Why Eating Clean Sucks

Why “Eating Clean” Sucks

by Terrence Thomas

 

Let’s discuss a mental construct that I believe is one of the major causes of yo-yo dieting. The idea that I’m talking is the “eating clean” and I believe has infected the entire health and fitness industry.  Here are three concepts about eating clean that explain how this mindset can sabotage your health, fitness, weight loss, and physique goals and what you can do to make sure you are not doing this to yourself.

 

1. Stop using the term “eating clean”.

The very idea that you are eating clean means that at some point you are not eating clean.  In other words you’re eating in a way that supports health and performance during a certain time and then the other times you are eating like crap. I don’t know about you but that sounds very much like an eating disorder. The mindset behind eating clean is that you are in some way depriving yourself. When the mind is in a dynamic of deprivation, it is relying on willpower to resist temptation. Eventually you will run out of willpower and the natural tendency is to either quit eating clean or go to the other extreme, which is to eat garbage or binge eat. Having “cheat” days are supposed to help deal with the deprivation aspect of “eating clean” but the mental dynamic of resisting or succumbing to temptation is still in play.

 

If you are constantly bouncing from eating “clean” to not eating clean you are on a yo-yo diet. On average, when you ask someone what eating clean means, they say eating in a way that helps them lose fat or get healthy. Why not eat like this all the time or at least consistent enough that when you do choose not to “eat clean” that it won’t totally derail your efforts.  Follow the 80/20 rule. In other words, if your are eating, living and managing yourself in a way that promotes health, fitness and vitality 80 percent of the time then when you should be able to tolerate the occasional culinary, or recreational vice without irreparable damage to your body.

 

2. Send the idea of Bulking up back to the 1970’s. If you want to gain quality muscle that lasts for a lifetime, eat quality whole food all the time. Eating garbage foods and supplements that only make you look swollen and puffy will give you the illusion that you are BIG.  If you want to have a real, bona fide brick shit house of a body, you must feed your body real whole food, train intelligently and consistently. Training intelligently means knowing when to crank it up and push it to the limit but also knowing when to back off.

 

3. Stop playing Tug Of War with our mind.

If you want achieve your health and fitness goals with zero resistance and a feeling of peace, stop creating extremes in behavior. Think lifestyle instead of dieting. Eat real food all the time and sprinkle in some treats instead of eating pathologically strict and then totally flying off the handle and single handedly keeping a local ice cream shop in business.

 

Disclaimer: With that said, I am fully aware of what it takes to achieve extreme levels of fitness, leanness and muscularity. For example if you are a physique competitor and are in pre contest training, you are asking the body to do something that by nature it does not want to do. This takes some specific training, diet, and supplementation strategies to achieve this and when done with a relative degree in intelligence can be done safely and at a high level. The key here is intelligence.  #BeBeautiful #BeStrong  #BeHealthy

Diet Tip Lesson #1: Blood Sugar Management

10 Rules Of Permanent Weight Loss

Over the last 20 years, I have had the pleasure of working with a wide variety of people with many of them wanting to lose weight.  With all of the weight loss clients that I have worked with, one or more of the 10 Rules for Permanent Weight Loss were implemented to achieve long lasting results. If you can implement just one of the 10 strategies that you will learn in this report, you will greatly improve your chances of maintaining a healthy and ideal body weight.

10. Establish your principles:
It is important to approach weight loss with the correct mindset. Your mindset will help create your personal principles for achieving your goals. Your principles create the standard that governs your actions.  It determines the line that you can approach but will not cross. It will be your law. You will not go to jail if you break your personal law but it may take you a bit longer to achieve your weight loss goals. This can be just as brutal as going to jail for some as self imprisonment is often times the most difficult to escape.
Principles create confidence and peace of mind. It keeps you centered in your own universe and protects you against outside influences that try to throw you off balance. Once this standard is set, maintain integrity by staying within your standard.
So how do you set your standard? It’s very simple. To create a personal standard, simply make an agreement with yourself and then honor it. For example: I will eat breakfast 5 of 7 days a week. Or I will only have alcohol on the weekends. I recommend that you start small. As you become good at keeping smaller agreements you can then start to increase your personal demands.  For example: I will stay within 5 to 7 pounds of my ideal body weight.
This skill of making and honoring agreements is simply exercising Integrity. This is a very powerful activity and I encourage you to use this exercise to help you lose weight but also in others areas of your life.
Here are some examples of principles that you can use:
i. I will lose weight one pound at a time. Small and consistent steps are the key to long term success.
ii. I will follow the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of my lifestyle and nutrition efforts will be directed towards my weight loss and the remaining twenty percent will not.
iii. I will approach my weight loss goals with a long term view. There will be ups and downs but as long as I stay on the path I will achieve my goal of PERMANENT WEIGHT LOSS.

9. Prioritize your effort:
Weight loss is very multi-dimensional as there are many reasons people gain weight. The chemical, physical, and mental aspects of weight loss must be considered.

Chemical: there many prescription medications that directly and indirectly cause weight gain i.e. birth control, anti depressants, anti-inflammatory drugs.  If you are currently on any medications, consult with your doctor about how they may affect your weight loss efforts.

Physical: you may not be getting enough exercise or may have a physical problem that prevents you from exercising effectively. If this is the case, I recommend that you schedule a corrective exercise consultation. The information that you’ll gain from this process will pay for itself now and in the future.
Mental: we all have a relationship with food. Our family, lifestyle and culture influence this relationship. Whatever relationship that you have with food as of now, make sure that it is in line with what you are trying to accomplish in terms of weight loss.  I am fully aware of the social pressures that are present today. The need to fit in is a powerful driving force behind our nutrition and lifestyle choices. However to accomplish your goal, you must maintain the integrity in your personal commitments (see rule #1).

Regardless of if the chemical, physical or mental aspects of your health, something has caused you not to be at your ideal weight. To achieve results the most important factors must be addresses first.  First things first! Determine which of the three facets of health and weight loss that you feel require the most attention and start there.

8. Strive for True vs. False Weight loss:
Focus on fat loss instead of weight loss. True weight loss is measured in terms of body composition. The exception is with people who are considered morbidly obese, which is being 100 pounds over what is considered ideal body weight for your height and frame. Those who are between 10 and 30 pounds heavy should focus on losing fat to achieve PERMANENT WEIGHT LOSS.
Have your body composition measured and re-checked every 6 to 8 weeks. This is to determine if you are keeping a favorable fat to muscle ratio. Your eyes will probably tell you even before the body fat caliper will. If you are losing weight and your body shape is changing you are more than likely losing body fat.  If you have lost a significant amount of weight i.e. 5 to 10% of your body weight and your shape has changed very little I would definitely look at your weight loss program a bit closer.

7. Create your Metabolism:
There are certain genetic factors that affect the way we process food. But there are many lifestyle factors that are within our control and they are;
1. Total Calorie intake
2. Meal Frequency
3. Macro-nutrient ratio i.e. Protein: Carbohydrate: Fat ratios.
4. Exercise

It is important to understand that all of the above factors are intimately connected to each other in regards to creating a healthy metabolism. We can control one or all of these variables to help create a metabolism that works for us instead of against us.
So what is the ideal metabolism? Is it being able to eat anything you want and not gain weight? Well not exactly. For weight loss and health purposes, an ideal metabolism is where we can effectively digest and utilize food without excessive conversion of calories to body fat. A healthy metabolism should also allow us to draw upon our body fat reserves when needed. The typical American diet has robbed us of the ability to use our own body fat for energy because of the excessive amounts of carbohydrates available to us. We are relying so heavily on sugar and other forms of sugar substitutes that our bodies see no need to use our own body fat for energy. It is this phenomenon called Syndrome X or Metabolic Syndrome that is causing a large number of health epidemics today, such as heart disease and Type II diabetes.
Food manufactures have spent billions of dollars to brainwash into believing their processed foods are healthy. As a result we as a society now have a misguided and unhealthy relationship with food. They have successfully made us believe that what’s in a box is good and what is not is bad. Just to give you a one cent tip worth a million dollars, avoid boxed foods as much as possible.

6. Metabolic Typing:
Metabolic Typing is one of the ways that Expert Fitness Solutions helps its clients. Dr. William Wolcott the author of the Metabolic Typing Diet said that One man’s fuel is another man’s poison. The science of nutrition is an ever-evolving topic and is still considered to be in its infancy in regards to its complete understanding. For this reason I will not promote any specific diet or nutritional strategy. We are all unique in the way we process and react to foods. The best way to achieve success with your eating plan is to become aware of how your body is reacting to the foods that you are eating. This will help you find your nutritional niche.

5. Food Allergies:
The subject of food allergies is a 10 tip report in itself. I know what you may be thinking, How can food allergies make you fat  Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this topic, allow me make a point of clarification. The type of allergic reaction that I am speaking of is not the deadly anaphylactic type but a reaction that basically makes the immune system work harder than it needs to. A better term for this is food intolerance. Due to the poor nutrition habits of many people today, food intolerances are very common and we are literally eating ourselves into allergies.
Here is one popular way that we acquire food intolerances. It involves alcohol consumption.  Alcohol is absorbed in the stomach and is also an irritant to the lining of the stomach. This causes the stomach to become inflamed and produce histamine (an immune triggered substance). We typically eat after we drink alcohol and here lies the problem. When you eat when your gut is inflamed your body starts to produce antibodies for the food that you are eating. The food that you eat will be recognized as a foreign substance so the body will make an antibody for the food that you eat after you drink alcohol.  Ok so you still may be asking how this causes weight gain. Here is how it works.
The gut irritation causes poor digestion. When this happens food gets trapped in your gut and causes further inflammation and irritation. So you are getting a double whammy. First is the gut inflammation and secondly you are not able to effectively eliminate what you are eating. If you don’t think that this is major problem, consider that antacid tables and laxatives are one of the highest selling over the counter medications today. In a nutshell, indigestion causes excessive water retention, constipation, and overall toxicity.  When there are excessive toxins in the bloodstream, the body will accumulate body fat to protect the internal organs from being poisoned. These are not signs and symptoms that are conducive for weight loss. Just know that if your liver is too busy fighting off extra toxins, it will be very hard to perform other jobs like make the proper hormones for weight loss.
4. Proper Hydration:
The human body is about 70% water.  If we took all the water out of us we’d fit in a jar. Water has many direct and indirect roles in weight loss and here are just a few.

Digestion and Assimilation: For every gram of carbohydrate that we eat, 3 grams of water is needed to absorb it. Protein’s water requirement is very similar. If you are dehydrated, you will not be able to properly utilize your nutrients. Why is this important? See tip #5 on gut irritation and poor digestion.

Fluid Balance: When the body is in a state of dehydration, the brain releases a hormone called ADH a.k.a. (anti-diuretic hormone). This hormone prevents the body from getting rid of water thus causing WATER RETENTION. So the act of drinking water will help the body maintain a normal fluid balance.
Here are some guidelines to help you maintain proper hydration:
a. Drink ½ of your body weight in ounces of water.
b. Drink the highest quality water possible. The water should preferably be mineral water. Dr. Royal Lee, states that if the water we drink does not have a mineral content, our body will release or expend minerals to properly utilize the water. This intern will create mineral and electrolyte imbalances. Any mineral deficiencies will cause uncontrollable food cravings.
c. Avoid drinking water contained in the opaque (smokey) water jugs as they leak toxins into the water.
d. Drink a glass or 2 of water upon awakening in the morning and/or about 15 minutes before you eat. This helps with digestion.

3. Exercise: Form follows function.
There is a universal law that is represented by the acronym S.A.I.D., which stands for Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands. The body will respond precisely to the type and magnitude of demand placed upon it, therefore exercise can be view like a drug.  Not enough medicine produces no results. Too much creates unhealthy stress on the system. The wrong drug can kill you. With that said knowing the best type of exercise for your current needs is critical. As a general rule the focus needs to be on strength exercise to achieve long-term weight loss. Why? See rule #7.

2. Planned Layoffs:

Over training can be just as counterproductive as being sedentary given the right circumstances. Exercise is a form of stress on the body. Too much stress causes abnormal chemical responses in the body such as excessive cortisol in the blood. Cortisol is the body’s stress hormone and is produced by the adrenal glands. It is counterproductive to building muscle because it causes protein break down in the body. It can cause some other undesirable effects like sugar cravings and mood swings. This definitely will not help if you are trying to lose weight or improve your health. Some other signs of over training are:

• Soreness that lasts longer than five days.
• Inability to sleep soundly
• Fatigue during the day.
• Loss of appetite

With this in mind, it is important that you do not exercise excessively in order to substitute for poor nutrition. The reality is that a one hour exercise class will not undo the effects of the nutrition that is flowing through your bloodstream 24 hours a day.  If you are not eating properly exercising may be doing you more harm than good. This same rule applies to those who do not allow adequate rest between training sessions. The body does not progress during exercise. It is only when it is allowed to fully recover from an exercise session that the body will become stronger and fit. The bottom line is to stimulate not annihilate.

1. More Food in your Food. “Concentrated Nutrition for Appetite Control
Food quality is the single most important variable in achieving permanent weight loss. You are what you eat.  If you are going to make your body out of coffee, muffins and salads made of iceberg lettuce, your body will be in a constant state of hungry. There is a little mechanism in your brain that controls your appetite called the appestat. The purpose of the appestat is to determine if all of your nutritional requirements are being met. Unfortunately the prevalence of processed foods deprived of nutrition has sent most of our appetite systems  into complete chaos. This is why obesity has become an epidemic in America today. Ironically, those who suffer from obesity are probably the most under nourished.  This is because their appestat tells them to keep eating because the food in their diet lacks nutritional value.  Therefore too many calories are consumed in an effort to get the proper daily nutrients. The best way to control your appetite is to EAT ORGANIC WHOLE FOOD. Organic food has the highest concentration of nutrients per calorie.