Weight Loss: Can I Eat Whatever I Want? — Om Naturelle Nutrition
Oh the lovely topic of food and food restriction in order to lose weight! What a baffling and confusing topic it is! Can I eat all the sweet, yummy, delicious treats that just call out to me like “ Mel.. come eat me! “ LOL! No, but seriously. During your weight loss journey, can you eat whatever you want? I want to say no, you shouldn’t but really — the answer is: you kind of can, but in serious moderation and depending on your chosen lifestyle.
WHAT FACTORS DETERMINE MY FOOD CHOICES?
Ultimately, you’ll determine what you want to eat. You might find that you have intense cravings and a sudden lack of willpower that overcomes you and you eat that entire delicious chocolate cake sitting in the fridge from last weekends birthday party. You’re not weak for eating it, you’re not a loser, or a failure either. The fact is, there are some seriously complex and intense chemical reactions in our brains that take place when it comes to feeling content. It’s not even about hunger or satiation believe it or not. It’s about your brain being a complete and utter junkie for dopamine. By eating that cake, your brain gets it’s fix and leaves you feeling like shit afterwards. Your brain is a bit of an asshole.
Once you’ve learned how to master control over your addicted brain (this will be another blog post soon), then you need to address your goals. Sure you want to lose weight, but how? Do you want to just lose weight and nothing else? Do you want to lose weight and increase health? Or, do you want to lose weight and increase fitness? We seem to think that weight loss, health, and fitness are interchangable but, they are not.
You can lose weight, but not be fit or healthy. You can be healthy and lose weight, but not be fit. And you can be fit, but not lose weight, or be healthy. Just because you’re fit, does not mean you’re healthy. So figure out your goals. Write them down. Determine what you want out of this journey.
An example of this may look like: “I want to lose 40 lbs. I want to increase my strength and my cardio. And I want to get off my high blood pressure pills all within the next 2 years “. This is a perfectly achievable and complete weight loss, fitness, and health goal.
Now let’s break it into steps and make it a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) and really get down to business.
DECIDING ON A LIFESTYLE
Once you have your SMART goals broken down and written out. Now you need to think about which lifestyle you want to live. Notice how I didn’t say diet? Diet is an ugly word that insinuates a temporary adjustment to nutritional intake for a specific period of time to acquire a certain goal. It is for that reason alone that “ diets” don’t work. Weight loss (and maintenance), health, and fitness are all life long journeys. There is no end. There are plenty of tweaks along the way, but there is no end. That’s what makes living a healthy lifestyle so successful. So ditch the word “diet”. You’re not on a diet. You’re making a healthy lifestyle change.
What are your options? Well, intermittent fasting is one. A vegan lifestyle. A plant-based lifestyle, a whole food or raw food lifestyle. There is a Keto lifestyle, the Mediterranean lifestyle, paleo lifestyle. There are quite literally tons to choose from.
So when you decide on a lifestyle, you need to choose one that you actually enjoy. One that doesn’t feel like a chore, suits your life, and one you can easily sustain over time.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THEM SWEETS!
Alright, so step one: master your brain. Step two: decide on a lifestyle. Step three: decide the foods you want to eat. This is the fun part! I’m a big believer of avoiding process foods. I love the quote “If it comes from a plant, eat it. If it’s made in a plant, don’t”. As an omnivore, I believe that your best chances of getting healthy are through eating fruits, veggies, dairy, and meat.
Notice I excluded grains? Yes, grains are good for you — I know that. But the quality of the grains most readily available these days are just not as good for you. They are high in carbs and they are not as nutritionally dense as whole foods. I believe that you can acquire far superior nutritional density through fruits and veggies instead.
Personally, I don’t eat bread. I rarely ever eat pasta. I don’t consume rice, quinoa, corn, or oats. Nor barley or any other grain for that matter.
Anyways, back to them sweets. I have chosen an IF lifestyle. I am an Intermittent Faster. In my eating window (which is 11am to 5pm) I eat pretty much whatever I want. If I want a chip, I’ll have a chip. I won’t have a whole bag of chips, but I’ll have a small handful. I certainly won’t eat chips every day, hell I barely even have them once a month. But a small handful of chips once a week during your eating window is fine.
The same is true about cookies, cake, candy, anything sweet, high in sweeteners, high in simple carbs. You can still eat them, just in much smaller portions, and much less frequently.
Will this work for every lifestyle? No. That’s part of the reason I am so fond of intermittent fasting. It allows you to still eat the foods you love, in moderation of course, while you fine tune your body to reaching your goals.
BE MINDFUL OF WHAT YOU PUT INTO YOUR BODY
Now, it goes without saying that you cannot intermittent fast, then eat nothing but junk throughout your eating window, and still expect to lose weight. It just doesn’t work that way. You have to be mindful of what you put in your body and when.
For example, never break your fast with something sweet. Something high in protein, high in fat, or bitter (like black coffee for example) are all perfectly great ways to break a fast.
Never eat fruit with a meal. Fruits should always be eaten on their own, a minimum of one hour before or after a meal.
High fiber protein bars, or nutritional shakes are totally OK to consume. Yes, I know they are technically a processed food — but they nutritionally dense and will help you acquire the nutrients your body needs.
Ultimately, you want to choose fruits, veggies, meats, fish, eggs, dairy, and nuts and seeds over everything else. Have a muffin, a cookie, or a piece of cake once in a while, but not every day. Stick to REAL foods, created by nature, not man.
WHAT COMES EASY WON’T LAST
It’s pretty fair to say that nothing worth having comes easy. We are a civilization that believes in the easy button. Fast food exists because it’s easier. Pills for health problems exist because they are easier. Pills take care of your symptoms, not the root cause of the problem, but we don’t care! Because it’s easier. It’s easier to drive a car than it is to walk or bike somewhere. Everything we do is about making our lives easier.
I say SCREW THAT! I know that nothing good in life comes easy. The best things take work. And hard work this is! I won’t lie to you and tell you its easy to be healthy. It’s not. It’s damn hard. You have to be stronger than your desire for an easy button. That takes time, and work too. Staving off that late night snack attack is damn hard. Pounding back 3 liters of water a day is damn hard. Getting up and moving your body daily is damn hard.
Only you will decide if your quality of life is more important than the hardest moments you’ll endure. Is it worth the struggles that you WILL endure? How important are YOU to YOU? Do you want to be a 65 year old, overweight person, on 3 different heart pills, barely able to make it up the stairs each day? Or do you want to be that 75 year old who is still dancing around like a spring chicken, on zero medications, living life to its fullest? Everything you put into your body will lend its hand to one of two paths: good health or bad health. It is up to you to decide what you eat, and the quality of life you want to live.
So, can you eat anything you want? Sure! Will it lead you to a path of health and happiness? Nope! But moderation of a few sweets with a 90% healthy lifestyle and exercise absolutely can. Choose wisely.
Originally published at https://omnaturelle.com on January 19, 2022.
