Diets

Self care is a topic that’s come up often in massage school. We’re taught that we can’t take care of others without first taking care of ourselves, and a big component of that is proper nutrition. I was worried going in that there’d be a vegetarian bias, and I’m not sure where that came from, because actually, we’ve talked a lot about the importance of protein and healthy fat (although my idea of healthy fat differs from that of my teachers and textbooks).

But still, when one of my teachers announced that we’d have a guest lecture on nutrition from an acupuncturist, I was not looking forward to it. I resigned myself to sit through it and not argue – maybe it would be really helpful for my classmates even if it wasn’t for me. But a few minutes into her lecture, Amy the Acupuncturist started talking about insulin and I perked right up – this wouldn’t be so bad after all!

Amy described her view of nutrition as a combination of the principles of Western nutrition with Traditional Asian Medicine. I did not know this before, but diet is a big component of Traditional Asian Medicine. I’d add that her advice also followed the guidelines of intuitive eating, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Here’s a quick recap of what resonated most with me:

Eating Enough Protein
This was one of the first things Amy talked about, and the one that spoke most to my personal experience. It’s only in the past several months that I’ve been making a conscious effort to eat protein at every meal (usually meat or eggs), and I have so much more energy because of it. She was not dismissive of vegetarian diets at all (she used to be one herself) and mentioned three foods in particular she recommends to strict vegetarians: molasses, ground flax, black beans.

Kindling Foods and Briquette Foods
Kindling or briquette a way of thinking about the energy for our foods – our digestive systems are the fire, and what we eat is the fuel that keeps the fire going. Kindling foods burn quickly: things like sugar, fruit, white rice, crackers, scones, muffins, marshmallows. Briquette foods are the slow burners: protein (particularly animal protein), whole grains, nuts, beans. I would also add fats to that list.

Dampness
Just after I was diagnosed with Celiac and was still new to healthy eating, I became concerned with eating local seasonal foods – I have since given up on this because certain … okay, many, foods just don’t grow in Seattle in winter. During her lecture, Amy introduced the idea of dampness – we live in a damp climate, so eating foods (raw foods and dairy, in particular) that create dampness in the body can aggravate certain conditions. And many of the foods that alleviate dampness are the ones that actually grow here during the wintertime.

Elements of Intuitive Eating
By far my favorite part of the acupuncturist’s advice was the part that aligned with the principles of intuitive eating. She mentioned several of them:

• listening to our hunger cues
• listening to what our bodies crave
• setting our forks down in between bites to thoroughly chew our food
• eating in a good frame of mind – our emotions while we eat affect how we digest our food

Amy also has several educational handouts on her website, which she’s given me permission to pass on here. Feel free to click over (after you’ve read my post!) and check them out – I thought they were very interesting.

I’ve since been in contact with Amy about my desire and struggles to cut back on sugar, and hope to visit her after the new year. She briefly mentioned during her lecture that for sugar cravings, her recommendation is meditation.

And finally, just to clarify: after I finish school and begin practicing massage, I will not be talking with clients about nutrition – my following a special diet and writing a food blog does not qualify me in the least to make dietary recommendations. It is within my scope of practice to refer clients to other healthcare professionals (like an acupuncturist), but this lecture was really for my purposes, to develop good habits in taking care of myself.

I mentioned this in last week’s post on intuitive eating – in general, I don’t count calories, but it can be and was at one point for me a really helpful tool. I’ve used a number of different online resources to keep a food log, and every so often, still check in to see what my current diet looks like by the numbers.

These days when I track my food, I’m pretty unconcerned with my total calorie intake and expenditure, and very interested in the breakdown of different macro- and micro-nutrients, and on Monday, decided to take a look at what I was eating. I used a very popular tracking site which I thought I hadn’t ever used before – it turned out not to be the case, and I found one day’s food log from nearly 2 years ago from when I was following a vegan diet, and after comparing the two, I want to share a few thoughts.

You can click on the images to see a larger version.

As a vegan, I ate my “healthy whole grains” at every meal, got my 2-3 servings of fruit, ate as little fat as possible and kept my calories low. I don’t remember that particular day, but it looks like I started off with a monster bowl of oatmeal, then a tofu stir-fry, and a bowl of bean and kale soup for dinner, plus three desserts snacks.

In January of 2010, one of my goals was to eat a healthy (gluten-free) but plentiful diet. Basically, I wanted to eat a lot, never feel hungry, and lose about 5 pounds. I was eating a lot volumetrically, but trying to keep my calories low. This meant loading my tank with lots of fibrous foods, and more fiber = more bloating. Although I might eat a bit more calorically these days, in general, I feel a lot better. While the calorie count is higher, I’m getting more energy and less bloating.

Another interesting point to me is the appetite v. carbohydrate intake – it’s very much been my experience, outside of just these two days, that the more carbs I eat, the hungrier I am. For example, after Monday’s breakfast (hardboiled eggs, coconut milk kefir, coconut oil, and coffee with half-and-half … fat, fat, fat, and a little protein) I was only a little hungry by lunchtime, but about an hour after eating lunch with white rice, I was starving! If that same logic applies to the day of vegan eats, then no wonder I needed a snack after every single meal – I couldn’t stay satiated for more than a couple of hours eating that many grains.

I marked on the two food charts the totals of protein and sugars and want to point those out to you as well. Vegetarian proteins most definitely can provide all the necessary proteins, but it’s harder for our bodies to break down and use, and a portion of it ends up going to waste. On the day that I was following a vegan diet, I ate about half the amount of protein I ate on Monday, and when you consider there was a portion of that protein that my body couldn’t access and use … well, I’m glad that I’m at least eating enough now! As for the sugar, I’m going to take a wild guess that I was using the sugar highs from all the chocolate, fruit, and desserts I was eating to make up for the fact that I wasn’t eating enough protein.

And one final point – this particular tracking site has recommendations for calorie and macronutrient intakes according to your activity level and weight loss goals. It highlighted several of my numbers from Monday’s food log to point out that I was way exceeding the recommended intake for fat, sodium, and cholesterol. This is why I’m leery about using sites like these as a tool – they make me feel a little guilty for not following the recommended dietary advice, even when I know it’s not right for my body. I’m still interested in knowing how much I’m eating, but the best gauge for my diet is how my body feels.

I spent ten years, starting when I was 13, either on a diet or cheating on a diet. Mostly different permutations of low-fat, low-calorie diets, and none of them worked. The gluten-free diet is the only diet I’ve never cheated on (although I’ve accidentally eaten gluten on occasion.)

The reason is that when I started eating gluten-free (for the most part, I try not to call it the “gluten-free diet” because of my obsessive dieting history) I learned the difference between eating what makes me feel good and eating to lose weight. Not too long after that, I learned about this “diet” called intuitive eating.

GF Pizza from Garlic Jim's

Intuitive eating isn’t really a diet – the idea is that you eat whatever you want, in whatever quantity you want. You eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full, and completely ignore any dieting guidelines. This doesn’t mean you sit around and eat nothing but pizza and ice cream, but acknowledging that a slice or two of pizza and a little ice cream every now and again have their places in a healthy diet.

What was really helpful for me about intuitive eating is that it’s very adaptable. For the first time, I’ve learned to ignore all those diet rules that I memorized over the years and figure out what works for me and my body. Here’s some of what I learned:

Grains are not my friend. I’ve tried a bunch of different gluten-free grains, and the only one that really agrees with me is rice. Starchy vegetables (even white potatoes) make me feel great, but grains … not so much. I’ll make exceptions from time to time, but for the most part, I try not to eat them.

Ditto for fruit. I know my opinion deviates from the popular opinion when it comes to fruit, but for me, it’s not a great choice because it makes me really bloated and gassy. What I know is that it’s not the most plentiful source of antioxidants (veggies have more) or enzymes (which are actually proteins, so meat has more), and while the fructose in a piece of fruit may be a better choice than in a can of Mountain Dew, it is a sugar and makes me crave more sugar.

Fat makes me feel great. Yes, even saturated fat. And even animal fat. I wrote a whole post about fat last month, and I stand by it.

Counting calories makes me crazy. There was a time that counting calories was important for me – not because I was eating too much, but because I was eating too little! My appetite was uncontrollable and when I started paying attention to how many calories I was actually eating, it was very clear why – I was averaging only 200 calories per meal. That’s nowhere near enough for my body.

Keep fiddling. Like I said, I learned all of this through trial and error. I’m still fiddling to figure out what makes me feel best – which sources of protein, how much animal fat v. vegetable fat. Right now, I’m experimenting with fermented foods, which I’ll tell you more about in a separate post. But this, for me, is the most important aspect of intuitive eating. Our bodies are all different, so the diet that works for me isn’t going to be right for everyone, and any diet plan that thinks that one diet will work exactly the same for everyone is quite mistaken.