Are You Trapped Behind These Bars?

Today I'm taking on a trend that I once enthusiastically took part in.  I used to have a book delivery job at my University, and on my delivery shifts I'd always take along an "energy bar."

Everyone is familiar with these things.  Back then pretty much the only choice was Powerbar, which came in Chocolate or Peanut Butter (both which shared the flavor profile of "nasty").  But I'd look on the back of the foil package and see I was getting 300% of my daily thiamin, 130% of my folic acid, and so on, and I'd feel pretty good about myself.  Plus, delivering all those heavy books with the school van was hard work, I needed the energy boost, right?

Well, 10 years later, and about 20 pounds lighter, I can see the folly of my youth.  The energy bar is just another misappropriated health product that was never intended for a mass market. 

Here's the history of two famous energy bar brands, the aforementioned PowerBar and its competitor Clif Bar, lifted from Wikipedia:

"Maxwell started the PowerBar company with his girlfriend, Jennifer Biddulph, a nutritionist who later became his wife. He came up with the idea of an energy bar after dropping out of a marathon at the 21-mile mark, at about the segment of the 26.2 mile event known among runners as "The Wall", where experts say the body ceases burning carbohydrates and begins burningmuscle tissue instead."

"While on a 175 mile bike ride founder and CEO Gary Erickson was eating energy bars and decided he could no longer take another bite due to the taste. He developed Clif Bar as an alternative to the many poor tasting energy bars on the market."

Did you notice something there?  The PowerBar guy was running marathons.  In fact he was on the Canadian Olympic Marathon team.  And the Clif Bar dude was on a 175 mile bike ride when his little lightbulb went off.  These guys were serious athletes performing near the extremes of human endurance.  And they invented super compressed calorie dense foods that were portable and packed a serious punch for systems depleted and starting to fail.

And yet today these products have proven so lucrative that they are being pitched as a healthy "pick you up" as you whiz through your busy day of dropping off the kids, going to meetings, cranking out that report, and hitting up yoga on the way home from work.  Clif Bar's female version, the ubiquitous Luna Bar, has little splash graphics on their homepage that change each time you go there.  Try for yourself! I've seen so far graphics of stylized women lying on the couch, grocery shopping, hula hooping, doing yoga in the park, and hanging out with friends.  I must have missed the Olympic marathoner and the 175 mile bike rider.

I don't care how mischievous your kids or or how hard your yoga session, you are not burning enough calories to warrant a 200-400 calorie midday "snack" to get you through to dinner.  The recipe for these bars hasn't changed much over the years.  A a blast of sugar followed by a bricks worth of carbs to get you over that 150 mile mark. Except now as they try to gain more market appeal with Chocolate Covered Raspberry Drizzle topping or what not there is even more saturated fats and processed junk going in than ever before.

The same thing happened with Gatorade and its ilk in the early 90s, a drink meant for athletes seriously pushing their bodies was moved over to a market or people who wanted to be like those athletes without all the hassle of actually exercising.  Now these energy drinks are consumed in vast quantities as a "healthy" alternative to sugary colas. (Guess what suckers, a bottle of Powerade has as many calories as a can of Coca Cola).   Hey, the number one tennis player in the world drinks it, why wouldn't it be appropriate for an active young guy like myself? Well, sorry dude, playing video games and surfing porn doesn't exactly warrant replenishing your electrolytes. 

The funny thing is, the designers of these products know very well that the vast majority of people have no need for this kind of supplement, but they won't be caught dead breathing a word about that.  So it's up to me.

If you are a regular person doing moderate and even strenuous exercise, you never need to eat an energy bar.  It will just add on excess calories, making the gains you made during your training a wash.  And if you are a desk worker or homemaker who eats these things as healthy snacks, you need to get off the crack.  The only way these could be worked into a diet is if you had one instead of a meal, and that would be a terrible trade off.  To give up the natural nutrition of fresh food for one of these sugary factory made carbo-bombs would be insane.  They look healthy and natural but you might as well be eating a candy bar.  In fact, why not a Snickers Marathon Bar!  I wish I was making this up.

Stick with your vegetables and fruit and don't let companies, however hippie and granola they present themselves to be, do the work of providing nutrition and energy for your body.  They don't really want you to be healthy and energized.  They just want your money.

Perform Your Own Gastric Bypass!

In the last few years, Gastric Bypass surgery has become all the rage.  Magazines love to put stars who have lost weight on their covers, and this applies even to those who arrived there via stomach surgery.  To see some stars who've undergone this operation check out this link.  The surgery is actually pretty simple.  The doctors open you up, snip your small intestine, and attach the intestine just BEFORE the tube that enters your main stomach organ.  The stomach is bypassed completely, and your new stomach is just the little pouch where food normally gathers just before entering the digestive tract.  This graphic illustrates it well.  That little empty tube on the bottom left?  Yeah, that's where your intestine USED to attach.  Cool/gross factor here.

The average person loses 100-150 pounds after gastric bypass.  This is not done through willpower or a special diet, it simply happens because, with a stomach the size of an egg, patients can't physically eat enough to keep putting on the pounds.

There is something to be learned here for the rest of us who are simply trying to maintain healthy weights:  

When your stomach is full, food loses its power over you.

We all know this process.  Go to an all you can eat Chinese buffet.  The first trip up, the food looks and smells so wonderful.  So you load up your plate and chow down.  The second trip up, the exact same food starts to look a bit heavy, a bit sickly under the lights. But you go for it anyway.  The third trip, what just 30 mins earlier looked delicious is starting to seem repulsive.  I've been to a few Thanksgivings where I've been so full that I literally couldn't look at food anymore.  Indeed, one of the universal signs of "I'm stuffed" is holding up the hand, closing the eyes, and looking away.  That's how gastric bypass patients feel after a small serving.  Cravings and willpower just aren't an issue anymore.

I got onto this line of thinking last week when I had a busy day where I didn't have a chance to eat lunch.  That afternoon I had to go to the department store.  In Japan the basements of department stores are where fine foods are sold and served.  So I was passing all these counters filled with pastries, cakes, delicately fried dishes, and glistening juicy morsels at every turn.  It was hard to ignore it all, and I soon broke down and bought my favorite sweet red bean pancake sandwich, Obanyaki.  Yum!  But a bunch of empty calories that won't make me any healthier.  It wasn't the particular quality of the food that tempted me, it was the state of my stomach as I passed the food.  A little lightbulb went off above my head.

1. Leverage the power of a full stomach.  If you physically fill up your stomach, even a chocolate swirl cheesecake with whipped cream and blueberries won't have the slightest pull over you.  You will be invincible.  The trick is, of course, to fill up your stomach with good stuff.  Fruit is your go to food here.  Eating a whole apple will add negligible calories to your diet, but will leave you feeling full for a few hours.  Also, as we've discussed at length, switching to a 6 small meals a day approach to eating will keep you topped up and craving free.  You can also use water or tea to fill out your stomach if there's nothing else available.

2. Shrink your stomach organ.  No surgeons required.  Just as we can stretch out our stomach organ if we consistently overeat, we can allow it to shrink back to a more natural size.  Most people eat far more than their caloric needs.  If you can just start to cut the amount of food you eat, the stomach will protest a bit (i.e, will tell you it's hungry), but will eventually become smaller in response.  Suddenly what a few weeks ago would have left you feeling unsatisfied now fills you up.  Portion control!

Why spend energy fighting cravings, when we can largely bypass them entirely just by thinking a bit ahead and always keeping our smaller sized stomachs full of good stuff?  Who's in?

PCP Cavities

I went to the dentist this week for a cleaning and to get my wisdom teeth checked up, and I found out that I had two cavities! TWO! I couldn't believe it. I haven't had very many cavities since I was a little kid, so I was surprised that two popped up after improving my diet so drastically.

My dentist asked me if I had been eating a lot of sticky foods or candy, but I have mostly given up sugar since last fall. She then asked if I had been snacking a lot. At first I was going to say no, just because I think of "snacking" as a negative thing... like stuffing your face with junky food all day long. But in reality, I do snack a lot. The PCP regimen has us eating small meals and snacks throughout the day. I asked her, even if it's healthy food, if snacking is bad for your teeth. The answer was Yes.

It turns out that eating many small meals throughout the day provides a lot of opportunities for food to get stuck in your teeth, for long periods, before we brush our teeth at night. And the longer the food sits between your teeth, the more likely you are to get cavities. YIKES! So I asked my dentist what the best solution was, and she said to drink water while you eat, and to brush your teeth some time in the middle of the day if possible. I guess I coulda anticipated that one, but it really makes sense. Too bad I had to figure that out after I already needed fillings.

Hope there won't be any next time... I hate novicane shots!

So drink that water all day long! It's good for you anyway.

Until next week!
Emiko

America

I'm planning on writing a three part blog piece on The United States on my personal blog Here Lies Patrick later this week, but I wanted to get my thoughts out there about the state of health and eating in my home country while it's still fresh in my mind.

I've seen a lot of people work their way through the PCP and have noticed that people based in America have a harder time than others shedding fat and getting over that last hump, the final body changes that make the difference between a "not bad!" physique and a "wow" physique.

I've thought about this for months, and wanted to use this trip to the States to confirm some of my theories. Here is what I've come up with.

1 . In the US, you are punished for small slip-ups.

Anyone working towards peak condition will be watching their diet closely. But we're all human, there will be times when you simply HAVE to have something sweet, or you're on a road trip and have to get a snack at a gas-station, or you go out to eat with friends. In Japan, for example, I love to have manju as a treat when I'm craving something sweet. Manju is a thinly breaded dumpling with sweet bean paste in the middle. They usually come individually wrapped so I'll have one or two and feel satisfied. Manju is nothing but sugar and flour and rice, and definitely not a good choice if you're trying to stick to a diet.

However, in the US, when someone slips-up and veers off-diet the choices are much more damaging. Because this country has perfected the art of squeezing the maximum amount of sugars and calories into a small amount of food, what seems like a small treat is actually adding 30% more fat to your diet that day. And the worst part is that because these treats are made up of artificial ingredients (HFCS and its ilk) your body doesn't recognize that it's been fed and tends to crave more. So, a Japan based PCPer will be able to get away with a few slip-ups without a problem, but US based PCPers will be punished for the smallest mistakes.

2. Cars and Distance

I was talking to my aunt about her troubles keeping weight off despite having an active life and good diet. I brought up the point that, like most Americans, she spends a lot of time driving around her sprawling town and between cities.

Driving is a tricky thing. Let's imagine that, as she did, you take a two hour drive to go see a family member in a "nearby" town. You get there, meet your nephew, have lunch, catch up on the latest, do some errands in town, and drive back home. You would say, "Whew, that was a pretty busy day," right?

However, from your body's perspective you sat completely still for 4-5 hours as you drove and ate lunch. Imagine sitting on your sofa for four hours in a single day. You'd feel like a lazy slob. And yet people do the equivalent in their cars week after week, year after year. The tough thing is that you feel tired, driving requires an enormous amount of mental exertion and unflagging attention, but physically, you've had zero exercise. This will really catch up to people.

3. The Nutrition Facts label has backfired

If you buy anything in North America you will be familiar with this chart.
It seems like a good idea, an easy way for consumers to get a rough idea of what percent of fat, carbs, and nutrients are in their food. However, people are misunderstanding the Nutrition Facts label in several serious ways.

a) Based on a 2000 calorie diet

2000 calories is actually quite a lot. It's an average based on an already overweight American population. It will apply to only the tallest of women. It's how much a muscular man of regular height would eat to maintain his weight. And yet people who are overweight and lacking muscle will think they've had a good day if they hit the 100% marks on the Nutrition Facts. This is sheer folly.

b) Serving Size

I've noticed that the serving size from which the percentages are derived are hardly ever what anyone eats. 1 tablespoon of salad dressing? When is the last time you put a tablespoon of salad dressing on a salad? The manufacturers are well aware of this, but they choose a serving size that keeps the percentages low so that at a quick glance it doesn't look so bad for you.

c) The Salt Percentage is whack

Often the salt content isn't even given a percentage, it will just say something like "Sodium, 150 mg", but when it is, still beware. The US RDA of salt is 2,400 mg. This is an insane number. The American Heart Association recommends 1000 mg a day. I think even that is too much. But here is the real insanity:

The average American consumes 3000-4000 mg of salt a day. Eating that much salt will give you the red, puffy look that almost all Americans have. It will wear down your heart and kill you before your time. It is the single most overeaten substance in the US diet.

So let's add this all up. I'm looking at a bag of Double Stuff Oreos, Cool Mint Creme © that my Grandfather had in his house. The Nutrition Facts says that these are 11% or my daily fat and 5% of my daily sodium. Doesn't sound too bad for a little treat right? But when I factor in that my daily calorie intake should actually be 1500 calories, my salt the 1000mg that the AHA recommends, and that I will actually have 4 cookies, not the serving size of two cookies, the picture looks different. My little indulgence will come out to around 30% of my daily fat, and a whopping 35% of my daily salt. And that's from FOUR OREO COOKIES. Is it any wonder that for every 4 Americans, 2 are overweight and 1 in 4 is obese?

I teach people healthy lifestyles for a living, and even I get tripped up in America. I've gained a good 2-3 pounds of fat in my two weeks here. What chance does a regular person dealing with a job and kids have? Things have to change.

These are just my first thoughts on this, I'll be sharing more later. My last word is that if you are in America and trying to be healthy, consider yourself behind enemy lines. You will have to work harder and have stronger willpower than anyone else. The whole culture is working against you. Good luck.

Am I Repeating Myself?

The diet has, once again, slipped for me this week. Not completely - my food measurements and schedule still resemble my diet plan - but I've had some bad moments. I am still feeling remnants of guilt because of the potato chips I ate earlier. I have always been an eat-my-stress-away type, so staying in line is especially difficult for me lately. Things have been stressful lately, with many long work days and other sources of mental stress. The majority of my work hours are spent out and about...away from home, and my kitchen. Like others have mentioned, preparing food is key to staying on diet when you don't have constant access to healthy food, and I just haven't lived up to that.

This is mostly due to my bad time management, but there is also a lot of mental what-have-you going on. Like Amy said in her last post, "my brain just really, really, really does not want to do this." Most of the time I get down on myself for eating junk, but some times I don't even care. That makes me question myself more. I even find myself feeling bad because I don't feel guilty. Shouldn't I feel awful for messing up? Is it this slight lack of guilt that allows me to continue deviating from the diet?

It's just one of those times that I have to put my head down, and push through without criticizing myself too much or giving myself so much room to make excuses. I will try to keep what Patrick wrote about in mind, and just do the best I can with each day.

That's what I have to work with for now. Until next time, good luck this week everyone!

Emiko

Constantly Conscious

What a week. Like Nate, I've had a rough week as well. I wrecked my motorcycle last week, but walked away with a bum knee due to road rash. This has set me back on the workouts, but my knee should be fine by the end of the week; thus I hope to fully resume the workouts then.

Unfortunately I've allowed myself to slip on the diets as well. It's amazing how the mind looks for any excuse it can to resort to its slothful state. I have to consciously and constantly remind myself to make better decisions. I was talking to a friend of mine who is being tutored by a wealthy individual in regards to saving money. He said that the primary concept it to be extremely tight with your money. It's a constant, conscious awareness and decision.

This relates to the PCP as last week I asked for advice on how to save money (much thanks to all of you for your advice and contributions, by the way). What I have noticed lately is how much more satisfying food is when you work for it -- when you take the time to prepare it and sit down to enjoy it. Fast food is convenient, but there's always something to regret about it whether it's due to cost or health.

My encouragement to you and myself is to take a moment this week to think about how you can be more conscious of something. Whether it's the food you eat, the way you spend your money, your posture, anything. The more aware of it you are, the more active you can be in pursuing change.

Take care, my friends.

"Eat well, feel well, roll eyes*

I've been toying with the idea of signing off all my blog posts, lectures, and books with the phrase "eat well, move well, be well." It's a pretty compact statement of my beliefs regarding the only way to feel healthy and get the most out of your short time on the earth. It's not about fad diets and gimmicky exercise equipment, it's simple stuff like eating a ton of vegetables and working within your body's natural parameters.

I've dropped the idea of having a signing off statement like "eat well, move well, be well" because it's super cheesy and reeks of fitness guru schlock. I want you people to know I am down here in the trenches with you, I don't know anything you don't know and if it seems like I do it's only because I've made more ignorant mistakes along the way.

I'm glad I decided to kill the line because last week I walked into a Starbucks and was confronted with this framed advertisement on the wall. Sorry about the low quality, it was taken with my camera phone.

As you can see, it's a poster sized piece that features the phrase "eat well/feel well." That's all well and good, but the foodstuffs that they have chosen to represent this feel-good lifestyle are, clockwise from the left, a foamy (perhaps whipped cream?) coffee drink, a cupcake, a piece of marble poundcake, a lettuce, cheese and tomato sandwich, and a blueberry muffin.

What a pitiful example of "eating well." The cupcake, poundcake, and muffin are all essentially the same meal, enriched flour with egg, milk, and sugar in varying amounts. There is nothing nourishing about them. The sandwich appears to be rye bread which would at least be a decent source of complex carbohydrate, but the lettuce and tomato bring basically zero to the nutritional table. That leaves us with the frothy drink and the cheese, both of which are the very non-essential dairy group of foods. (But dairy is one of the four food groups you say? Not in the other half of the world where people never touch the stuff and live long and healthy lives.)

It seems that where Starbucks and I differ is the shading of the word "well." Their "well" seems to be that of momentary gratification. As in "eat well for tomorrow we die." Accordingly, their "feel well" seems to refer to the pleasure derived from the experience.

My view of the word well is "skillfully." As in "Well played old chap." In my scheme eating a big piece of poundcake would certainly be enjoyable, but wouldn't qualify as "eating well."

We seem to have a similar disconnect in the modern world. We so often confuse what tastes good, fills us up, and turns on our seratonin pleasure centers as a generally positive culinary experience. In fact, beyond the momentary pleasure on the tongue, that kind of diet will do anything but make us feel well. It will make us fat, clog our blood pipes, and give us diseases.

What I try to tell myself and anyone who will listen is that we need to recalibrate our sense of taste and what is a "good meal." A bowl of vegetables, lightly seasoned, simply will not compete in the taste arena with a Starbuck's mocha.

The truth of the matter is that the healthiest foods and meals are light, subtle dishes that accentuate the flavor of nature. Yet we have come to expect that every meal should contain something that really knocks it out of the taste stadium. Salty, cheesy, sweet, creamy, rich, savory, these should all be viewed as treats, not mandatory parts of a meal.

This Starbucks ad is just another voice in a choir of media that is based on the idea that to really eat well and feel well you must be experiencing amazing drinks and meals at every opportunity. Break out of the matrix and see that this expectation is ruining not only our palates but our health.

Steam some vegetables, eat an apple, and see what eat well feel well really means. In my world I'd say "eat skillfully, live gracefully."