1. Drinking Diet Soda
Diet soda is on the top of many dieters’ shopping list. However, diet soda actually can make you gain weight. The sweet taste of artificial sweeteners actually causes an insulin response in your body. Insulin is released into the blood (which is like sandpaper to your arteries, causing inflammation and disease). Meanwhile, your cells do not get any glucose as they thought. When this happens, they start screaming , “hey, where’s that glucose that I was promised”. This causes appetite stimulation and you eat more. On top of this, you have caffeine which dehydrates you. Dehydration can make you feel hungry. Caffeine also sends out a cortisol response in your body, which is more stress on your liver and causes weight gain. Phosphoric acid in soft drinks cause that tangy flavor, but also binds with calcium and can lead to decreased bone density. Your best beverage choice is water. If you like bubbles in your water, try Apollinaris or Gerolsteiner for natural minerals. They are not the most environmental choice since they’re imported, but I love the taste on special occasions.
2. Not drinking enough water.
Most Americans are dehydrated. Water helps us transport nutrients, improves cell to cell communication, lubricated the joints and empowers our healing process. Being dehydrated can actually cause you to gain weight. Water helps us to maintain a healthy weight by suppressing our appetite, reducing our body’s level of sodium and helping us to maintain muscle tone. Dehydration causes a person to become more hungry, resulting in a higher calorie consumption throughout the day. Lack of water can even inhibit a person’s workout routine. Being fully hydrated regulates the body’s temperature and helps the muscles to work well, which in turn leads to a more productive workout. If you are hungry or experiencing a food craving, try drinking at least one full glass (or eight ounces) of water right away and you will automatically feel more full, will consume less calories and will be one glass closer to fulfilling your daily quota. A good rule of thumb is to drink ½ your body weight in water each day, up to one gallon. Then, for each diuretic you consume (and this means coffee, packaged fruit juice, soda, tea, alcoholic beverages) you need that times 1.5 to make up for the dehydrating effect it has on you. I drink a a glass of water when I wake up, then a glass of water ½ an hour before I eat then wait at least 1 ½ hours after I eat for more water, so as not to dilute any stomach acid digesting food.
3. Avoiding fat and/or choosing the wrong fats
Myth: Fat makes you fat.
Truth: You need fat to burn fat.
Fat is needed to maintain healthy liver and gallbladder function, to properly make hormones, to build cell walls, to help your body heal from injury, and it is the main fuel for muscles, including the heart muscle. A Harvard study found that fat-free dairy leads to decreased ovulation in women by 28%. You also need fat to maintain proper blood sugar levels. It helps slow absorption of food to keep you full and to get the most benefit from what you eat.
Good fats include fats that are cold pressed, unrefined, expeller-pressed, organic and extra virgin. Bad fats include hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated, canola, soy and cottonseed oils. Choose organic coconut oil or butter for sautéing food. Extra virgin, organic olive oil and flax for salads, and never ever eat canola, soy or cottonseed oils. They are not natural fats meant for human consumption and the body does not recognize them as a food. Choose avocados, egg yolks from pastured chickens, and animal fat like chicken skin (yes, eat the skin when you eat the chicken, just skip the rolls, stuffing, noodles, rice, or cornbread) or beef from grass-fed animals.
4. Believing that the box on the shelf that says “Natural”, “Low fat”, or “Organic” means that it’s healthy.
If you want to be slim, it’s best to avoid food in boxes all together. These are highly processed, high in carbs, full of sodium (not sea salt, which is great stuff), and full of artificial colors and flavors. If a product needs to have artificial or even added “natural” flavors to make it taste good, then you shouldn’t be eating it. In fact, if a product needs to say something on the box to indicate that it’s healthy, that should be your first warning sign that it’s not a real food. Stick to simple ingredients and don’t be seduced by fancy “organic” packaging of food that is really in the end, just junk.
5. Eating fake, soy foods and drinking soy milk
The soy industry is a big money maker too, and they’ve caught on to the “diet” world. Soy messes with your natural hormones and can cause infertility and breast cancer in women and infertility in men. It has been linked to premature sexual development in girls and delayed or retarded sexual development in boys. It leaches minerals from your body and contains high amounts of aluminum which has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
“What about the Japanese, they eat lots of soy?” you ask? The truth is that the average consumption of soy foods in Japan and China is 10 grams (about 2 teaspoons) per day. Asians consume soy foods in small amounts as a condiment, and not as a replacement for animal foods. They also mostly consume it in it’s fermented for such as tempeh, natto and tamari, not as a meat or dairy substitute. Forget the edamame, soymilk and soy protien shakes too. Your body can not digest them and they cause even more harm than I’ve mentioned here.
6. Thinking that eating vitamins can make up for a bad diet
Supplements are just that, supplements. They can not make up for a poor diet full of bad choices, high in carbs and full of trans fats. There is a lot of money to be made in the supplement world, so those who push them will have you believe that one little green pill can make up for a whole day of poor food choices.
7. Thinking you can “work it off”
Eating a cheeseburger and fries with a coke then going to the gym won’t solve the problem. You can burn off glucose, but not insulin, which will damage your arteries and cause inflammation. You are what you eat, not what you burn off. Trans fats and nitrates don’t just “melt away” at the gym.
8. Thinking that diet programs that focus on calorie restriction work.
Diets that promise you can eat pizza and chocolate cake while still losing weight are simply wrong. The low-fat recommendations advised on many of these diets can raise blood sugar levels, which make you tired, increases food cravings and weight gain. Many popular low-carb diets encourage processed meats, which studies have shown can lead to cancer. Low-carb diets are often wrong when it comes to fat consumption (advocating canola oil for cooking) and suggest that you completely avoid all saturated fats.
9. Believing in the “Food Pyramid” and what USDA Dietitians tell you about food.
Registered Dietitians generally get a bad rap in the alternative medical and nutrition communities. After all, they are the people who serve up white bread, cereal, jello and foods fried with trans fats in school and hospital cafeterias, who help doctors enforce low-fat, low-cholesterol diet plans and advise weight loss patients to drink calorie free diet sodas. Indeed, the ADA thinks that plenty of processed, packaged and fast foods, are just fine in the context of a varied diet. As Mary Enig, PhD, MACN, is fond of saying, “Dietitians are trained to dispense processed food.”
The bulk of your diet should actually be vegetables, meats and good fats, with the cereal and breads category completely eliminated. The government is dominated by the food industry, who is mainly (you guessed it) the cereal and breads category. Focus on food that is perishable; food that you have to worry that it might go bad. That means it’s full of nutrients and is meant to be consumed. Think of school lunches – that is the food pyramid at work. Disgusting!
10. Thinking that just because you’re skinny, that means you’re healthy.
Although most Americans are indeed overweight, don’t use the scale as the only measure of health. It is entirely possible to be slim AND diabetic, have heart disease or cancer. It is entirely possible to be slim and suffer a heart attack or cancer. Superficial image isn’t everything, it’s nothing. This is a major and often disastrous cultural illusion. Diet programs designed to help you lose weight are typically focused on “low calories” to the exclusion of quality health or nutrition. They typically supply their desperate victims with empty processed foods and coddle them with empty “low-cal” and “low fat” carbohydrates and sugary treats to seduce them into their programs (“look—I can EVEN eat chocolate cake and STILL lose weight!”).
Sources:
Primal Body, Primal Mind, by Nora Gedgaudas
The Perfect 10 Diet, by Dr. Michael Aziz
Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon
