.

Anyone who knows me will testify to the fact that I am loud, honest, and not afraid to express my opinions, often to the point of causing offence.  Take for example my recent argument with a friend over the fact I am not currently eating eggs. Arguing over eggs? Really? Yep that’s me.

I tend to see the world in black and white. It’s either one extreme or another. There is no middle ground.

This way of thinking is common in people who suffer with eating disorders, and it’s something I discussed in great depth during my counselling sessions a few years ago.

My extreme thinking often gets me into trouble.

It’s public knowledge that over the last few months I’ve let my healthy habits slip a little and managed to gain a few pounds back. As of this morning, 7lbs to be precise. The result of which has me desperate to scroll through Amazon looking for the latest diet book to help me shift the weight NOW. Thankfully, I know that’s not the answer.

Old Hazel was a big fan of diets. Not just any diets, extreme diets. Cabbage soup, lemon detox, slim fast, cambridge, celebrity slim. The more extreme the diet was the more inclined I was to test it out.

Thankfully my days of extreme dieting are long gone. I’ve purposely avoided ever doing the pouch test for longer than a day or two because I know that long periods without real food are likely to send me into a spiral of binging.

Now when I want to lose weight, I try to just cut back a little on my treats. That is of course, until I find myself 7lbs heavier and desperate to try anything to get myself back down to goal weight.

As I was researching some healthy low carb recipes ( I’ve eaten way too much white bread and pasta recently ) I realised that eggs seemed like such a great option to help me trim the fat, only eggs aren’t “allowed” because I’m trying to be vegan.

That’s when it hit me. I may not be using extreme diets any more but I still think of food in extreme terms. It’s either CARNIVORE or VEGAN. No in-between.

Most diet’s fail because they restrict the individual in a way thats unsustainable, and most people who attempt to eat a vegetarian or vegan diet fail for the very same reasons. We restrict too much.

Trying to go vegan for me wasn’t about becoming a hard core animal activist, although it is something I feel strongly about. It was two-fold. Partly about making a personal choice to not contribute to the suffering of animals, so that I could help the world in my own small way and partly about health.

I’d watched a lot of food documentaries and read a lot of plant based nutrition books and wanted to embrace the healthy lifestyle.

But in times of stress I would still turn to food in comfort… I often referred to myself as “Vegan except for chocolate”. A phrase my friends found quite amusing.

In moments of weakness, the morals behind my way of eating were far outweighed with my brain’s desire to binge eat on junk food. When I’m battling the urge to devour 5 bags of cookies, making sure the cookies I’m trying to resist are vegan friendly is a little unrealistic.

So I began thinking about my diet. About the choices I make and why.

I recently visited a food festival, and because I couldn’t find a vegetarian option available for lunch, I ate a cupcake. Now even I know a cupcake, whilst vegetarian, is not a healthy lunch choice.

Did I really feel so strongly about not eating meat that I would sacrifice my own health?

Last time I decided to eat meat again it was for selfish reasons. I knew that WLS would be much easier if I could eat dense protein in the form of lean meat and dairy. I chose to put my own needs above the needs of the animals I had previously been trying to protect.

Selfish? Probably so.

People are often very wary of vegetarians and vegans and I understand why, having spent time on both sides of the fence. When you discover something you feel passionate about the desire is to shout it from the rooftops. You want to spread the word and help “enlighten” everyone around you.

But this only serves to make them feel be-littled, guilty, or defensive. It doesn’t help the issue at hand. It doesn’t save any animals.

What if instead of focusing on what vegetarians and vegans can’t eat, we instead focus on what we can? What If we sing about all the extra vegetables we can eat, all the new fruit salad recipes and smoothies we have discovered and how it’s cleared up our skin, hair and nails?

“As meat eaters, we often spend too much time focusing on the 1/3 of our plate that is meat and forget about the other 2/3”

Everyone can benefit from eating more vegetables. Every can benefit by swapping processed foods for fruit, and sodas for water and herbal tea.

If in the process of eating a little more veg people naturally eat a little less meat, then even better.

A person’s diet is always their choice and we should respect that persons decision. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t educate, but we should educate in a respectful manner.

With regards to my own diet, I find my extreme thinking becoming more of an issue as time goes on. I’m nowhere near binge and purge free these days, but restricting myself even further is not the solution.

So whilst I today ate a vegan diet, and the day before ate a vegetarian one, I am not promising to eat that way forever. Life is constantly changing and we have to adapt with it.

Ultimately, you have to make your own decisions about your health and the food you want to eat. If that happens to be eating meat only a Sunday, or adding a little more vegetables to your Atkins diet, then that’s ok.

You have to do what’s right for you.

 

 

Going Green

Many of you probably don’t know, but before my WLS I was a vegetarian. I’d been one for maybe 3 years, after a short spurt at being a failed Vegan.

When I began researching WLS and how my life and stomach size would change I realised that getting my daily protein requirements with a tiny stomach would be a near impossible challenge.

I decided that at that time in my life my health was to become my priority, and it meant reverting back to eating meat. I never disliked the taste of meat. In fact, most of my favourite foods are meat. Chicken wings, spare ribs, crispy duck, steak, and not forgetting bacon. I love me some bacon.

But the reason I gave up meat in the first place was because I disagree PASSIONATELY with the way in which animals are raised for farming. I always bought free range, organic meat, but still my heart didn’t want to be supporting the horrible conditions that supposedly “well looked after” chicken had to endure.

The more I study nutrition and it’s effect on our body, the more I find myself pulling away from meat. As it stands, I can only eat chicken and beef. Pork and Lamb never made it back into my diet because the images I’d seen of pigs tails being ripped out of their bottoms had ingrained itself in my memory. Lamb makes still makes me nauseous.

I’m now over 18 months post op and find myself able to eat a normal healthy portion of food at every meal. Sometimes people are shocked by the portions I can eat now, but I’ve never stretched out my sleeve by eating past my personal feelings of satiety. My stomach has naturally stretched to a “fairly normal” size over time.

Last week I stumbled across a documentary online, Food Matters. I had quite an emotional reaction watching it, and it brought back all my old feelings of anger and hatred towards the meat and dairy industry. Towards the government. It angers me that so many people suffer from serious health conditions because of the poor nutrition advise we are given by the people whose opinion we trust. It angers me even more that this suffering is brought on by people eating animals who spend their lives suffering, only to be eventually slaughtered.

It’s now a FACT, that a vegan, plant based diet is the healthiest option for humans to eat. It meets all our nutritional needs and can not only stop diseases such as cancer and heart disease from occurring, but it can also reverse these conditions if we already suffer from them. All this, and it doesn’t involve hurting any innocent lambs.

So I’ve decided the time has come to re-embrace my morals, and stand up for the causes I believe in. It’s not just about animals, it’s about health.

I want to live a long disease free, active life.

And the facts are telling me that the best way to do that is to cut out meat and dairy from my diet.

It’s going to be a tough transition. I remember last time, the smell of bacon drove me wild for months, and eating out is exceptionally hard when you limit yourself to mostly vegetables, fruits and legumes. Add to it the fact I try to avoid gluten, and it’s going to be a minefield out there for me.

But I’m going to try.

The first step is removing meat. That’s started today.

Then will come removing fish, and then removing all dairy from my diet.

I know it’s going to be a challenge, but it’s one that will benefit not only my own health, but the health and well being of at least 65 animals per year.

65 animals a year might not seem like a lot, but it certainly makes it real. Each animals life is precious and If I can save just 1 animal a year from torture and death then it’s worth it.

Wish me luck!!!

To Market to market….

For the past couple of months I’ve been ordering my groceries online. I like it because it prohibits me from being tempted by food that I didn’t intend to buy, but that caught my eye at the supermarket.

However shopping for high quality food online has it’s downsides, the cost being a large one, only one available delivery day from the company I use, and the inability to pick my own vegetables from a pile and choose a size and quality I like.

I’ve been searching supermarkets high and low for good organic produce and high quality meats, but organic, or even free range meat is harder to come by than you would think.

Yesterday, I decided to take a trip to my towns local market, hoping to get some fresh meats, fruits and vegetables from local producers.

The market was bustling with shoppers, all with their little baskets and recyclable carrier bags picking fresh fruit from the baskets and ordering freshly caught fish from the fishmongers.

I started in search of fruits and vegetables. Not a single stall sold anything organic, or even promised me it was local produce. I bought a little to test the quality of the produce and moved onto my search for meats.

There was a whole aisle of fresh butchers, carving shanks of ham, and dicing mince or marinating steaks. I browsed a selection of meats but struggled to see anything organic, which didn’t suprise me by this point, so I decided to look for some free range chicken instead, surely in a room of a least 30 local butchers one would stock that?

When I failed to find any I asked a local butcher if I could source free range chicken at the market. His response was very honest, yet revealed shocking details about the consumers.

“That butcher next door, he sells 3 chicken breasts for £2. Not the good kind, the shit kind. If we sold good quality meat we couldn’t compete with his prices, so we find the cheapest meats we can”

Looking around at the hundreds of shoppers I found it difficult to believe that no one cares about the quality of meat they are eating. All they are concerned about is the price?

I guess it shows that in todays economy people are turning to quantity over quality, which goes towards explain why the obesity rates are so high and the number of diseases and illness we Uk consumers contract are on the rise.

In the wake of the recent horse meat scandal, ( It was revealed that many food manufacturers that label a meal “100% beef” were actually containing up to 90% horse meat instead ) you would think british consumers would start to really pay attention to the origin and quality of the food they are buying.

Although I came away from the market having enjoyed the ability to browse and select my own fruits and vegetables by hand, I will be returning to online ordering after seeing the shocking quality of the ingredients on offer.

When it comes to food, I would rather have a little of a high quality ingredient any day.

Apples, avocados and lime

Pepper, mange tout, pak choi and garlic 

Berry cheap

Go Organic…

Organic food is still something that many people dismiss. They see it as elitist, overpriced, and something that isn’t worth their time or their hard earned money. But these people are wrong.

“More than four in ten people now buy organic food despite its higher price.

Once considered a fad, organic produce is now the biggest growing sector of the UK food market – and is said to be worth £1 billion – despite consumers having to pay 10-20 per cent more for organic food.” 

It’s said that during the farming process up to 500 different chemicals are used, all of these then make their way into our food, and inside our bodies.

Pesticides and herbicides found on non organic foods can actually lead to a variety of health risks including cancer and developmental problems in children.

Going organic isn’t just about saving the environment, it’s about saving yourself. So many people I know are cautious about how often they will accept antibiotics from the Dr because they don’t want their bodies to become immune to them, not realising the amount that enters their body through meat.

Choosing organic produce used to be mostly about what harmful chemicals you avoided ingesting, but recently science is showing organic foods contain more nutrients, even more reason to consider making the switch.

An experiment with kiwi fruit showed that the fruits grown without pesticides, herbicides etc to encourage them to grow had to develop more anti oxidants to help them survive in nature. These anti oxidants are then passed onto us when we eat the food. The kiwi who were sprayed with chemicals to help them grow, had no need to develop a good natural immunity and therefore pass on less nutrients. Organic food is actually healthier for us. It’s now a fact.

I’ve been reading a lot about how to cut costs elsewhere to allow me to buy organic foods when I can. Things like trips to Starbucks, food at the cinema, buying bulk amounts of magazines, are all things I can cut out and use the money saved towards buying a better quality of food to nourish my body.

They say it can take up to 7 years for all the toxins and chemicals used in the farming industry to leave your body…so I’d better get started.

Here’s a few more reasons why you should consider going organic.

1 – You will avoid the health risks associated with chemicals

“There are over 3,800 brands of insecticide, herbicide and fungicide approved for use in the UK. Some fruit and vegetables are sprayed as many as ten times before reaching supermarket shelves.”

Non organic dairy products contain a chemical called Lindane, which is extensively linked to cancer.

“Lindane – the chemicals found in non-organic milk is part of a group of chemicals called organochlorines, which includes a banned chemical called DDT.

DDT has been outlawed in Britain but 100 tonnes of lindane are still used on our fields every year. It is thought that a cow can pass on lindane to humans through its feed.”

3 – It’s the only HEALTH “claim” with any meaning

“It is hard to miss the problems arising in the wake of the conventional food system–toxic exposures, birth defects, learning disabilities, obesity, water pollution, unacceptable suffering by farm animals, to name a few. While dozens of labels promise often undefined and unverified benefits, the certified organic label stands apart in consistently delivering what people care most deeply about–more nutritious food, grown using methods that minimize the use of toxins, while building soil quality and protecting water quality.”

4 – To avoid added hormones

“Most conventional livestock farmers use a combination of growth hormones, drugs, feed supplements, and high-grain diets to push their animals to grow faster, get bigger, and produce more milk and eggs per day. In fact, animals on conventional farms are often pushed so hard that they experience serious reproductive and/or other health problems leading to heavy antibiotic use.”

“Toxins has here are mostly petro chemical based pesticides. These act in several ways in the human system. Firstly they act as an estrogen. All organo phosphate agra chemicals from bug spray to fertilizers are highly estrogenic. Estrogen can cause cancer, fibrosis diseases such as but not limited to Uterine Fibroids, Fibrocystic Breast disease etc. infertility, miscarriage, and reproductive organ malformations. Not to mention making both sexes cranky and fat. Next and most important – all present pesticides are variants of World War 2 German nerve gas!”

5 – Be a friend to the farm animals

As an ex vegetarian I care about how my animals are treated, and always buy free range. Organic is even better.

“The National Organic Program rule, states that organically raised animals must have access to the outdoors, including pasture, and ample space to carry out natural behaviours.”

6 – Taste

“Organic fruits and vegetables more often than not have higher levels of flavor-enhancing nutrients, coupled with lower concentrations of water and sugars. The end result–typically more intense and complex flavors. Plus, no artificial food colors or preservatives are added to any organic foods.”

If food tastes better, then you can really enjoy the quality of the food instead of it’s quantity, meaning you’ll eat less and lose more weight. Do I need more reasons?