Have you ever been told “Don’t Eat That it’s Bad for you!” I’ve heard it plenty, hell I’ve even said it a time or two to my clients. And I’m here to apologize to those I said it to, and to admit I was wrong.
The word “bad” or “unhealthy” has such a negative string of emotions tied to it, and when fitness professionals tend to voice those words they oft times come off as judgement, which can be pretty harsh. Now I’ve never been an in your face scream at you type of trainer, but I’m sure I’ve probably made some people feel bad about the food choices they’ve made, and I realize now I shouldn’t have.
You see I think one of the things that we as fitness professionals have done is to continue to perpetuate the idea that certain foods are in fact bad and we should never eat them. The reality is, food is not in and of itself bad, and eating these so called “bad” foods will not instantly make you less healthy.
Food is simply food and the “bad” part is the association we draw from it, or the emotions that well up in us when we consume something we think we shouldn’t. Many times when we eat these “bad” foods we start to feel “bad” about ourselves, then that whole negative self talk thing kicks in and we start to feel really crummy. These feelings over time can start to cause a whole host of other concerns like disordered eating, body images issues, and concerns like depression, if you aren’t careful.
Now, If you think I’m giving you carte blanche to stuff your face with ding dongs, ice cream, and to wash it all down with a big gulp, then you are sadly mistaken. There are foods that we should eat less of, and they are usually the foods that are low in nutrition and high in calories, like many of the aforementioned high sugar, highly processed foods.
(Sorry but I can’t help but think of the intro to Weird Al’s “Fat” every time I think of ding dongs.)
These foods eaten on a regular basis usually have a detrimental effect on your health, but it takes a long time for those negative health impacts to show up. Think of it as dosing, just like we do with medication. A correctly administered dose of the antibiotic gentamicin can help with infection, while an overdose can cause you permanent disability by destroying one of the components of balance. So goes the dosing of food.
One twinkie or sweet treat occasionally that provides balance (pun intended) to an otherwise healthy diet is pleasurable, delicious and should be enjoyed, but continuously overdosing ourselves with low nutrition foods can destroy our health, much like that antibiotic can destroy our balance.
I’ve used it before and I’ll use it again but the 80/20 rule is as much in effect here as it is anywhere else, being that 80% of the time we should be eating mostly unprocessed single ingredient foods, the other 20% eat a bit more freely. I’m not necessarily a pusher of the paleo diet, I’m not really a pusher of any so-called “diet”, but for ease of understanding a paleo style of eating is probably among the best ways to go, in my opinion.
Paleo is no magic bullet, and if you don’t drink the koolaid that some of it’s proponents drink, you can actually learn to eat quite well. It also has roughly 2.5 drillion (yep totally made that number up) cookbooks on the market that can teach you some solid recipes and encourage you to try new and different foods. But you’ll find some of it’s hardcore adherents will tell you that milk is the spawn of satan and that eating potatoes is akin to kicking puppies. These are the types of people to avoid.
Whether you try a paleo style of eating, or some other plan don’t let someone brainwash you into thinking certain foods are bad, and don’t just “follow” the plan, actually educate yourself on nutrition and your food choices and what works for you. I’d be remiss to say there aren’t some folks with legitimate medical concerns or sensitivities due to food, but for most of us that simply isn’t the case.
I could keep going, but I think I’ll leave it at that and turn this into a two or three part series. The second part will be focused on arguably the most maligned macronutrient out there, fat, and why it’s totally misunderstood, like that kid in high school with the green mohawk and chain wallet.