From a Christmas Pudding to a Christmas Cracker - Weight Loss Motivation

CheerLouth wrote: »

Mindless eating in the evenings when the kids have gone to bed is my downfall - anyone any tips on how to avoid this?

If someone told me this 6 months ago I would have thought they were being insanely, annoyingly self-virtuous but here goes. I have found that the highs of physical activity can almost completely replace the need to snack at night. For years, especially since pregnancy, I found that time at night where you have no responsibilities and can just watch tv/read and snack on something delicious to be the most pleasurable, looked forward part of the day. Essential for my mental wellbeing even if crap for my physical. When I quit sugar last year I switched to healthy snacking like frozen blackcurrants (which are an amazing snack on a hot summer night - not so tempting toward Christmas;)) but I was essentially still in the same habit of my looked forward to me-time/down-time being completely sedentary while eating tasty treats. I lost all the weight I needed to lose but I knew that I essentially had the same bad habits. Realistically it would only be a matter of time before I fell back into wanting crap easy snacks and was in danger of just yo-yoing in weight.

Then by accident that changed. I found a physical activity I love and want to do nearly every day. I occasionally joke it's such good exercise it allows me to eat all the dessert I want but the thing is I don't really want. Obviously I still find tasty food pleasurable and I have a couple of really good quality bars of chocolate in my bedside drawer. But chilling and eating isn't my me-time/down-time any more. My brain is just so pleasantly high from the enjoyments and efforts of the physical activity that I don't have the same need/desire to relax that way any more. I sometimes choose to but it's an active choice and I'm usually as genuinely happy to have a peppermint tea/glass of water when watching something.

I honestly wouldn't worry about the naturally occurring sugar in whole fruit. How your body reacts to it isn't even remotely comparable to how it reacts to refined sugar. They aren't even a little bit the same and stressing about it is more likely to sabotage your efforts. It's normal to enjoy sweet food, the absolute healthiest food by a very wide margin in the whole world for humans is super sweet and full of sugars. It's breastmilk. We've evolved to enjoy sweet and all sugars aren't equal and shouldn't be considered as such. Studies have even shown that people on calorie controlled diets who additionally eat as much fruit as they want lose more weight than people on otherwise identical diets. Fruit is full of nutritionally solid vitamins, minerals, healthy carbohydrates and fibre. This is also true of dried whole fruits. Eat as much of it as you want and don't stress about it. The reality is that all the water and fibre is going to run it (and everything else you are eating) through you before it makes you fat.

Yes be careful of drinking more than a glass of juice or pre-packaged smoothies on occasion. But if you are eating whole fruit and making your own smoothies, honestly knock yourself out. I quit refined sugar last year but allowed myself to eat all the fruit I wanted whenever I wanted. If I hadn't allowed myself that, I'd probably have failed. But I ate all the fruit I wanted, felt better for it (almost certainly pooped better than ever) developed a much better relationship with my appetite and the weight fell off steadily without any other effort. I'm actually crazy healthy now and do what amounts to really full on work outs nearly every day meaning I need to make a conscious effort to eat something specific to help replace what I've lost and encourage muscle building (which a good fruit and nut-butter smoothie is perfect for). But I'd lost all the weight before that and that was in very large part down to eating all the fruit I wanted.

Jude13 wrote: »

Very true, I wouldnt worry about whole fruit, couple of pieces a day is okay for sugar content, once you're not trying low carb or keto. Smoothie or juice though, as the studies show, have no difference in absorption when compared to refined sugar. I am not sure what studies you are referring to however all the things I have read or been given of the years by nutritionists/docs say that sugar is sugar according to ones body.

‘'Calorie for calorie, fruit juice is worse for you than fizzy drinks'’ source, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/24/robert-lustig-sugar-poison

Is that the wrong link? That quote isn't in the article, there is literally no mention of fruit or juice other than high fructose corn syrup which is a processed sugar with nothing in common with the sugars found in whole fruit. Worrying about the sugar content in fruit is the very best way to sabotage most people's efforts. People don't just give up fruit, they think "feck it, if fruit is just as bad a Snickers I might as well have the Snickers. If orange juice is as bad as Coke, I might as well have the Coke."

This completely ignores the fact that orange juice is naturally high in vital nutrients, such as vitamin C and potassium, that it aids the absorption of iron, is high in anti-oxidants, reduces the acidity of urine and thus reduces instances of kidney stones and shows reductive effects in people with high HDL cholesterol. Just comparing sugar content with sugar content is so reductive it's worthless. Yes compare the sugar content of HFC to sugar, that makes sense as HFC is the removal of all the amazingly beneficial parts of fruit and leaving just the sugar. But you absolutely can not compare whole fruit or even fruit juice to processed sugar or processed fizzy drinks because it ignores all of the great, nutritional and health effects that the fruit and even juice has on your body.

The negative effects of eating lots and lots of fruit are minimal if they even exist outside of tooth acidity (which is easily counteracted). The health benefits are absolutely enormous, not least of which they satisfy the craving for sweet and make reducing or removing processed sugar consumption far easier for most people. Not to mention the massive benefit of eating all the fibre. Honestly, just eat fruit and don't feel bad about it. Eat as many portions as you want. Need a snack, grab an apple. Want something to graze on when watching tv at night, have a bowl of berries or pineapple pieces. You will avoid the feeling of denying yourself and make your new healthier lifestyle one that's pleasurable enough to feel genuinely happy about sticking to for life.

And that last part applies to exercise too. Don't get in the trap of committing to an exercise routine that feels like work. That is something you have to push yourself to do and feel like you will reward yourself for your efforts. Find something you love. That you rush out of bed to get on with or look forward to all day. As someone who was prone to a bit of yo-yoing in terms of weightloss and gain, I know that when weightloss feels like sacrifice you will almost certainly hit your target and then slide back into bad habits. And all signs indicate that is actually worse for you than staying over-weight. Whereas if you find a way to lose the weight without it feeling like a sacrifice, if life in fact feels more pleasurable than ever, then you are far, far more likely to embrace this new lifestyle forever.

Jude13 wrote: »

Apologies its in an article about the study on BBC here https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/should-i-still-drink-fruit-juice

I was just noting sugar is sugar to the body, nothing to do with vitamins, when I specifically referred to fruit juices. Here's the British Medical journal article about it https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5001

The trap is people thinking 'natural sugar' is treated differently.

That study is about type 2 diabetes and the conclusion is that the greater the consumption of whole fruit, the significantly less to minor amount less the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, depending on the fruit. It kind of just proves my point your body reacts completely and utterly differently to the sugar in whole fruit. Eat as much whole fruit as you want it's absolutely amazing for you, be careful with juice. The trap really and truly is avoiding fruit for no reason, it sets people up to fail and denies them a myriad of benefits.

But reality isn’t calorie for calorie. That isn’t how our bodies work. You can’t compare empty calories to calories that come with a myriad of health benefits. It’s reductive to the point of near redundancy. While someone at high risk of T2 diabetes should avoid juice someone at high risk of kidney stones, vitamin c deficiency or anaemia may well be recommended to incorporate orange juice into their diet.