My New Take on Health in 2021 (Just Eat Already!)

When I was a teen, I had this fantasy about eating breakfast on a porch.   I couldn't tell you why I wanted to eat breakfast on a porch so badly.  It was simply something I felt I wanted to do.  I was convinced a porch was the perfect place to eat breakfast. 

Looking back now I understand the appeal.  Many people enjoy dining al fresco.  A porch provides the opportunity to dine outside, and still be sheltered from some of the elements.  Eating on the porch provides the sensory experience of dining in the open air, but also provides the comfort and protection of home. We greet the day from an open, but somewhat secure, environment.  Breakfast on the porch also suggests a sense of calmness and leisure.  You have to take the time to carry your breakfast outside.  If you are sitting outdoors, you don't want to be rushed.  Eating on the porch isn't the same as wolfing down your breakfast before rushing out the door, or eating at your desk at work.

I am a member of one of humanity's most hated tribes.  I am a morning person.  I wake up early naturally and I enjoy the early hours.  I am not one of those people who loves breakfast foods.  I don't have a particular passion for pancakes and I don't think it's a treat to eat breakfast for dinner.  Regardless of the food, I do love the act of eating breakfast.  I like to sit down and eat with a book or a tablet and simply enjoy the leisurely early morning moments.   Breakfast is particularly satisfying after I completed a workout and a shower.  It doesn't have to be solitary either.  I also enjoy breakfast with company.  In fact I like breakfast with good conversation even more.  Breakfast on the porch is my idealized version of taking in the morning.

"What's your point, Rachel?" You say.  "You like to eat breakfast.  Why did you waste these minutes of my life talking about it?"  

The reason I spent two paragraphs rambling about my breakfast fantasies is because nine months ago I decided to stop eating breakfast.  In other words, I decided to attempt an Intermittent Fasting (IF) protocol.  

Doing Intermittent Fasting went against so many of my instincts.  I know there are many people who skip breakfast because they are not hungry in the morning, but I am not one of those people.  I am always hungry in the morning.  I don't like to go long periods of time without eating.  I eat an early dinner so I don’t have a full stomach when I inevitably fall asleep by 10PM.  That means an uncomfortable number of hours until my next meal.  What demon would ever possess me to try Intermittent Fasting?  

I spent most of 2020 at home.  I wasn't in the office or at the gym or in rehearsal.  I went for long periods of time not going to the barn or to dance class.  I was at home with a kitchen.  I filled those hours at home with baking for entertainment.  I cooked my own meals.  Food was always present  With all of this time spent at home, I needed a way to avoid too much weight gain.  One easy way to do this was designate a large chunk of the day to not eating.

I decided to experiment with tried a 16:8 IF protocol.  That meant I had to stop eating by 8PM every night and not eat again until noon the next day.  Some protocols allow up to 50 calories during a fasting window, so I measured a tiny amount of milk into my coffee (not enough to improve the taste).  According to IF proponents, all kinds of wonderful things would happen to my body.  My metabolism would improve.  I would lose weight.  I would sleep better.  They all promised I would stop feeling hungry once my body stopped expecting to eat at those times.

It was a risky proposition for me.  I knew it would take me a long time to get over being hungry if I went sixteen hours without eating.  I read about how most IF studies were done on men, and it was men who reaped the benefits.  Women who tried it often experienced horrible hormonal disruptions.  Some women say it became a type of eating disorder for them.  One of my favorite fitness experts, Krista Scott-Dixon wrote extensively about how not only did IF become an eating disorder for her, it put her into early menopause.  

So why did I do it?  I felt like I needed some kind of structure to my eating.  I have tried a few different eating protocols in the past.  I tried several Whole Life Challenges.  I even tried the Whole30 (which ended up being the Whole25 because I had too many family functions where I wanted to eat like a normal person five days before the experiment was supposed to end).  I read the words of Loren Cordain, Robb Wolf, and Mark Sisson (even though another favorite fitness guru of mine, health and fitness writer James Fell, called The Paleo Diet "The Scientology of Diets").  

As I said in a recent food blog post, there are many foods I love.  That makes it hard for me to cut anything out.  I also have to cook for a husband who never met a starch he didn't like.   I have no sensitivities to any foods.  The only foods I don't eat are ones I don't like.  Eating protocols that limit or cut food groups don't work well for me.  It seemed to me an eating protocol that didn't eliminate food groups, but merely told me when I should eat seemed like an easy solution to avoid quarantine weight gain.  Besides, it would help with hunger tolerance.  I could use a bit more practice at that.

The good news is I didn't gain weight during all those months at home. I was surprised at how I didn't find myself bingeing at lunch time.  I also didn't have any major hormonal disruptions.  On the other hand, there were no miraculous metabolic changes.  My bodyfat didn't change.  I was also hungry.  The hunger never went away.  I dealt with it, but I didn't enjoy dealing with it.  

I started reading a book recently called The F*ck It Diet.  It's an interesting read that explores many of the food issues we have and how obsessing over what we are eating only creates a sense of scarcity that ultimately works against us.  It discusses many of the psychological issues tied up with how and why we eat. While I find the self-help half of the book a decent read, I was more fascinated with the areas of the book that deal with our brains and how feelings of deprivation will always cause us to eat more.

One of my favorite examples in the book was about a study that had its subjects drink a milkshake.  Each subject drank the same milkshake, but half of the participants were told it was a highly-caloric extra rich milkshake and the other half were told it was a low-fat diet shake.  The group who drank the "diet" shake reported lower levels of satiety and, more shockingly, had elevated levels of ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") sooner It seems all we have to do is believe we are being deprived and it tricks our bodies into thinking we need more food.

The book attacks most diet plans because no dietician, no doctor, no health guru on this planet truly knows the best way for everyone to eat.  There are so many ways of eating that span the globe and the whole of humanity.  Not every diet will work for every human.  What makes me feel healthy and energetic might make another person feel tired and sick.  The one thing we do know is that when you tell a person, "Don't eat that.  It's bad for you.  It will make you fat," chances are good that person will want it more.  

I admit I don't know much about true intuitive eating (and I don't like how Intuitive Eating is a brand name like every other way of eating is these days) but I think it's time for me to trust myself a bit more about knowing what I can or can't eat.  When I was a picky kid, I can remember my sweet great aunt, "Tantie" telling me every time I didn't like a food, "You don't know what's good."  I do know what's good.  I know what's good to me.  (Tantie didn't eat chocolate.  As far as I'm concerned, she had no business telling me I didn't know what's good.)

I have better instincts for doing what feels right to be than  I give myself credit for.  If I eat a huge lunch, I see no reason to eat dinner if I'm not hungry.  After the holidays this year where I made large, heavy meals and plenty of desserts, and ate leftovers for days, I was craving a salad.  I have browsed through the bakery section of the food markets and given myself permission to buy myself a treat, only to realize I didn't have a strong craving for any of the offerings.  When I am in a restaurant and want to have an appetizer and a main course, I will order a lighter, vegetable-based appetizer or salad if I plan to have a rich, meat-heavy dish because I know I don't want to be weighed down by too much rich food.  I have pretty good instincts for knowing which foods will make me feel better or worse.  

On the other hand,  I go to parties I tend to forget my better instincts and gorge myself.   Still, it’s not a permanent state.  It's all part of life.

I don't want to judge what I eat anymore.  If I eat a sandwich for lunch and pasta for dinner, I don't want to worry about all that refined flour I ate (even whole wheat flour is a processed food after all).  I don't want to "budget" for my desserts.  I think if one takes a long view of my diet, it looks pretty nutritious.  I cook most of my meals from scratch.  I buy at least half of my groceries at the farm market (including meats, which cost a fortune).  I do my best to make sure every meal I eat contains a fruit or a vegetable.  I drink more water than anything else (although I admit my wine intake has increased since the pandemic started).   Maybe I don’t need to panic so much about how my diet is going to kill me.  

I was talking about The F*ck It Diet to a couple of friends last week.  I tried to explain to one of them how she needs to stop worrying so much about her love of potato chips.  I told her she needs to relax and stop telling herself she shouldn't have them.  I suggested she let herself eat as many as she wanted without shame and then see if they still held their allure when she had eaten her fill.  I said we need to eat what we think we want and get rid of the scarcity mentality.  Our other friend said, "When you say as much as you want, you mean as much healthy unprocessed food." I explained this was not part of the exercise.  We need to stop judging the food we eat.

"But if you eat as much sugar and white flour as you want, you will get addicted," she said.

That is the exact mentality I am trying to fight.  This is the point I was trying to make.  Do you really think if you let yourself eat what you want, then you won't be able to stop?  How well would we eat if we trusted ourselves to know when we have had enough?  

Could my diet be better?  I am sure it could.  I am both lucky and unlucky when it comes to genetics.  I don't know what my ideal diet is, but there are few foods on this planet I can't eat.  My genetics allow me to eat most foods without allergic reactions or digestive issues.  My ancestry is mainly from Italy, Ireland and Switzerland.  The latter two countries have traditional diets that are heavy in dairy, grains, and potatoes and don’t farm much produce.  Both countries have good land for grazing livestock, so I do well eating ruminant animals.  The mild climate of Italy means it has a more diverse agricultural ecosystem and I can eat many fruits and vegetables.  (I have no idea where my aversion to seafood comes from since Ireland is an island and Italy has extensive coastlines and both countries rely heavily on fish.  I guess landlocked Switzerland wins this game.)  My ability to easily digest and take energy from so many foods is lucky in terms of health, but it also means my diet is so diverse I can easily put on weight.

I'm tired of diet gurus trying to tell me the right way to eat.  Every eating protocol out there works for some people, but that doesn’t mean it applies to the entire population.

For example our society is convinced veganism the the optimal way to eat for everyone.  If veganism works for you, then go for it, but it’s not a panacea for the world’s health issues.  Entire books have been written by authors who ruined their health with veganism.  The internet is filled with even more stories.  The first true vegan I ever met, who had the most blameless diet I ever saw (not even sugar or alcohol) was not without health issues and was overweight (not the Skinny Bitch figure some women will try to pursue with a vegan diet).  That's not to say plenty of dieters do well with vegan diets and feel great.  

It's the same situation with the Paleo diet.  Mark Sisson and Robb Wolf are thriving, but not all of their followers thrive on it for the long term.  The internet is filled with testimonials from former die-hard Paleo eaters who did not thrive on the Paleo diet, or felt the restrictions were affecting their mental health. Not only do many active people find the carbohydrates from grains fuel athletic performance, but the science behind the Paleo diet is sketchy.  It's not confirmed pre-agricultural societies avoided grains.  Grains few in the wild and there is archaeological evidence showing cavemen found ways to grind them into flour. 

I believe anyone reading this probably knows someone who tried the Keto diet (or its predecessor The Atkins Diet) and failed to stay on it.  'Nuff said.

I believe there are good takeaways from most commercial diet plans.  I love the Paleo focus on eating fresh foods.  The Weight Watchers approach of controlling portion sizes is not without merit, although I differ with them on the way they standardize portions for all members.  Veganism is filled with vegetables and fruits, which is never wrong.  Intermittent Fasting seems to work well for men and people who aren't hungry in the morning like me. 

Human beings don't like to put their eating habits in a box.  I believe our species survived these millennia because we are willing and able to eat so many diverse foods.  If you don't have an allergy or an intolerance to a certain food, you should eat it.  If you don't like a food, you shouldn't eat it.

This is my eating resolution for 2021:

• I will honor my hunger whenever possible.  There will be times when I am hungry and I will not find anything I want to eat, so I won't eat until I do find something I want to eat.  Intermittent Fasting taught me how to tolerate hunger until I am ready to eat again.  If there are foods accessible to me that I want to eat when I am hungry, then I will eat them.
• I will plan my meals according to foods I enjoy rather than what I think I “should” be eating.  
• I will focus on making sure I have fruits and vegetables in my diet, but I am not going to obsess over size and number of servings.  
• If I want to eat something I will give myself permission to do so.  That doesn't mean I will impulsively stick crap down my gullet.  I will make rational decisions about what it is I really want.
• I may not make rational decisions all the time about stuffing crap down my gullet.  That's okay.  It happens.  
• If I have health issues, if I don't feel well, if I feel lethargic and run down for no reason, if I start having issues with my digestion, or notice drastic changes in my skin and hair, I will not hesitate to look for causes in my diet and see if adjusting it works.  
• I will continue to bake homemade desserts whenever I can, because Kevin loves my homemade desserts (I love them too).

The hardest part of all of this?  It will be accepting how my body looks no matter what.  I am never going to be lean and tight.  My muscles will never show much definition because there will always be a decent layer of bodyfat over them.  The way I looked in 2013 and 2014 isn't feasible anymore. I don't want to be monitoring my eating like that and I have too many injuries to work out that hard.  Some of the reasons I have injuries was because I worked out that hard.  Maybe this is an excuse to invest more in my wardrobe to buy the most flattering clothes possible and have them tailored to look as good as they can.

Like all resolutions I don't know if I will be successful at this.  I do know how much I am looking forward to sitting on my balcony (the apartment equivalent to a porch) on an early summer morning and enjoying the act of dipping a piece of well-buttered toast into a soft boiled egg yolk and washing it down with a cup of coffee that contains all the milk* I want.

*Milk means real, full-fat, dairy milk.  Black coffee is gross.  Low fat milks make coffee taste worse.  Plant-based "milk" has the unique ability to make coffee taste even more bitter and gross.  Give me full-fat dairy milk or give me some tea or hot chocolate.  (Yes, I can survive without caffeine.)