If you don’t love it…..

A week into reading and applying the principles in Intuitive Eating (Tribole & Resch). A great and frightening book. It turns our modern notions about “eating right” upside down. Its most basic premise is one of staggering proportions: The very act of wanting to lose weight by controlling food intake is what leads to weight gain. In order to lose weight you must first stop wanting to lose weight! The moment you restrict food intake, the body unleashes a host of biological and psychological mechanisms to make you eat more…and there’s nothing you can do about this because we are genetically programmed for it as a survival mechanism.

Even trying to shift your eating to “healthier” choices immediately triggers deprivation mechanisms that make you crave what you have eliminated! While restriction-based dieting works in the short term, it is simply not sustainable. Clearly this observation is fully supported by both myriad studies and popular folklore that have for all intents and purposes proven that dieting doesn’t work. Yet, we keep doing it, hope springing eternal that “this time it’ll be different”.

According to the authors (dietitian/nutritionists with many years of clinical experience), there is only one possible approach to achieving a sustainable healthy weight: Reconnecting with your body’s primal mechanisms of hunger and satiety and trusting your body to find its optimal weight. The leap of faith required to do this is enormous, especially for those of us who have been absorbed by North America’s orthorexia (obsession with right-eating) fueled by the food and diet industries and their desire to help us (read: themselves).

But this is no theoretical treatise. Tribole and Rechs provide detailed advice on how to do this. Their theories are strongly supported by the research evidence and their recommendations backed up by vast clinical experience. A must read book.

And I absolutely love their admonition: “If you don’t love it…don’t eat it. If you do love it…savor it”.

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DWI (Driving While Italian)

Hilarious, courtesy of Mr. Dario.

Whatever happenned to ice cream?

Look up any recipe for homemade ice cream and the ingredients are pretty simple: Milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, vanilla (or other flavor). But try to buy ice cream at the store and it’s generally a chemical soup that sounds like something emanating from a fuel refinery rather than a kitchen. Haagen Dazs is an exception, although other than Vanilla and plain Chocolate, even they use additives – albeit “natural” ones such as coconut oil, guar gum, xantan gum, etc. to simulate certain flavors and textures.

Commercial brands are a nightmare. Even the ones that try to tug at the “Real” heartstrings are full of all kinds of additives. Nestle’s Real Dairy brand for example, includes the following ingredients in its very basic Vanilla recipe:

FRESH CREAM, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SUGAR, EVAPORATED SKIM MILK, GLUCOSE, EGG YOLKS, CAROB BEAN GUM, GUAR GUM, NATURAL FLAVOUR, PURE GROUND VANILLA BEANS, COLOUR.

Whey protein concentrate? Yeah, I remember my grandmother saying to me: “Steve, please reach into the cupboard and hand me the whey protein concentrate”. And my grandmother always made sure to have lots of Carob Bean Gum and Guar Gum on hand…yummmm.

Chapman’s – a popular homegrown Canadian brand – lists the following on its basic Vanilla Ice Cream:

CREAM, MODIFIED MILK INGREDIENTS, SUGAR, GLUCOSE, MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, LOCUST BEAN GUM, CELLULOSE GUM, GUAR GUM, CARRAGEENAN, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOUR.

And ironically, moving to the “Premium” category, doesn’t actually get you less shit, it gets you more!

CREAM, MODIFIED MILK INGREDIENTS, GLUCOSE, SUGAR, FRENCH VANILLA FLAVOUR (GLUCOSE, GLUCOSE-FRUCTOSE, FROZEN EGG YOLKS, SUGAR, WATER, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOUR, COLOUR, POTASSIUM SORBATE), MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, LOCUST BEAN GUM, CELLULOSE GUM, GUAR GUM, CARRAGEENAN, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOUR.

In fairness, all other brands are as bad or worse. As I say, a chemical soup. What resemblance does any of this crap have to ice cream?

As tempting as it is to ask why, I won’t because the answer is pretty obvious: Profit. And frankly, I don’t mind….every company is entitled to put its “value proposition” out there and let the consumer decide. My bigger question is: Why don’t more brands make a pure, simple, homemade version and price it accordingly? Or is that answer also obvious? Consumers want volume and a low price…it’s the American (and Canadian) Way.

Run, don’t walk…..

When advice columnist Ann Landers wanted to stress that someone should immediately follow a particular dictum, she would use her trademark expression, Run, Don’t Walk….to the nearest psychiatrist, bookstore, travel agent, whatever.

I’ve been aware of Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch’s book, Intuitive Eating for some years now. There were quite a few reviews of the book and enough exposés of its principles that I never felt sufficiently compelled to actually buy a copy.  And perhaps because it was first written in 1995 (and later updated in 2003), I thought that much of its content had already been addressed by other authors, e.g. Will Clower (The French Don’t Diet Plan). Big Mistake.

Apple has been dragging its feet in allowing Canadians to download books off its iBook site. The result has been a move to downloading books for the iPad from Amazon’s Kindle Store. And, low and behold, one of the available books is Intuitive Eating. I downloaded it yesterday and have been absolutely fascinated by it. This is a terrific book, written by highly qualified and experienced clinicians who have been helping people regain their eating sanity for more than 20 years. Every page had me nodding in recognition of the truths therein.

A great book and terrific approach…..Run, don’t walk to your nearest bookstore or computer, and get this!

Great advice from Mireille Guiliano (French Women Don’t Get Fat)

Mireille Guiliano has some excellent advice on integrating exercise into your daily life. Although intended for women, there’s no reason to believe the same advice doesn’t apply to men. The short of it: Forget the gym and start moving around.

In 1975 I lost 50 pounds in 2.5 months while in Greece, never exercising a minute and eating anything I wanted. I wasn’t even aware I was losing weight and thought my clothing was stretching from over-laundering (stupid, huh?). The secret: I was alone with little money and walked 5-7 hours a day, camera in hand, seeing the sights. No taxis, no buses, just walking everywhere.

If it’s not in the Yellow Pages….

My wife isn’t amused. For the last 35 years, every time she’s asked me to do something “handy” around the house, I’ve given her my standard line: “If it’s not in the Yellow Pages, Dear, it can’t be done”. Sometimes I’ve gone on to elaborate that this position is driven not by my innate incompetence in matters manual (although it is), but rather from a profound respect for The Professional, who has the requisite training and “cycles of learning” to do the job better, faster, and safer than I ever could.

My words haven’t had much impact on her, other that to generate contempt, driven by my failure to fulfill the Handyman Archetype that seems to be genetically embedded in women’s brains.

But today, no less an archetypal authority than Mike Holmes has dared to come out and say it:

“Even though I talk about empowering you to take charge of your renovation, and as much as I think you need to be educated about every aspect of your home, I don’t believe you can do as good a job as a professional. When it comes to most home improvements, I don’t think you can do it yourself”.

Bravo Mike for having the courage to buck the massive expectations placed upon accountants, lawyers, doctors, psychologists, and company executives, to fulfill some misguided model of manliness.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/mikeholmes/simple/3272497/story.html#ixzz0udMNgAMa

Becoming a cat

A few days ago I wrote about the differences between how dogs and cats eat.

Dogs eat voraciously, as if there’s no tomorrow, stopping only when there’s no food left. It may well be that as pack animals, dogs long-ago learned that the dependence on someone else for your next meal was never a sure thing and that you might as well bulk-up when you could. Of course, it’s also this pack mentality that made it possible for dogs to want/need to belong to a group, and that when that group became Man, it led to the most amazing relationship in the annals of human/animal symbiosis. Many people don’t know for example, that the dog is the only species to ever voluntarily associate itself with Man, as opposed to being captured in the wild and domesticated (e.g. horses, cattle, cats, etc.). Nevertheless, this tendency to eat non-stop seems to be hard-wired into dogs, regardless of how readily and predictably food is available. Sounds like me!

Cats on the other had have a reputation for being “finicky”. Cats are among the very few species that have been known to actually starve themselves to death rather than eat something they don’t like. We may speculate that as “lonely hunters” cats developed a self-reliance or high internal Locus-of-Control (LOC) around their eating, i.e. a cat knows it will find food and that it’s largely in control of that process, so that it doesn’t need to stuff itself at any given meal. Wild speculation? Jumping to conclusions? Maybe.

What if Man is actually genetically hard-wired to eat like a dog? Very depressing thought for us fatties. On the other hand, there appear to be many humans, the majority perhaps, who eat like cats…..they eat when they’re hungry, and only what they like, stopping when they’re full. Oh to have that exquisite LOC!!!!

I’m inclined to believe that we’re not as “fixed” in our programming as cats and dogs, and that we can ultimately override even genetic tendencies through higher-cortex activity. Hey we do it all the time. We’ve learned to not kill each other except under the guise of war or self-defense.  We’ve learned to share and cooperate some of the time. So why not learn to eat like a cat?

I’ve come to a major conclusion in my 57 years of struggle with food and fitness: If you can’t bring the control internally, no amount of outside-influence (short of being thrown in a prison cell in Guatemala) will result in sustainable change. When we externalize LOC, the moment the intervention is gone, the problems return.

Smell power

A lady goes up to a rummy lying on a park bench. She looks disdainfully at him and in a superior tone of voice says: “Sir…you smell!”. The rummy slowly opens one eye and glances up at the lady. “No Ma’am”, he says, “You smell…..I stink”.

I’m sitting across from a spectacularly gorgeous woman. She’s exquisitely dressed. Her make-up is impeccable. We’re having a coffee as I’m interviewing her for a research project. But I’m having trouble concentrating on what she’s saying….not because of her beauty….but because of her smell. She’s wearing the most overpowering, sicketating, “old-lady” perfume I’ve ever smelled. I try shifting my head in various positions in order to avoid the downdrafts, but to no avail, the restaurant booth is very tight and I can’t escape. The interview is finally mercifully over, and I can barely remember what she said. The G-D smell lingers in my nostrils all day.

It seems that while most senses dull with age, the sense of smell becomes, if not more acute, certainly more selective. I’ve always liked after-shaves, but these days can barely bring myself to wear one. Except for the Booster line of highly watered-down shave splashes, I can’t tolerate any of my old standbys. I used to sneer at reports of growing hypersensitivity to perfumes and the banning of such in hospitals and public workplaces. Not any more. Not sure what’s going on…too much environmental toxic overload? Brain tumor? Whatever it is, I’ve got a closet-full of high-end after-shaves to give away.

Etienne Musslin update

After much rummaging on the net I found Etienne Musslin’s web site. I realized that I had already been there but had dismissed it as belonging to someone else because of its emphasis on restoring old Citroen automobiles. But I now realize that this young photographer is also a Citroen aficionado (the appeal escapes me…it must be a French thing :-)). If you look at the top of his web site you’ll find the “Galleries” tab. Scroll down to “Vietnam” and Burkina Faso” for some excellent images. Very talented. As Mr. Italo would say, “I hate this guy!”.

Etienne Musslin

I’m unable to find much on the net about this photographer; he doesn’t seem to have a web site and his works make only occasional appearances on other people’s sites. But from what I’ve seen he’s damned good! This one really spoke to me – discovered while I was researching vintage bikes for my previous post. Brilliant work in the “real photography” style that I like.