I made the decision to 'go healthy' again after lock-down a little while ago. In fact, I wrote about it on this blog last month, but, as usual, I dragged my feet because........well why won't you when you have this excuse for eating badly. This will be a pretty quick blog as I don't want to be repeating what I've already written about here many times before, but trying to eat healthily is a constant effort for me (especially as I have to be so much more strict due to the PCOS) and I don't think it'll ever become just a habit.
I should probably start by saying that, at a general look, my diet looks pretty healthy with lots of vegetables. It's just that the portions are definitely too big for my size and the additional food, normally known as snacks, are probably more of the problem.
Starting with the easiest bit, I need to reduce my portion sizes to the amount I should actually be eating for my size, and probably ignore the little bit of hunger I will be feeling at the beginning. I now have more control over the food being made at the moment, so I also want to make fresher meals with one being a large mixed salad and the other full of fresh vegetables. I'm also having gluten-free toast for my breakfast, but I'm finding I'm getting hungry pretty quickly in the mornings now so it would probably be a good idea to go back to overnight oats or porridge.
Now for the more difficult bit, snacking. Like pretty much everyone else, I tend to snack on things I really shouldn't, like biscuits, crisps, chocolate, sugar, sugar, sugar. It probably doesn't help that I used to get allergic reactions to pretty much every fruit out there, bar the fiddly oranges, making it difficult to choose that option. However, that does seem to be reducing at the moment so maybe I should probably give them all another try. Having to walk to the shops to get unhealthy food doesn't seem to be much of a hindrance to me either, so what I really need to do is make the healthy snacks much more accessible and easy. The fruit should cover the sugar cravings and the nuts should add the crunch I like to have. I'm still going to let myself have 'unhealthy' snacks now and then, probably once or twice a week, as going too extreme tends to lead to people falling off the bandwagon in a strong way.
Hopefully, if I can make these changes over the next few weeks my health should improve considerably, including the reduction in my allergies which usually gets worse when I have too much-processed sugar. Which should then be enough of an incentive to keep going. My arse might also stop expanding in the way it's doing right now as well. 😂
Like most people in the western world I have a little, nasty addiction. It sits in the back of my head constantly pestering me to have more of it. There are times when I have been able to resist it, but more often than not I give in and get my fix. I am, of course, talking about sugar. Addiction is an odd thing to me. I don't smoke and have never got into that habit, I don't feel the need to have a drink when things get bad/stressful/celebratory, I don't feel like I can't function in the morning if I haven't managed to have a cup of tea or coffee, and I definitely don't have a drug habitat of any form. So it didn't occur to me that I might have an addiction to sugar until a few years ago. Really, if I had been paying attention, I should have guessed that I had, the one chocolate bar not being enough anymore, the wanting a fizzy drink in the morning and afternoon, the constantly wanting pastries with icing and cream in. It was only when I started eating healthily properly after doing some research on my PCOS that I noticed that little niggling feeling in my brain. I have tried giving this up before, but I always fall back into consuming sugar in the form of chocolate, biscuits, and fizzy juice. I suppose I should be too suprised, research on sugar addition and rats have shown that they are more addicted to it then they are to cocaine and sugar is added to products (even 'healthy' products) all the time. The problem is that sugar, especially in it's process form, is so bad for you. I remember being warned about it regularly, as I'm sure we all have, by my dentist when it came to the health of my teeth. Then there was the big health push in my teens about sugar and Type II Diabetes (though you would have thought from the pictures that only obese people got that). There's now also information showing that sugar increases the amount of aging our body does, especially on the skin, as well as some connections shown between sugar and high cholesterol. Yet, despite all this, it's still there being added to our food. I think the weirdest thing for me is the way it's still in all the diet food. It's all 'fat free' this and 'fat free' that and yet they replace the fat with high amounts of sugar and as far as I'm aware there's no real difference between the fat you consume and the fat your body converts the sugar you consume into. For some reason fat has been placed as the baddy to be removed at all costs, while sugar is the naughty product that isn't that bad really and definitely the better of two evils. If only it was that simple. The one thing I found when doing my research into healthy eating for my PCOS was that there are actually a number of fats that are not only good for you but also really important for your health. Sugar isn't entirely bad either as your body does need it in moderation, but needs to be eaten in small amounts in a more natural way (and by natural I mean like in your fruit and vegetables which are mostly whole). Sweetener is not really any better. It still gives your body the sugar kick that is so addictive and, as your body doesn't know the difference, it still releases the insulin into your bloodstream with possible connections to insulin resistance in the long run. There's also some evidence that people who use sweetener also eat more afterwards, possibly because their body is geared up to get sugar that never turns up. For me, the big health issue in connection to my PCOS is that my insulin baseline is higher naturally than most people's. This means that the Sugar that goes into my body is much more likely to be converted into body fat (with all the health issues there) and the fat in my body is less likely to be converted into fuel, I'm also more likely to get Type II Diabetes. It's much more important for me that I eat healthily and exercise regularly, not only to reduce my body fat but to reduce my insulin levels as well. Sugar is definitely an 'only in moderation' product for me and I really want that moderation to be in the form of the fruit and veg by body evolved to understand. It also fits, as I'm trying to live more sustainably, that the by eating healthier, less processed food it'll actually be easier for me to make more sustainable choices in the food I eat. I'll be able to decide where all the products come from. So how am I going to break this little addition this time. Well, thankfully I'm stubborn so the fact that I failed the last few times is not going to stop me giving this another go (it does have it's uses). Also, my new job means I'm going to be stuck up a hill with no access to a shop selling pure sugar in a fizzy disguise, and my trip back and forth to work doesn't pass any of those either. I'm not going to buy anything in my weekly shopping that has the substance in (I do have some very expensive maple syrup to get through right now though) and that way I'll have no choice but to not have it. I will need to increase my calories for this job, but the plan is to do it through the healthy options, such as fruit, seeds and nuts instead of chocolate and biscuits. I'll just have to ignore the little sugar demons in my head. Afterall, I won't have a choice.
The film I have decided to highlight this time isn't necessarily an environmental film, but 'That Sugar Film' does promote a diet that is both healthy and sustainable.
It follows filmmaker Damon Gameau, who has spent the last few years eating a predominantly unprocessed diet (thanks to his Mrs), and decides to go back to the average, high sugar diet that most Westerns follow for 60 days. In this movie he documents not only the effect this has on his health, but also on his moods.
What I find most interesting about this documentary was the fact that he kept in the recommended calorific intake each day and even regularly ate advertised 'healthy foods'. Yet, despite this, his health still deterioate and he accumulated fat around his waist, one of the worst areas to you can accumulate it. According to the research available at the time of the making of the movie, fructose is the one type of sugar that is particularly bad for us, always being converted by the liver into fat. Unfortunately, this is the one sugar found in almost all processed foods.
It clearly shows that we need a shake up in how companies are allowed to advertised their products and how they present the ingredients we look at. But it also highlights that we need to educate ourselves about the food we put in our bodies and not rely on the companies to provide us with a 'healthy option'.
While I do eat a predominantly healthy diet, it did make me realise that I still consume a lot of sugar and that this is probably stopping me from reaching some of my health goals. I had reduced my sugar intake before, but it has slowly slipped its way back in and I have noticed my energies levels bounce up and down all day in connections with it. It's probably about time that I go cold turkey when it comes to sugar, but after watching what Damon went through to begin with it is a little daunting. However, it's definitely a route worth going down as this is not only a more healthy diet but not eating processed food is also more envirnmentally friendly and sustainable.
