Click here to catch-up on part 1 and the first six stages of my diet journey.

 

7.  Travelling & gluten-free

When I went travelling in 2011 my paleo ideals began to fade.  Guess what?  In Latin Amercia, non-paleo foods like rice and beans are a staple and the people there do just fine.  For the most part, they don’t get hung up on body image and weight loss.  I tried to relax a little with my diet but felt bloated eating bread and drinking lots of beer.  For the second part of my trip I followed a gluten-free diet without being super-strict.  Happily, I still enjoyed trying all of the local foods.

When I returned home in 2012, binge eating was still an issue.  With the occasional exception I pretty much followed a gluten-free diet for another 12 – 18 months.  By this time, however, having freed myself from the paleo in-group bias, I was exposing myself to other ideas and beginning to question my beliefs.  I began eating much more fruit as well as introducing rice, oats and some dairy without problems.

 

8.  Moderation – the ‘eat everything kid’

In the last year, I’ve continued the process of becoming more flexible with my diet.  One day I ordered prawn tacos at a local café assuming they’d come in a corn taco shell.  When they arrived in a wheat wrap, I decided to eat them anyway.  I felt fine and gradually began introducing more gluten-containing foods.

It’s been a slow process, with the occasional binge along the way, but I’ve been getting over the faulty ideas I’ve had around food and what it means to be healthy.  I’m at the stage where I can – for the most part – pretty much eat everything again in moderation, without feeling bloated or compelled to binge.  Without feeling that the day is ruined.  It seems I’ve come full circle.

My diet is still based on a lot of the principles I’ve learned along the way – just without the dogma or emotional charge that we put on certain foods.  The vast majority of my diet comes from whole, satiating, nutrient dense foods and I prioritise protein.  At the moment, I find that tracking calories and macronutrients throughout the week helps me to eat an appropriate amount of food – something I found difficult after years of eating at irregular times, eating in the absence of hunger, and binge eating.  There are some foods I still don’t eat a lot of, either because I’m just not a huge fan of them, or I just don’t feel that great eating them.  But nothing is off-limits.  At weekends, I just try to eat sensibly and usually enjoy some dessert.

And you know what?  Life is better that way.  I’m leaner and happier and better able to enjoy social situations than I was when I followed a heavily restricted diet.  I don’t look like a fitness model.  And I do still overeat occasionally.  But I’m strong and healthy and able to enjoy my food and my life.  And dessert is pretty good!

 

The Lessons

1.  You’re not broken

The chances are, you’re not broken.  It’s unlikely that you’re a sugar addict.  It’s unlikely you’re intolerant to gluten.  It’s unlikely that you’re merely overweight because of your genes or your slow metabolism.  What’s more likely is that you’ve bought into some faulty ideas about food and health and you’re being too rigid or are just not eating the right amount of food and nutrients to support your goal or needs.

I’m not saying that health issues and food intolerances don’t exist.  Just that it’s more likely you’re not doing the fundamentals.  I don’t know if my gut and gluten issues were real or psychosomatic.  I did learn to pay attention to how food makes me feel and what food choices help me feel at my best.  It’s possible that by going gluten-free I gave my gut a chance to heal.  But it’s so easy to fall into the trap of ‘feeling’ negative symptoms just because you believe a certain food is problematic.  Curiously, my improvement also coincided with the time I began to question my beliefs and look at what the evidence says about gluten-sensitivity.

 

2.  Calories count

It took me a long time to accept this.  Yes, food quality is very important.  But calories do count.  Any diet that has you losing weight without counting calories does so by tricking you into eating fewer calories.

By the same token, when you try to do a ton of physical activity without eating sufficient calories, you should expect to experience some negative symptoms or health issues (refer again to point 1).

 

3.  Being health freak isn’t actually healthy

Being healthy is about coping well with the rigours of life.  If you have a long list of foods you cannot eat, you’re not healthy.  You’re fragile.  (The obvious exception being if you have a specific, diagnosed medical condition).  If you cannot hang out with friends or enjoy social events because you’re anxious and worried about breaking your diet, you’re not healthy.  Following a heavily restricted diet only to periodically lose control and furiously binge isn’t healthy.  If that’s you, I don’t need to tell you how bad it feels.

 

4  Everything works …until it doesn’t

New diets tend to make us feel better because they give us something our previous diet didn’t.  Eventually, the new restriction becomes unsustainable too.  A healthy diet is one that is sustainable and flexible enough to allow to you live and enjoy your life – without disordered behaviour.  When you restrict foods, you give them a certain power.  The scarcity principle makes them more valuable and increases the likelihood of you bingeing on those very foods.

 

5.  Question your guru

There are a lot of faulty ideas in the fitness and nutrition industry.  In hindsight, in the holistic health crowd, and the paleo community, I can see I was following the wrong people.  Question your guru.  Question your information.  It might sound logical but what evidence is there to support it?  Click here for more on who to listen to.

 

6.  Question your beliefs

Educate yourself about logical fallacies.  Then question your beliefs.  Is that diet really the answer?  Do you really just need to do it better?  Or could it be that there’s another approach?

The funny thing is, I was never overweight in the first place!  Sure I encountered some problems along the way but most of my problems were a result of my judgements.  Judgements of foods.  Judgements of my body and how I should look.  Judgements of what it takes to be healthy.  These were the real cause of my issues.

The hardest part of this is that when we believe something, it always seems genius at the time.  It’s hard to genuinely question our beliefs.  We’re biased.  And when we are introduced to information that contradicts our beliefs, we tend to dismiss it right away.  The idea that I could eat some less nutritious, processed foods in moderation and still be lean and healthy – and stop binging – was outrageous to me.  Sometimes you’ve got to reach a certain point before you’re ready and open to change.

 

I hope this helps.  I’d love to hear your comments below.  If you’d like to hear more from me, check out my book, Energy Is Everything: Mindset, Nutrition & Exercise for the best version of you.  It’s available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Always Keep Reaching!

Mike

References

Gaesser GA, Angadi SS.  Gluten-free diet: imprudent dietary advice for the general population?  J Acad Nutr Diet. 2012 Sep;112(9):1330-3

Witthöft M1, Rubin GJ.  Are media warnings about the adverse health effects of modern life self-fulfilling? An experimental study on idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (IEI-EMF).  J Psychosom Res. 2013 Mar;74(3):206-12. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2012.12.002. Epub 2012 Dec 23.

Ziauddeen H, Fletcher PC.  Is food addiction a valid and useful concept?  Obes Rev. 2013 Jan;14(1):19-28. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-789X.2012.01046.x. Epub 2012 Oct 12.