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Day 4/14 - What are "problem" foods and how do we live with them? Is "clean" eating the way or does it cause more harm than good?
Daily podcasts for the 14-day nutrition & mindset masterclass for Turtlemethod.com by Scott Flear.
Join here - app.turtlemethod.com
Day four is yours. Thursday of the Masterclass. Now today's topic is very important. We're looking at problem foods and clean eating. So when people talk about you might have talked to coaches, but we gotta eat clean, which means, like, veggies, only, lean meats, and all that stuff, and it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Right? It just flat out doesn't work. People rebel against that plan. Most diets or most plans are they say you eat about these small groups of foods, and the rest of them you can't So, eat. Basically, they restrict you from everything.
Speaker 1:So it doesn't work. Right? And if all of you be listening to the podcast, know we're looking at our data objectively like a scientist. We must stop this conflict in the mind. This food conflict we're always having.
Speaker 1:We look at a food, we say it's bad, but we want the bad food, and then we fight that, we break, we eat the bad food, we feel bad about eating the bad food, and we fight ourselves over and over and over. This is a nonstop thing. Right? So with there is no good and bad foods. There are no good and bad foods.
Speaker 1:That's the first thing to say. There are nutrient dense foods and low nutrient dense foods. Every food has its place. You know, some are tastier, some are higher in calories, some are lower in calories, all that stuff. Right?
Speaker 1:But there's a very, very interesting study, right, on problem foods. Now they ask you to list out your problem foods, which I want you to do. So list out five problem foods. It could be ice cream, It could be a chocolate bar, Snickers bar. It could be Oreo, ice cream sandwich.
Speaker 1:It could be whatever it is. List five of them out. Right? And in the study, it found that the only intervention that was, strongly correlated with weight loss was the people that could eat their problem foods in moderation, a portion size that was decent size but wasn't overboard. That was the only intervention that actually worked for long term weight loss.
Speaker 1:The rest of the stuff didn't work. The other interventions were never to buy the food, to rely on your friends and family to stop you eating the food, to buy like the lower calorie ones that don't taste the same so you never get that fulfillment. Eat and you go, it's not the same. It's not the same and I want the I want the real thing. So none of those things worked.
Speaker 1:The only thing that worked was being able to eat the problem food in moderation. So essentially what that means is is turning a problem food into a non problem. Does that make sense to you? Because if we're eating in moderation and we're stopping, we go, I'll eat the Snickers bar and I say, right, you move on with your day. Happy days.
Speaker 1:The problem is the the classic mindset is, I don't want it, but I can't have it. Oh my god. Why have I started eating this? My day is now ruined. It's over because I've had a chocolate bar.
Speaker 1:But your body's not saying, oh my god, Scott, me just had a Snickers bar. No. You'll never lose fat today. The body sees things as protein and carbs and fat. It doesn't see the brand name.
Speaker 1:Like, think about it. The body's not thinking, like, oh, he's at a Mars bar. We're a loser. It's not gonna stop fat loss in his tracks. What is the thing that determines weight gain or weight loss is total calories over time.
Speaker 1:Right? It's not about the actual food name, brand, thing. We make it a problem and then we hate ourselves and then we eat out of guilt eating, comfort eating, stress eating, all that stuff comes into play. So you have to be able to eat your problem food without it being a problem. It's very, important.
Speaker 1:I want you to pick one of your problem foods today and track it. I want you to pick something. I'm gonna have an Oreo ice cream sandwich myself. I'm gonna put it in the app. It's never a problem for me.
Speaker 1:I put it in the app. Job done. Sometimes I have it in the morning. Think about it. Scott, you don't have ice cream in the morning, you gimp.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I do. I have an Oreo sandwich sometimes in the morning when I go on a walk. I love it. I put it in the app.
Speaker 1:No problem. Man, I mean, can I get better use of macros? Of course. Is there better food choices that are gonna give me more bang for my buck calorie wise? Of course.
Speaker 1:Right? But, we don't wanna live a life where we don't have the foods we love. Okay. So then when we look at another piece of research that looks at what diet so they looked at 2,000 calorie diet and they used a computer program to figure out which combination of foods can we get our vitamin and mineral needs from. So into the program they had like 800 odd foods.
Speaker 1:The first test they did, can we hit 2,000 calories and achieve all of our vitamin and mineral goals from the generic foods from the supermarket, from unprocessed foods, and they found they couldn't do it from 2,000 calories. It wasn't possible mathematically in the study, it wasn't possible. The only combination that was possible from the hit them vitamin and mineral targets was a combination of unprocessed foods and processed foods. Right? And ultra processed foods.
Speaker 1:An ultra processed food is a is a is a yogurt, for example. A Greek yogurt has been processed, ultra processed, is is cereals. All these things are ultra processed. Just because they're ultra processed doesn't mean they're bad. They've got added vitamin and minerals, most of them, fortified with iron and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:They all have got that on them. So that's why it was possible to hit the vitamin and mineral targets with a combination of both and not just the quote unquote clean foods. If you're just doing clean foods, you're gonna find it very difficult actually to kind of have this balance. Right? And we know rigid dieting doesn't work.
Speaker 1:We know it doesn't work. We know the flexible approach is the approach that works. It's the nonjudgmental approach. It's the approach where we don't hate ourselves for the foods we eat. Some days we wake up and we just feel terrible and you know, we just wanna we just wanna eat the food we like.
Speaker 1:We don't wanna go and eat chicken and broccoli and then if, you know, coaches will
Speaker 2:be like, no pain, gain. No pain, no gain, Scott. If you can't do it, you don't deserve it. I don't know why I'm doing a
Speaker 1:weird voice but you know what I mean they're like keep going. If you can't if you can't eat, if you can't stick to your diet then you can't do anything. It's like no mate, that's not how we're gonna live our life, right? So pick a problem food, eat the problem food, make it a non problem food, track it and post it in a group what you had and how about you weren't guilty about it because the guilt comes from thinking it's going to stop your progress, it doesn't. There was another research by professor Mark Hobb of Kansas State University.
Speaker 1:He ate sugar sweets every three hours for ten weeks, but he was in a calorie deficit. He lost 27 pounds. His health mark has actually improved, which shocked him. His bad cholesterol went down. Good cholesterol went up.
Speaker 1:Body fat went down. All everything improved because he went from a BMI of overweight to a normal range BMI. And what he said at the end was, look. I'm not suggesting you eat a 100% sugary food rubbish. Right?
Speaker 1:No. I don't suggest that. But what I'm saying is you can have it doesn't have to be 90% clean, as we say, and 10% junk, as we say. It can even be fifty fifty. It could be sixty forty.
Speaker 1:It could be 60 unprocessed food, 40, you know, convenient ultra processed fast food, you know, food you can buy meal ready meals and stuff like that. The first the most important part is do we track our calories first? We hit our targets. Once we get used to hitting the targets of the foods we love, right, you can see results from it. You get an insight, you get a breakthrough light bulb moment when you start losing weight and you're eating foods like a chocolate bar, like cereal, like foods you thought were gonna stop fat loss, you actually realize they don't as long as you're hitting your calorie macro targets.
Speaker 1:And then once you've got momentum, you say, do you know more? Why don't I meal prep my lunches instead of going to Tesco and getting them that ready meal even though the ready meal was high in protein? Why don't I meal prep so I can add more veggies myself, save money? This intrinsic motivation to improve food quality will come in time. If you try and do it all at once it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Small change is true change. Remember, you can't do all of this at once. Right? So the three studies I mentioned there, three very important studies. Eating our problem foods and making them a non problem is essential to long term change.
Speaker 1:We must be able to live with the foods we love. Right? Understanding it's a mix of foods, ultra processed and unprocessed is going to give us the best diet quality actually and it's going to be sustainable. And the third thing is you absolutely can lose fat with a terrible diet, but it's not recommended, but it's been proven. What we're trying to say is that you're not eating a 100% junk.
Speaker 1:You could be eating 50% unprocessed, 50% processed, and that's absolutely fine to start with. Right? What is gonna give you the biggest health benefits if you are overweight or obese starting this is a reduction of body fat by five, ten percent. That's where a lot of health benefits come from. It's the reduction of body fat.
Speaker 1:Right? So how you get that reduction? Eating food you love, happy days. We can look at diet quality over time. We can look at switching out certain foods for other foods and meal prepping over time.
Speaker 1:Meal prepping saves money. Meal prepping saves time, but it's not possible for us all to jump in and do it straight away. K? So be kind to yourself. Remember you're a scientist.
Speaker 1:Observe your thoughts without judgment. Observe your actions. See how you think about food. Eat your problem food today. Observe your thoughts about it and how your mind will go off.
Speaker 1:Oh my god. You're gonna lose. You've lost it. Put it in the app. Post it in the group.
Speaker 1:Happy days. Well done. This is one of the biggest moves you're gonna make in terms of your nutrition. It is the ability to eat foods without hating ourselves. Once we can get over this part, repair this relationship with food, honest to God, it's a life changing moment.
Speaker 1:It is. Because all we do is fight food. Right? And the only way to stop fighting food is to stop the thought going round in circles about food. If you see yourself eating a lot a lot of chocolate and you think, you know you're eating it, and you go I don't eat chocolate why am I keep eating it?
Speaker 1:Stop going around in circles with thought because thought is the creation of desire. Right? Without thought there's no desire. Right? So your thoughts you can run-in circle creating desire for it and then then you're creating desire to eat and then you're creating the desire not to eat them.
Speaker 1:So it's desire all the time, it's in a loop. I want to, I want to, want to, I I to. And that doesn't ever stops. When it does stops, you can just look at it. So for ninety seconds, you feel like you're about to binge or overeat something, just sit with that for ninety seconds and just look at the food and stop trying to fight it.
Speaker 1:Just look at it and look at the thought. Don't fight the thought, don't want to change it or accept it, just look at it and stand there in silence and stillness for ninety seconds. And the science says that the feeling the emotion will go away after ninety seconds. Sit with it. Don't judge, observe, don't accept, don't decline, don't let desire want to want you to eat there, desire want you to not eat there, and the feeling, the intensity of that desire will wash away after ninety seconds.
Speaker 1:Right? So that's what you wanna watch when you eat your problem food today and see what happens. So let me know how it goes. Enjoy your day. Remember, live one day at a time.
Speaker 1:Okay? You can make a change today. You can make the change tomorrow. Be kind to yourself. Observe.
Speaker 1:You're a scientist. Experiment. Let's go, and I'll speak to you all tomorrow.