When I was in my 20's, I was relatively "hard core" about lifting weights and training. I weighed every meal, brought my own meals to cookouts, estimated macros as best I could. I was pretty obsessed with it all. As a result, I tried every diet out there, multiple times.
What I keep coming back to is low carb. By that I mean: Tons of broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower, zucchini, nuts (almonds and pecans primarily), fish, and beef. Plus, hard cheeses like Parmesan and Romano.
It's not hard to make these meals delicous. And, interestingly enough, I get "run down and depressed" when I don't eat this way. It's weird to admit that I crave vegetables like I would a piece of pizza. But, if we go out of town for a few days, and eat out a lot, I completely do.
I'll usually indulge in a carb/sugar binge once a week. Any more than that, I feel rubbish physically - bloated, sluggish, hungry, irritable.
Soda specifically is going to give you a nice big dose of sugars which your brain is just going to love. But what you’re also doing is kinda training your brain — well when I had that massive pure sugar dose I felt great, now I’m eating chicken and veggies, and wtf where’s the feel-good rush?
There’s nothing really wrong with that either if you’re at peace and doing as you’re doing, eating a holistically healthy diet. But I do wonder in audience with clinical depression — if those people might be gravitating towards foods that offer quick pick-me-ups that make them feel like themselves finally, but overall make their depression worse especially when the effect is quickly wears off
Study your own family and friends, and you will find a dozen different mechanisms people use.
The key is to be aware that there are multiple paths.
And one of the dirty tricks our brains play on us is, a quick but short-lived mood bump is more salient than a constant improvement.
FWIW, for my purposes, "sugar" maybe has more to do with the blood sugar spike than chemistry. Mashed potatoes would count, insofar as, at least according to the tables I've seen, mashed potatoes have just about the highest glycemic index money can buy.
https://health.usnews.com/wellness/food/articles/2018-11-16/...
Second, there seems to be more subtlety to it than could ever be resolved by arguing semantics over vernacular terminology. For example, consider this angle: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/14/910
A news article in "US News" that cites three people isn't a "scientific consensus." In fact the article itself reference enough contradictory research to show that it couldn't be a consensus (the only "consensus" right now is that there is no consensus and it depends which measure you use to define it).
Plus their entire position boils down to this:
> The research shows, among other key differences, that while similar neuropathways are involved in both drug and sugar consumption, the brain changes that lead to needing more and more cocaine to get the same high aren't seen with sugar.
They're conflating addiction (i.e. habit forming behaviour) with something completely unrelated (biological diminishing returns for addictive substances). According to that definition very few things are actually addictive (which is the crux of this article).
Both the DSM and ICD have a ton of stuff in them that wouldn't fit that tiny definition: Gambling addiction, food addiction, sexual addiction, video game addiction, etc. In fact the majority of the listed addictions aren't according to this article and these researchers.
Addiction is often defined [in scientific literature] as having two core elements: Reward and reinforcement (i.e. likelihood to seek repeated exposure).
Addiction in general is a sliding scale. With anything offering both reward and reinforcement being a potential candidate for addiction.
We need protein nutritionally but both the reward and reinforcement are lower than sugar. So if you wish to call protein addictive, you may be able to, but I'd still suggest it is further along the sliding scale towards the "less addictive" side.
Plus if we measure addiction purely by its negative impact on society, sugar addiction claims thousands of lives every year. I don't know how many (if any) lives are claimed by protein addiction.
It's really changed my perspective of sugar.
if I stick to meats and vegetables, mostly green kind, I don't have the munchies but I have to tend more to the "keto" side to keep it up. Meaning, no starches or sugars but lots of fats and green stuff; that was the key for me, lots of stuff that is green.
yeah there is science behind nearly every diet but the trick is finding out what works for your physically and mentally. Forget to accommodate the mental side and its easy to lapse
Around a few years ago I started noticing more and more reports on how excess dietary sugar is quite bad for you. So I took a good look at my diet and realized that not only was I eating crap but also over eating in general. I then made it a mission to cut out added sugar, excess carbs, and excess fats. No keto, no atkins, no gym membership, no gimmicks. Just thought to myself "if this was 100+ years ago, what would I be eating?" I limited myself to eating just the basics in smaller portions. I limited beer and red meat to occasion and eliminated sweets, sweet beverages, sweet and savory dishes, and cheese. After a year and a half of discipline I lost damn near 65 lbs. It wasn't easy but it worked. (ymmv, I think my metabolism is quite good and I just abused it)
Conclusion? I feel great. I feel lighter. I move better. Clothes fit better. And I sleep better. I feel confident. I'm now the skinny guy in the group. Family and friends are both envious and inspired to also lose weight. Those feeling alone are addictive so it helps me hold the course.
This doesn't sound right. No wonder you get fed up with such a diet and run back to junk, there is a mental/emotional factor to changing diet, as you describe.
I can't claim I know what would be perfect fit for you, but I can try: you describe tasty junkfood as the thing that makes you happy. Ever tried to properly spice up those healthy meals? I don't mean just chili, but dozens of herbs and spices available from all around the world.
Personal anecdote : When I went backpacking to India for few months, I practically stopped eating meat altogether - their chicken was full of bones, mutton was like a chewing gum, fish curries full of bones and god knows what sanitary conditions were (not) upheld. The thing is, I didn't miss meat at all, food was spiced so well and flavors were so rich that it took me quite some time after coming back to start eating meat (and I never really resumed pork and beef apart from few special occasions).
Also, don't know how active you are, but finding what makes you tick and enjoying the efforts will help greatly with move to healthier eating (it did for me). If you work out enough and often (this takes time to get to, but totally achievable for anybody), you don't have to watch portions and count calories anymore. The key is consistency.
The problem I have when people argue against "processed" foods is that most of thing things that people argue as "processing" is just normal cooking and preserving made to sound scary.
And the research is there that we absorb calories and nutrients differently depending on how and how much we cook things but that should be the discussion.
Steak has significantly more available nutrients and calories if you cook it well done. I don't want to live in a world where we define food only on that axis.
You're absolutely right that the actual nutritional content matters and there's a lot of low-nutrition food out there but the term processed just irks me because it doesn't at all capture what's actually wrong with certain types of food.
Processed food, as explained, would be the industrial processing of bleaching the flour etc.
Also the seed oils which are used is highly processed.
Yes you can make a non processed pizza. Use real ingredients.
Yes the term processed is irksome, so use real food. Real food is easy to identify. It's food we good eat and make easily before the industrial age.
What makes a real food if it's not defined by processing? Minimal ingredients list? Marshmallow is just sugar, water and gelatin. The only way you could then consider that "not real food" is by appealing to the processing of the sugar again.
I don’t recommend this diet to other people though because the first three weeks or so of this detoxing diet is really rough. It was like my body was fightly back, pissed off at me.
Then, when I came through the other side, my levels of inflammation were drastically reduced, I was sleeping great, and my mood and energy level were great! I felt twenty years younger.
However, the first three weeks or so of getting used to the diet were awful which is why I hesitate to recommend it to other people.
EDIT: by processed foods, I am referring to packaged foods, not how they are cooked.
The recent red meat study was a very rigorous one (as they knew people would try unpick it).
The older I get, the more I appreciate eating healthy. But every once in a while I'll order dominos and enjoy it without guilt.
Those are the circumstances under which I learned to cook: garlic, vinegar, searing heat, beans, and eggs can combine to make the chicken and vegetables unrecognizable. And still healthy.
This article has a good summary: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...
Excess heme iron on red meat is harder for the body to regulate absorptions and is linked to cancer.
In general, there are no nutrients in meat that don't exist in an equivalent or better form in plants, that's where they come from after all.
Including ALA, DHA (flax seeds for example), and many of the nutrients are made by the body itself. We are animals too, our body has all the same essential mechanisms to process plant foods as animals do.
Of course, we can't eat grass like a cow, but fruits, vegetables, root vegetables, nuts and seeds all that we can digest easily.
There are certain amino acids the body can't make itself, meat and fish contain those in high levels getting them from plants is of course possible but a pure plant only diet without dairy and fish you have to be careful that you are eating the right mix to get all the amino acids.
This is a common myth, plants contain all the essential amino acids. A cows gut does not magically create essential amino acids, it takes them from plants, and so can we.
There is no magical ingredient in animal products, they are completely optional for a healthy diet.
Meat and eggs are complete proteins in and of themselves, as a single source they are complete in all the essential amino acids, plants aren’t so you have to be more careful to get a decent mix.
I’ve no dog in this fight, I’m not a vegan or vegetarian but I also eat very little meat for medical reasons so I made sure I ate an increased range of plants to compensate.
One can live on pure animal product alone and not need any supplements, yet one can't do the reverse. If you eat only plant food you must consume supplements.
There are plenty of nutrients found in meat and not found in plants.
B12 is the big supplement not found in plant foods, and the supplement was invented in 60s. So no true vegans could exist until then. Vegetarians existed, but they ate some animal products.
Plants also have no Vitamin A, only carotenoids which is difficult for our bodies to convert to Vitamin A.
The vitamin D found in plants is inferior to the vitamin D in meat. Most of us don't get enough sun for adequate vitamin D.
Vitamin K2 is also severely lacking in plants.
Heme iron is also only found in animal products. You need heme iron. For most people iron overload is not a worry, you need some genetic disposition to absorb extra iron.
We can't eat grass like a cow, but we can eat that cow.
You've made some claims without an examples. Can you give me an example of nutrients that are found in plants and not in animals?
Also the definition of an "essential nutrient" is a nutrient that we can't synthesise ourselves in our bodies. So no we can't make any essential nutrient because that's the very definition of the phrase.
You don't have to eat the cow, but it would be a waste to give it to the dogs when it dies. And you would thrive more if you did eat it.
> You need heme iron.
If you live on only animal products you are likely to get diseases like scurvy, or like the Inuit have a rampant rate of atherosclerosis.
B12 is produced by bacteria in the dust, meat in modern factory farms only has it because it gets injected in the animals.
Living in nature drinking from spring water and not washing everything so throughly we would get all the B12 we need. Instead of injecting the supplement in the cow and eating it, just take it straight.
> There are plenty of nutrients found in meat and not found in plants
Literally all nutrients in meat come from plants, or can be made by our body based on plants, there are no magical nutrients in meat it's myth.
> They are also in a less bioavailable form,
Certain nutrients like iron are excessively concentrated in meat, and eating it every day 3 times a day is toxic, so having less of it per volume is a good thing not a bad thing.
All the vitamins that you need are available in plants, A, K2, you name it. There is no magical nutrient missing they all come from plants.
As you mentioned, your body also produces vitamin D, you can go outside which is healthy anyway and that's it. Your body produces Vitamin D just like the animals.
Our body can either consume directly or produce based on plants anything that it needs in sufficient amount.
There is nothing magical about meat, its completely optional for a healthy human diet in all stages of life - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864
B12 only comes with veggies if you don't clean them, i.e., if you risk food borne diseases. Otherwise you need supplements.
Meat is optional if you eat enough unwashed veggies. Veggies are optional if you eat enough meat. Societies have survived for centuries with both diets, but the thriving societies were all omnivorous.
I have always hated the taste of meat. My pet theory is that some bodies simply can't handle it.
Most Americans don't think they eat organs, but they are a big component of most processed meat foods, like sausages. But offal consumption is prevalent in the rest of the world. Even in the US, you can find offal in many Mexican restaurants.
https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20001025/too-much-i...
And comparing nutrients, animal products have far more, in better format, and more available then vegetables. For example liver is about 20 times more nutritious than fruit by weight.
Plants, have hundreds of active compounds in them that meat products do not. Those more bioavailable micronutrients from meat are linked to problems and cancers (heme iron) because our body can't regulate them as well as from plant sources.
Now I am not saying that liver is not packed with micronutrients, but I am just replying to a hilarious claims that plants are somehow drasticaly lacking in nutrients
Second, I would like to ban the phrase "eat healthy" from the popular consciousness. It's nonsense. You can't eat healthy. You can be healthy, and you can eat healthy foods. What are healthy foods? Foods that have calories and won't poison you. That's a big category.
When I think of "healthy" veggies and chicken, I think of a pot with raw veggies and chicken breast steamed until they're cooked, with a bit of salt and pepper. Incredibly unappetizing, very bland. I don't care how fat I am, I would never waste my time or money eating something like that. I'd rather eat a candy bar, which would be about the same calories.
Your weight is defined by the number of calories you consume and burn. If you eat 1200 calories of veggies and chicken, your weight goes up. If you eat 500 calories of olive oil, garlic, onions, tomatoes, basil, oregano, sweet potato, hot sauce, and lemon-garlic-yogurt marinated chicken in a toasted pita, your weight goes up less. The latter tastes a hell of a lot better than the former, and you didn't gain weight. But it has oil and yogurt and bread, so some people don't consider it "healthy".
It is definitely hard to begin eating smaller portions, but I guarantee that if you improve the flavor of your foods, choose a variety of recipes, and keep the overall calories down, you can eat delicious, satisfying meals and lose weight. I also highly recommend cold-brewed drinks over soda, which you can carbonate yourself. I make overnight cold brewed tea and coffee, veggie-flavored waters, and fresh juices.
This is orthogonal to the fact that sugar makes me sleepy overall.
He needs to learn to cook more things.
I can't eat an entire pizza in one sitting and a single big meal usually means I won't eat for the next 18 hours, so what I usually do is have small portions of fatty/caloric food. A single cheeseburger or pizza slice. Half a cookie. Ice cream, but the smallest serving. Those feel much better than a pound of chicken, and as an added bonus, I'm not feeling nauseous at the end of the meal.
but, in the long term, it's worth it to eat healthy.
> A pizza and a soda, or a huge steak and garlic mashed potatoes will lift my mood quickly.
When I eat processed/junk food, the temporary high is very soon replaced by feelings of low energy, moodiness, acid reflux, and general sluggishness.
When I eat a veggie-dominant meal (raw garlic-tahini sauce over roasted broccoli/kale with a side of buckwheat noodles and hemp seed, for example) I feel vibrant and happy and productive for hours.
Tip for OP: when eating veggie meals, make sure to add vegetable fats for more calories.