the non-fat foodie

I love Jamie Oliver both for his rustic and easy recipes and his efforts to get proper food into schools.  Unfortunately the poor guy came under fire recently for his weight, responding to an Australian journalists question on his weight with “I do my best. Working in the food business is quite hard when someone is constantly asking you to try things.”

The fact is that whilst Jamie produces some pretty wonderful healthy recipes he also has some real heart attack recipes out there such as his delicious refrigerator cake:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chocolate-recipes/chocolate-fridge-cake

The problem is that if you enjoy cooking it’s easy to over-indulge, tasting recipes as you go, eating the first cookie of the batch to check it came out ok, trying out new recipes.  However food and cooking is such a pleasure in life, so it’s such a shame to have to give up your love of cooking and delicious recipes in order to keep your figure.

So how can you be a slim foodie?

- One of the great things about being into cooking is cooking enjoyable food that you want to savour … food far removed from tasteless diet food.  This is something you should take advantage of … great tasting fresh food is more satisfying than processed bland food.

- look to cook with and eat the freshest ingredients, and always think of how you can up the flavour of your food … add fresh berries and chopped hazlenuts to your breakfast cereal or a spoonful of greek yoghurt to your muesli for a luxurious taste

- savour your delicious food … people tend to eat the least tasty food much quicker than the really tasty stuff … taste is only perceived in your mouth, so if it tastes good you’re going to chew it and savour the flavour

- your high foodie standards are a good thing … look for the freshest highest quality ingredients and buy organic where possible. Your kitchen creations will taste better as a result, and if something you cooked up doesn’t taste good discard it.

- when trying out recipes have people on hand to eat your output, partners and kids are good and forgiving food tasters. If no one is available to try out your food be ready to store it … you can freeze most cooked meals and a lot of desserts. If you make a full size cake you can freeze it in slices.  For other goodies like cakes and biscuits, if you can’t store them share them with your friends, colleagues or neighbours … you’ll make yourself popular with them and they won’t be around to tempt you to eat them.

- experiment with healthy taste enhancers .. I love Ndali vanilla essence to make lower-fat recipes taste creamy and cinnamon and ginger enhance sweetness and add depth to the taste of baked goods. Using molasses sugar, rather than refined sugar, adds a lovely treacally taste.

- get into garnishes, top your food with fresh herbs, they look good, add flavour and taste

- remember not to eat when you’re not hungry, either cook up for a meal time or save it for later

- when cooking you do sometimes have to taste foods as you go, but limit yourself to a teaspoon taste at each stage in the process and put the used bowls and spoons straight in the sink with some washing up liquid, to avoid the temptation to lick the spoon or bowl clean!

-   make sure all your cooking is based on healthy ingredients … always look for recipes that incorporate fruits or vegetables or wholegrains. If the recipe doesn’t call for veggies then make them up as a side dish and serve your main dish over them as a stack.

-   Use your cooking curiosity to find and develop the best healthy recipes you can, a lot of savoury meals can be cooked with less fat, most cakes can be made with wholegrain flour and most desserts taste better with some fresh fruit added.

- when you are cooking super rich indulgent food remember it’s much more calorie dense, so you shouldn’t eat a huge portion … serve yourself a starter size portion for your main and only cook one indulgent course, so if you have a steak and ale pie planned then go for a salad starter and light fruit dessert, or if you’re planning a triple chocolate pudding extravaganza then have a nice fish main.

Getting motivated

So what's the answer to the obesity vicious cycle?

Well what was unusual about last nights lecture is that the doctor presenting did not recommend exercise to his obese patients who had no desire to exercise!

What, no exercise? But surely that's the way to encourage weight loss.

His argument was that when someone is that leptin insensitive that they can't burn fats, then the only exercise they can do is fuelled by glucose stores in the muscles. After 15-20 minutes they will have used these up and find themselves exhausted and hungry.

Instead he recommended a dietary strategy to undo the insulin and leptin resistance and encourage the dopamine pathways, under the principal that once these were restored his patients would be naturally inclined to start exercising.

The diet has no refined carbohydrates or sugars and is generally low in all starchy carbs, instead focussing on 6 small, protein rich meals daily plus specific antioxidants and protein supplements that encourage dopamine production.

The absence of sugars and carbs massively reduces insulin production whilst the regular meals balance blood sugar. A high protein diet has also been shown to increase basal metabolic rate, so increase calories burnt at rest.

If you flip that diet on it's head then what this implies is that over time a diet high in sugar and white refined carbohydrates could actually reduce your natural inclination to exercise meaning you start to exhibit laziness and exercise avoidance.

So should we all be living on high-meat, low-carb diets?

This is an argument I myself struggle with - yes naturally we have evolved to live on a high meat diet supplemented with native fruits and vegetables, but at the same time our lives nowadays are so far removed from this that our dietary requirements can't be exactly the same as they were thousands of years ago. Also our food is so different - getting your hands on pesticide and antibiotic free and lean meat is actually pretty difficult.

In particular our fast paced lives put a constant stress on our adrenal glands which can impair their ability to burn fats for energy - by not consuming any carbs we could be putting them under more stress than they can cope with ultimately leading to fatigue, something I have definitely seen happen overtime in clients.

Whatever your diet ethos the fact is that refined sugars and refined carbohydrates are not good for us whatever our lifestyle and should be limited to occasional treats. So remember next time you eat a chocolate bar or slice of white bread it's going to make it you less inclined to go to the gym!
------------------

Understanding obesity

As a nutritional therapist I find that I often meet naturally thin people who are very unsympathetic to obese people and often can't understand why they don't just eat less food and go for a jog to lose weight!

I was at a seminar this evening on the obesity epidemic in the developed world which actually covered this topic extremely well so I thought I'd share the science and hopefully enlighten a few of you as to the plight of the overweight individual.

Very slim people, who can eat whatever they want without gaining weight, generally don't have proper nutrient absorption so this is not an optimal state. In the days of the cave man these people wouldn't have survived due to the shortage of available food.

We are infact designed to be very economical with our calories so with the current abundance of food it is very easy to over-eat, and therefore gain weight.

Secondly, a sedentary lifestyle is self-perpetuating on a motivational level which means if you are over-weight, and in particular have central obesity around your tummy, then you will have a larger appetite and a lower neurological impulse to exercise than a healthy person.

But surely exercising is just a case of will power?

Not so, the motivation to get up out of your chair and move around is a neurological pathway, you may be lying around on the sofa feeling apathetic, but once you get hungry this dopamine pathway will kick in and you will be motivated to get up and go to the fridge. However the more fat you have around the middle the less active this spontaneous exercise pathway is, so overweight people are naturally less motivated to exercise than slim people. Overtime these pathways can atrophy making it even harder to produce a motivational response to a physiological need.

The other problem is that the more sedentary you are the more insulin and leptin resistant you become, which means your ability to burn fat for energy becomes impaired. As a result you can be over-weight and sedentary but still have a huge appetite as your body can't access any of your fat stores for energy. A very determined overweight dieter can get themselves to a point where they are eating less than 1000 calories a day and yet still can't burn fat for energy (they will just feel extremely tired and not lose weight).

So what's the way out of this vicious cycle?

Well I think that's enough science talk for one blog ... So you'll have to wait til tomorrow for the answer!
------------------

The bloggers blogs

With everything going on in my life I don't get as much time to read as I wish I did, but I do follow a few blogs and newsletters that keep me up to date and give me health and recipe ideas, some of which make it into my own blogs. One such blog is the daily bites blog, which I started following recently as a source of healthy gluten and dairy free cooking inspiration. As well as posting some pretty ingenious recipes Hallie also posts on nutrition and healthy eating. Today's blog on managing hunger I thought was a particularly good one and worth reading in full: http://www.dailybitesblog.com/2012/04/24/real-life-hunger-games/

The final list

I feel like I'm playing that shopping memory game we used to play at kids parties, where you go round the group and have to remember the shopping list the person before you listed and add one item to the list yourself!

Still we're very almost there with my daily food checklist so I'm going to finish it off today with the last two items.

Remember this isn't a comprehensive list of everything you should eat - instead it's the minimum you should aim to have daily to get the nutrients you need - then you can add any other food you need or want on top.

The final two items on the list are protein and fats. The amino acids in protein are the building blocks for all proteins in the body, whilst fats are a key component in the cell wall of every cell, so both are essential for the body.

So how much do you need?
Well for protein you're looking to have a minimum of a portion of lean protein the size of a deck of cards with each main meal, but if you're working out a lot or trying to gain muscle mass you could have double, plus half to 1 deck of cards worth with 2 snacks.

This guide amount applies to all animal sources - skinless poultry, less than 5 percent fat beef mince, lean game meats, eggs (have only 1 yolk per portion) seafood and fish as well as tofu, seitan and tempeh. If you're having pulses as your protein source in a meal you need to double the volume and eat some wholegrains on the same day, which you should be doing anyway, to make a complete protein. You can also use a scoop of protein powder as a protein source in a meal or snack, which I do regularly, whey is a good source but if you're vegan or fully dairy intolerant (rather than just lactose intolerant) like myself
then use rice or pea or soya protein instead.

You can kill two birds with one stone by having oily fish as your source of protein three times a week for healthy fats. I generally only eat fish once a week, so take a fish oil supplement daily.

For a daily habit have 2 tablespoons of raw unsalted nuts or seeds, either on your breakfast cereal, mixed into a salad or as a snack. Ground flax seeds are also a great source, add to soups or smoothies or have 1 tbsp flax oil over a salad.

So here's the final list:
- 1.5litres water
- 5 portions of veggies and 2 fruit (1 red, 1 orange, 1 leafy green, 1 cruciferous and 1 of onion or garlic)
- a daily portion of pulses
- two portions of wholegrains
- 2 tbsps raw unsalted nuts/seeds
- three portions of healthy protein per day (including 3 portions of oily fish per week) or a good fish supplement daily
.. and a partridge in a pear tree (only joking)!
------------------

Grainy goodness

Something I've been waiting for for a long time has finally happened and I'm very excited about it ...

Waitrose now stocks gluten-free sandwiches!

I appreciate that to those of you who are wheat eaters this may not seem important, but I've been waiting 8 years to be able to buy a gluten free sandwich, so it's pretty exciting.

Not only is it convenient to be able to buy one, but it signifies that the number of gluten free individuals in the UK has reached the critical mass needed to accept gluten free as a normal eating habit ... The only frontier left for me is to be able to buy a gluten free pizza in a restaurant (waitrose already sell gluten free pizza bases so you can make your own).

Anyway back to my daily food checklist and talking of bread brings me onto wholegrains.

A wholegrain is one which hasn't been processed so the fibre/husk hasn't been removed. This is good news for your health not just due to fibre content but the fibrous parts of the husk contain the grain's B vitamins which are vital vitamins important for numerous functions. Two of which are energy production and coping with stress.

If you're under stress your body prioritizes the use of B vitamins in the stress response and so energy levels drop, which is why everyone feels tired after a stressful day and also why most city folk need more B vitamins in their diets.

So on top of 1.5litres water, 5 veggies, 2 fruit and a daily portion of pulses I'm adding two portions of wholegrains to my daily food checklist.

This is pretty easy to achieve:
Start your day with an oat based breakfast such as muesli or porridge made with whole oats (for gluten free porridge use brown rice or quinoa flakes and add extra rice bran).

If you're more of a toast person have wholegrain toast, preferably wheat free such as rye or spelt which is still wheat but lower gluten. If you're gluten free you want a bread with added rice bran or whole millet/buckwheat flakes. I like warburtons wholegrain rolls or dietary specials ciabatta rolls. Alternatively use these wholegrain breads to make a lunchtime sandwich.

For dinner brown rice should be top of the list and is good with a stirfry, casserole or fish dish otherwise have barley or quinoa, or if you're having soup have some german rye bread to dip into it ... simples!
------------------

Pulse power

A group I deliberately didn't include in my blog on veggies yesterday was pulses. If you believe the labels then one portion of pulses counts as one of your five a day, but I don't include them when I'm counting my fruit and veg.

This isn't because they're not worthy of being grouped with vegetables, but infact because they are so healthy they warrant their own category.

So on top of 1.5litres water, 5 veggies and 2 fruit, I'm adding in a daily portion of pulses.

Why? Pulses are a good source of the main vitamins and minerals associated with energy production and fat burning. On top of this they are a very very low GI carbohydrate giving a good sustaining source of energy. The reason they are low GI is due to both their high fibre and protein content. On top of this they contain phyto-oestrogens, which have protective effects against hormone cancers and balancing effects on hormones in general, and they can even lower LDL cholesterol. Pretty fab all round.

I find it easy to have a portion every day as I just add some to my lunchtime salad and vary them so they don't get boring - pinto beans, chickpeas, kidney beans and lentils are my favourites.

If you're really not keen try adding them to casseroles and chillies where you won't notice them and they'll boost the fibre content and reduce the amount of meat you eat, and most people enjoy hummous as a dip with some crudites or oat cakes.
------------------