Don't Diet Eat Smart

Introduction

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.

François La Rochefoucauld

Nobody wakes up with an intention to become unhealthy. If at all we kick-start the day with the best intentions to eat healthy, exercise, lose weight, and gain more energy.

Unfortunately, however, juggling the responsibilities of work, life, and family leaves us with little sleep, no time, fatigue, and increased stress. Rushing for a breakfast meeting after missing the alarm, getting stuck in a traffic jam, dealing with unanswered calls, texts, and emails can ruin the best laid plans for setting our diet right. To say that we are a time starved society would be a gross understatement! Adding to this daily mayhem are today's fad diets, fitness trends, paradoxical nutrition advice, and the tempting abundance of convenience foods, making it hard to adopt a healthy dietary agenda and even tougher to stay on course. It is always easier to just wolf down whatever is most convenient. This is because a daily routine of frenzied activity weakens our ability to be mindful about our food choices. With so many things on our mind, our awareness diminishes and we end up ingesting wrong foods. We end up eating mindlessly. Over time, a pattern develops; wrong food choices transform into habits and we are trapped in a vicious food cycle.

As the vicious cycle begins to have a toll on our bodies, nutrition suffers and consequently so does our health. We try to break the cycle by following a diet plan, possibly one that is the latest fad. But does this help?

I define dieting here as the practice of eating and drinking in a restricted way to achieve a specific, short-term goal such as weight loss. While monitoring and reducing calorie intake is a big part of good health, weight lost, by itself, does not always equal health gained. Fad diets and irregular eating habits that quickly take inches off your waistline can be harmful in the long run, especially if they ignore health safety and lack nutritional value.

With our cultural traditions focused on feasting, it is no surprise that we overeat on a regular basis and are perpetually looking for ways to lose weight. Food is an obsession we all pay for. A love that enslaves us. However, life is too short to spend it struggling with food. I personally feel that adopting a rigid diet has a taxing effect on the body and mind. Counting calories, carbs, or fat grams not only is distracting and wearying but also adds more stress to an already-encumbered mind. Frequent adoption of varying dietary plans defeats the long-term resolve to get healthy and taxes short-term willpower. Proper digestion is stimulated by the sight, smell, and taste of food. When we do not enjoy our food or nourish our body with nutritious food, we inhibit good digestion. Without proper digestion, metabolism of nutrients is affected and our bodies do not receive the nourishment they need for stable health. Our bodies are therefore deprived of many essential nutrients, a condition that causes deficiency disorders.

Recurrent dieting can easily lead to nutrient deficiencies and may even encourage a significant rebound in weight once the individual resumes normal fare. Drawing on our willpower repeatedly to do tasks we do not enjoy leads to frustration and demotivation, and before we know it we fall into another vicious cycle, all the gains we achieved with the diet plan are lost, and we find ourselves in a worse state than when we started the diet plan. Thus, fad diets are not only unsafe but offer only a short-term solution.

To achieve optimal body composition and good health, we must let go of short-term solutions and instead begin to enjoy nutritious food in moderation. Therefore what is needed is a long-term mindful approach to healthy eating—what I call Smart Eating or Eating Mindfully. This is the practice of making intelligent choices about what and how much we eat, with the intention of improving or maintaining good health. It eliminates our unhealthy obsession with food and paves the way for a sustainable healthy lifestyle.

This book attempts to illustrate the value of changing our dietary approach from "restricted eating" (dieting) to "smart eating" (eating mindfully). In so doing we will transition from a vicious cycle to a virtuous cycle.

Health gained through steady, consistent effort and smart food choices is not only safe but helps sustain an ideal body weight, avert chronic diseases, and increase longevity. It eliminates the need for restricted diets, tedious fitness regimes, and strict nutrition philosophies of staying unrealistically thin or depriving ourselves of the foods we love. Being "healthy" should not be a goal but a way of life. A life of sustained wellbeing can be instilled by a regular practice of mindful eating.

From a Vicious cycle to a Virtuous one

Mindless Eating

Most of us eat for three reasons, to satiate our hunger, for energy and for pleasure. Gratification is a pleasurable experience and as humans, we want to repeat habits that give us pleasure. Our inherent tendency to seek pleasure constantly is triggered by several factors, but the most common one is emotion. Most people tend to overeat or seek comfort in food when they feel lonely, angry, stressed or extremely tired. Either of these emotions initiate mindless eating patterns and if prolonged develop into inappropriate eating habits. These harmful patterns get implanted in the mind and replace the food-hunger link with an undesirable food-emotion link. In such instances, the mind separates itself from the real needs of the body (hunger and energy) and only identifies food with comfort. In such situations, food provides relief from unfavorable emotions and eating mindlessly becomes a habit. Self regulatory mechanisms are impaired activating a loss of control. Eventually, this unfavorable reliance nudges people back into the dreadful vicious cycle. The food mood connection plays a role in this move towards a vicious cycle.

The Food-Mood Connection

The food mood connection is a basic ingredient for the vicious cycle.

Can our food choices directly affect our mind? Can what we choose to eat or drink encourage happiness, elevate sadness or encourage alertness? Although we do not have the whole story yet, current research provides some interesting clues. The science of the effect of food on our moods is based on the fact that certain food substances can bring about changes in our brain structure (at the chemical and physiological level), which can lead to altered behavior.

Typically, the food we eat undergoes a series of chemical reactions (metabolism) in the presence of other nutrients (vitamins and minerals) to generate energy. Often, this activity has a direct impact on the release of specific neurochemicals (neurotransmitters) that affect moods.

These chemicals (neurotransmitters) are involved in brain and nervous system functions. They relay signals between nerve cells that cause the heart to beat, lungs to breathe and the stomach to digest food. They can also affect sleep, mood, concentration and weight causing things to go out of balance. For example serotonin is the neurotransmitter responsible for our wellbeing. At optimal levels it keeps our moods stable by calming anxiety and relieving depression. Low level of serotonin causes a dip in moods and drives us to seek happiness by eating carbohydrates which in turn activate the release of serotonin. Another neurotransmitter that affects us deeply is dopamine which is responsible for feelings of pleasure. Foods such as chocolates trigger the release of dopamine which stimulates pleasure and thus get us addicted.

Listed below are some such neurochemicals and foods.

Optimal quality and quantity of the right food ensures sustained energy levels thereby inducing 'good moods'. Intake of non-nutritious foods leads to sub-optimal nutrient intake, which leads to low energy levels thereby inducing 'bad moods'. Certain foods have an intrinsic biochemical ability to create energy and improve moods while other foods such as junk foods deplete energy and cause fatigue and distress. Foods such as complex carbohydrates and proteins provide sustained energy and maintain the blood glucose balance keeping the moods stable throughout the day. On the other hand, popular junk food containing stimulants such as sugar, coffee, tea and alcohol elicit a stress response in the body. This stress (fight or flight) response releases chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol and encourages the release of glucose from various reserves in the body, providing short term energy and pleasure (excitement). Once the glucose is utilized, there is an energy crash resulting in fatigue, lethargy, poor concentration and apathy. At this point most people once again turn to sweet and sugary food, coffee, cigarettes or other exciting things to regain energy. Yet, this very tendency to seek a quick and easy way to deal with stress often entraps them in a more stress generating vicious cycle. This vicious cycle is associated with many health problems and a wide variety of illnesses.

The Vicious Food Cycle

Vicious cycle is an often-used term in economics. A vicious (or a virtuous) cycle reinforces itself through a feedback loop. These cycles, as in Newton's third law of motion, will continue in their momentum until an external factor intervenes and breaks the cycle.

Our relationship with food functions in a similar way. We do not always eat simply to satisfy hunger. More often than not, we turn to food for comfort, pleasure, stress relief, or as a reward. This kind of emotional eating is not a good approach to food and is usually accompanied by guilt. However, with time guilt wanes and the same emotions resurface leading to a cyclical pattern of emotional eating prompting health disorders and weight gain.

The stress cycle and the pleasure cycle are good examples of this.

The Stress Cycle: The stress cycle is characterized by the fight or flight response, which is designed to enhance our likelihood of survival against any threat. The biochemical pathways in your body undergo a drastic change every time you experience stress. The mind perceives a treat and signals the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline triggering the fight or flight response. Within seconds the muscles tighten the heart starts pounding, eyes dilate and stores of glucose are released into the blood. Insulin is produced by the pancreas to transport this glucose into the body cells for energy to deal with the stress at hand. Ina stress cycle, energy and nutrients held in reserve for the body's repair and maintenance are at that instant utilized to deal with the cause of stress. Prolonged stress therefore inevitably lowers nutrient reserves and damages body systems, especially digestion. It also targets the pituitary and adrenal glands and the pancreas and liver, causing hormonal imbalance, inflammation, disturbances in blood sugar levels, fat storage and weight gain. Over a period of time the coping mechanisms wear out, fatigue sets in and the body is unable to deal with additional stress.

Stress has many triggers, environmental, emotional, and dietary. We need to study the underlying causes of stress and understand the accompanying physiological responses before we can effectively remedy its symptoms. Most people compromise and treat these indicators without really attempting to understand the root causes. To regain energy and deal with stress, they turn to pleasure inducing foods, stimulants and exciting pastimes that in turn activate chronic stress.

Chronic stress in turn triggers a stress cycle, as a consequence of which energy level and concentration drop, irritability and temper escalate, and fatigue sets in, upsetting productivity and performance.

What happens next is inevitable: In an attempt to regain control, the person under stress consumes rousing foods, such as sugary, starchy refined foods or coffee, thereby reigniting the stress cycle. Coping with stress by consuming stimulating foods or activities leads to a further reinforcement of the vicious cycle.

The Pleasure Cycle: Studies indicate that we are inherently hardwired to enjoy pleasurable experiences. As a reaction to the stress, we tend to turn to the pleasurable experience of ingesting tasty junk foods. When we experience pleasure, a neurotransmitter called dopamine is released in our brain. Therefore, when we eat something delicious, for example ice cream or chocolate, dopamine is released and it has a forceful effect. It triggers a feel-good response in us and spurs us to seek more pleasure. Thus, through the cycle of pleasure reinforcement, we repeat those behavioral patterns that give us pleasure. This is the way we are instinctively programmed to cope with stress.

Ingestion of sweet treats or unhealthy comfort foods promptly induces the release of dopamine that traps us in the pleasure cycle. This is compounded by the fact that the higher the calories in the food, the more is the dopamine released; in this manner high-calorie foods thrust us ever further into the pleasure cycle. High-calorie foods also tend to be high in sugar or starch. Therefore they invariably trigger a glucose spike and in so doing activate the "stress cycle alongside the pleasure cycle". Together these two cycles propel the body into an unending "vicious cycle."

The Vicious Cycle: When either dopamine or any other neurochemical is out of balance in the body, metabolism and mood are affected, paving the way for unconscious behavior that instills wrong food choices, that trap us in the vicious cycle. Caught in this loop, a body that is over stimulated eventually underperforms. Metabolism slows down, organ functions are impaired, nutrients are depleted, hormonal imbalance sets in, and the natural acid-alkaline balance is lost, opening the gateway to disease.

As the vicious cycle begins to take a toll on our body, we are either forced, voluntarily or led by an ailment, to attempt breaking the cycle. When the move is voluntary, more often than not, we try to break the cycle by following a diet, possibly one that is the latest fad. Although dieting offers temporary change, it may result in long-term damage to the body when done intermittently without