What’s the Difference between a Diet “Cheat” and a Life “Choice?

  What do you mean when you say you cheated on your diet?

Do you mean you ate a food that was high in calories?
Do you mean you used food for a role other than fuel?
Do you mean you veered from a path of food restriction paved by an “expert”?

It’s important that we make informed choices in our lives,
and if our weight is a consideration,
the amount of food, and the calories of food, can be important.

 But if a person can’t decide to have food as a pleasure in one’s life,
then that person is probably not living a realistic life.

It seems to me that the choice to embrace a such a Fantasy,
will more likely lead to overall failure in one’s weight-loss or maintenance
than any independent choice concerning a particular food.

What is “Junk Food” anyway?
Is it an "edible food-like substance"? The opposite of:

“real food”
“proper food”
“healthy food”
“organic food”

Not necessarily.  
Junk food is slang - an informal term - for food that contains a high level of calories from sugar or fat, with little protein, vitamins or minerals.

The definition of Junk is anything that is regarded as worthless, meaningless, or contemptible; trash. The definition of Trash is anything worthless, useless, or discarded; rubbish, So Junk or Trash is something worthless. The opposite of that would be Treasure, as the definition of treasure is a valuable or precious possession of any kind.

There’s a wise old proverb that says: “One man's trash is another man's treasure”, meaning that something that one person considers worthless may be considered valuable by someone else.

Whether something is trash or treasure is a matter of an individual’s perception. This proverb is applicable to current popular culture and its food issues.

The most common viewpoint is that junk foods include salted snack foods, candy, sweet desserts, fried fast food, and sweet carbonated beverages. Although every person has their own list of foods that they call junk foods, society uses the slang term “junk food” as though we all agree on exactly what these specific foods are.

White sugar and white flour are carbs that become glucose when ingested, and will provide life-sustaining physical energy, just like other carbs. This, when used together with a bit of protein, some fat, and an added multi-vitamin-mineral pill, is a diet that many modern humans use to sustain reasonably healthy lives. We see the term “Healthy” everywhere nowadays, but “Healthy” really only means not-sick and not-dead.

Recently I saw an article headlined: “Junk food is an issue of national security”. And in fact, there appear to be foodie terrorists everywhere ... People who insist on forcing their strong opinions about which foods are trash, and which foods are treasure.

Nowadays, one can’t go for long without being exposed to the assertion ... (everything seems to be believed by someone) ... that some specific micronutrient, such as carbs, or animal proteins, or fats  cause heart disease, cancer and/or Alzheimer’s disease.

Assertations abound that chemicals used in processing foods, or genetic changes in the way food is now grown, or foods fed to the animals providing protein products make many of the major foods unhealthy and unsafe.

There are many opposing opinions on which food micronutrient, or which of the chemicals within foods, will kill us or make us sick. People can’t even totally agree on which ones will make us fat.

In my lifetime, I’ve personally experimented with a great variety of different food plans. Some were labeled “fad” diets. Some were labeled “crash” diets, Some were labeled “healthy” diets. Some were labeled “balanced” diets. Some were labeled “low-fat” diets. Some were labeled “low-carb” diets. Some of these food plans tried to distinguish themselves by redefining themselves … insisting that they weren’t “Diets” at all.

No matter which food plan I was currently on, there were always plenty of “nutritional experts” around to tell me that my current plan was wrong. “Nutritional Experts” across the board have delighted in telling me that my diet-of-the-moment was providing me with too few calories to meet my body’s nutritional needs, and that I absolutely MUST eat at least 1200 calories or more every day. The reality is that I’m a short, light, elderly, sedentary “reduced-obese" female and my body requires LESS than 1200 daily calories to sustain my current normal-sized weight. Despite my low-calorie intake my body isn’t shrinking into nothingness, and my recommended daily multivitamin seems to work well to effectively correct any potential nutritional deficiencies.

One common question that the “experts” all seem to find unique and meaningful about any specific diet is: “Are you going to continue to eat like this for the rest of your life?” As to any one specific diet, I find that question irrelevant, because there are literally thousands of different food plans possible. My personal choice is to engage myself in serial diet monogamy which has brought me from morbid obesity to a normal size, and allowed me to at normal size for quite a few years. Although I’m over age 60, all indications are that I’m still in excellent health.

The truth we all need to face is that the human body is designed to wear out, and even if we are fortunate enough to avoid the major diseases, we will eventually die of old age… Probably by our mid 80s, but perhaps not until we are in our 90s. The time I’ve spent visiting the elderly in nursing homes has taught me that the stretch between death in one’s mid-80s and death in one’s 90s, seldom comes with years of excellent health, and practically speaking, it might actually better to avoid an attempt to extend one’s life span for an extra 5 or 10 years.

So, are the following pictures Junk Food to YOU?

The majority classify the above foods as Junk Foods,
but would you agree with the people
who classify the foods below as Junk Foods?

Bread  (carb)  -   Butter (saturated fat)

Hot Dog in Bun with ketchup and mustard & fried Onion Rings (carbs, processed fatty meat, sugared condiment & fried food) - - - Cheese, crackers & Grapes (animal based fatty protein, wheat-flour carbs & high sugar frutose carb)

 
Roast Beef Sandwich  (fatty red meat, wheat carbs) -  Tuna Salad Sandwich (wheat carbs - mercury tainted protein source?, mayo- fat & carb, chopped eggs - cholestrol)

Beefsteak, green beans, carrots & roasted white potatoes  (fatty red meat, high starch vegetables) - - crisp fried bacon (processed fatty meat with nitrates).

The examples above demonstrate that almost every food seems to contain some micronutrient or substance that SOMEONE can find objectionable.

I often read articles involving diverse perspectives on Obesity and Dieting. I consider the evidence and put it into my mental file on the issue. Sometimes I even change my mind. But, truthfully, I most enjoy the articles that agree with my own beliefs.

I’m well aware of the existence of a great deal of dietary research involving “bad” science.   Some of these are studies based on inaccurate, self-reported, dietary recall which don’t even attempt to account for the actual quality of the participant’s diets, but then make conclusions about different food and health issues, including the impact of artificial sweeteners on one’s health.

I think that an Ideal end goal would be to drink the smallest amount of “sweet” beverages regardless of how the beverages got their “sweet” in the first place. In an Ideal World, I’d replace all of my artificially flavored and artificially sweetened beverages, including tea and diet cokes, with clear and undiluted water.

However, it’s NOT an Ideal World.

 As my current choice is to frequently use Splenda, and to drink Diet Cokes or Coke Zero, I enjoyed the following article.

             Artificial sweeteners help keep it off.

Not exactly a surprising result, but likely one that will be poo-poo'd by all those who love to vilify artificial sweeteners.

Researchers in New Zealand studied folks who had successfully lost weight and their dietary consumption patterns. More specifically they looked at folks who had maintained a weight loss of greater than 10% of their weight for 11.5 years and they compared these folks' dietary strategies to folks of similar weights who had never been overweight.

What unshocking yet valuable results did they find?

They found that folks who lost the weight had to work harder at their dietary strategies to help keep that weight off than folks who never had weight to lose. Their strategies included consuming fewer calories from fat (though the importance of this one's debatable as the 90s were the low-fat decade and more recent data from the National Weight Control Registry suggest that low-calorie is of course more important than low-fat and can be accomplished many different ways), consuming more of sugar and fat modified foods (reduced fat, reduced sugar), consuming more water, less pop and three times more daily servings of artificially sweetened soft drinks.

Go figure - folks who are predisposed to weight gain can help themselves keep the weight off by employing dietary strategies to help themselves consume fewer calories.

Go ahead, drink your diet Coke.

Phelan, S., Lang, W., Jordan, D., & Wing, R. (2009). Use of artificial sweeteners and fat-modified foods in weight loss maintainers and always-normal weight individuals International Journal of Obesity DOI: 10.1038/ijo.2009.147

Dr. Yoni Freedhoff MD,
Sept 17, 2009
weightymatters.ca

I identify with the words of wisdom in this post by a member of a forum I frequently visit.

"When I think about overeating I remind myself that it is just a thought fleeting through my head, I don't need to do anything about it.

This helped me when I was struggling with emotional eating. I would feel compelled (it really was a compulsion) to eat when I wasn't hungry, to eat over my emotions and I finally realized just because I am thinking about it doesn't mean I have to do it.

Every Friday in the staffroom at work I face Friday treats. Just because there are a gazillion different kinds of cookies, cakes, donuts etc, does not mean I have to have them all (or even any). I’m working to remember: Food is not leaving the planet! I can have what I want another time … when I fit it into my eating plan. I don't need to eat something just because it looks good, and it’s there!"
 

There have been times in my life that I thought the only way I could get rid of a thought was to act upon it.  Like, I'd start thinking about eating a specific food when I wasn't hungry and it wasn't mealtime. The thought would persist in my mind, and I'd often act upon it....which would frequently lead me to eating quite a lot of that specific food, and then I'd usually follow-up with unplanned eating of whatever other available foods that seemed tempting to me at that moment in time.  Sometimes, upon reflection, it seemed like I ate that original food item just so I'd stop thinking about it.

Finally, I realized the Truth that is contained inside the post above:
It is just a thought fleeting through my head,
I don't need to do anything about it.

            
I am currently involved in trying yet another Experiment
which is very similar to one I’ve run in the past.
And yet I’m hoping for a Different Result.
Since that meets one definition of insanity,…
     ………….enough said.