Embrace Your Inner Food Monster To Be Better At Balancing Your Health
At 40+, a flexible approach to the old nutrition rules could be the vice that sees you finally hitting all of your health goals.
Keep your virtues and vices in balance after 40.
THE BRIEF
Time to read: 3 minutes
Time to action: 5 minutes
Mantra: What if your best body is more about embracing vices than virtues?
Main message: B-A-L-A-N-C-E. Balance! Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez, Highlander, 1986
Stat: Just 21% of people who stick to a strict diet, say it made them feel happier (dsjresearch.co.uk)
Rules. Where your health is concerned most of them are written, endorsed and accredited. To be fair most of them are right, they will deliver for you. There is an unwritten rule though, that we’d love to break. It’s the secret code that we all work to - the balance - the debit/credit, vice/virtue ideal that allows a little bit of what you do in trade for a lot of what you don’t. The real win (the rule to live by) has to be finding health in what you do, not what you don’t. So we looked at three of the major areas where we get it wrong and found a way to make it so wrong it’s right. Vice+Vice=Virtue is a new health formula we would love to live by.
“The real win (the rule to live by) has to be finding health in what you do, not what you don’t.”
THE VICE: Poorly Timed Meals
EMBRACE IT: Midnight Munchies
If you crave carbs after work to give you that extra energy kick, let go of the notion they shouldn’t be consumed at specific times and go for it. Carbs at dinnertime can actually increase satiety and reduce your risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to research in the journal Obesity as you emit more hunger-suppressing hormones. Go on, get stuck in to your cravings.
THE VICE: Underestimated calories in, overestimating calories burnt
EMBRACE IT: Go even more yo-yo
The practice of yo-yo calories has been pegged as unsafe, but if you trace our eating ancestry, we would eat whatever we could as soon as we could, to stave off the hunger for when we couldn’t. This is still true today - research in the journal Metabolism found that as many as 40 percent of us yo-yo diet, and it harms weight loss or metabolism in the long term. It might be a good time to stop weighing yourself every time you feel bad, or simply weighing yourself all together How you feel is often the biggest indicator of positive body balance, and infinitely better for self-esteem.
Find a monstrous balance between good and bad foods.
THE VICE: Listening to experts, not your body or infrastructure
EMBRACE IT: More expertise: from training buddies & body chemistry
Advice from friends is regularly just as effective an aid in weight loss as they’re practising as well as preaching on the health value of food, according to research in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association. By all means, listen to experts, use apps, and consult labels, but also remember your body chemistry is unique, so until 8 billion apps are tailored to us all as individuals, beware of ‘death by data’. Feel free to use the Bruce Lee method of consumption. ‘Don’t think, Feel’. it might tell you it's good for you, but do you feel bloated? It might say it’s bad for you but does it keep you feeling fuller for longer? Talking to the people who ‘do’ is valid. Practice makes as close to perfect as we suggest you aim for. Where vices are concerned, if they can become your new virtues - how far off can your fitness goals really be?
In addition to its role as a prebiotic, resistant starch found in reheated or leftover food can play a crucial role in fostering a healthier digestive system. As a type of dietary fibre that resists digestion in the small intestine, resistant starch reaches the colon intact, it becomes a substrate for the growth and activity of beneficial bacteria, commonly referred to as probiotics. These probiotics thrive on the fermentation of resistant starch that a leftover meal is often rich in. A diverse and balanced gut microbiota has been linked to improved digestive health, enhanced nutrient absorption, and a reduced risk of various gastrointestinal issues. Incorporating foods rich in resistant starch through reheated or leftover meals can be a practical and palatable way to support a thriving gut ecosystem and contribute to digestive wellbeing.
“Vice+Vice=Virtue is a new health formula we would love to live by.”
The temperatures at which you cook your food have a huge impact on its flavour nutritional value, and its safety. The extreme heat that stir-fries are cooked at for example not only enhances their taste but their goodness, because research at the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at Zhejiang University found that this cooking method increases food’s antioxidant and vitamin C levels. What does this mean for the temperature you should set your leftovers to warm to? An exact figure has been placed on how hot you need to your leftovers to be. The Food Safety and Inspection Service states that they need to reach 74ºC, as measured by a food thermometer. For all foods, check on the re-heat before serving of course, but take as much joy in knowing that the simplicity and cost-efficiency of meal number two is actually surpassed by the hidden health benefits you’re about to enjoy.
PT WOLF
Wolf is a personal trainer who tries and tests every programme we put together. A celebrity trainer, Wolf has been a fitness journalist, practising what he preaches for over 20 years. Now in his 40s, Wolf has added muscle to his frame in every decade of his life and has an annoyingly healthy body fat percentage. He tries it before he says it, but even more importantly, he lives it every day.
ENERGY RABBIT
Not simply a life coach, but an award-winner in the wellness sector with over a decade of experience. Rabbit specialises in the accessibility of information. If there is a theory worth exploring, Rabbit will work out how easily it can be integrated into your everyday life.
DR DRAGON
A GP for an eclectic community, Dragon is a prolific author in the world of health. Award-winning for his content creation and ability to answer the ‘actual’ questions asked of him, his theories are always worth listening to in looking for those little things that can make a real difference in our lives.
Would you like to know more?
Studies:
People who fail on dietshttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130103192352.htmCarbs at nightSigal Sofer, Abraham Eliraz, Sara Kaplan, Hillary Voet, Gershon Fink, Tzadok Kima, Zecharia Madar. Greater Weight Loss and Hormonal Changes After 6 Months of Diet With Carbohydrates Eaten Mostly at Dinner. Obesity, 2011; 19 (10): 2006 DOI: 10.1038/oby.2011.48Meal frequencyhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9155494YO-YO DIETINGCaitlin Mason, Karen E. Foster-Schubert, Ikuyo Imayama, Liren Xiao, Angela Kong, Kristin L. Campbell, Catherine R. Duggan, Ching-Yun Wang, Catherine M. Alfano, Cornelia M. Ulrich, George L. Blackburn, Anne McTiernan. History of weight cycling does not impede future weight loss or metabolic improvements in postmenopausal women. Metabolism, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.metabol.2012.06.012MAGNESIUM AND WEIGHT LOSSRodríguez-Morán M, Guerrero-Romero F. Oral magnesium supplementation improves insulin sensitivity and metabolic control in type 2 diabetic subjects: a randomized double-blind controlled trial. Diabetes Care. 2003 Apr;26(4):1147-52Mooren FC, et al. Oral magnesium supplementation reduces insulin resistance in non-diabetic subjects - a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial. Diabetes Obes Metab. 2011 Mar;13(3):281-4.