Food is up there with politics and religion in regards to dinner table discussions. We all have opinions and it can easily get heated for many reasons. We all eat, we all have a physiological and emotional connection to food. Throw in all of the information and misinformation we are exposed to today as well as the latest celebrity diet trends that are 'guaranteed' to help you lose that last few kilograms of stubborn body fat, make you look 10 years younger or even save the planet! Everyone has their own map of the world based on their life experiences and the information they have been exposed to - therefore who am I to tell you not to eat vegan, keto or juice fast. I have constructed my own ideas of what is best for myself, my clients and my family health wise based on my own research both academically but also through application and observation. I have also constructed ideas around my consumption and the impact it has on this planet - something I take seriously for many reasons (especially because this is the planet we are leaving behind for the next generations - my beautiful girls will be left with the after effects).

My thoughts, opinions and actions have changed and evolved but the main thing that I am proud of is that my actions reflect my beliefs at that time. I also now understand that every dollar is a vote therefore drives the market and impacts everything! This is why I believe we should all have a food strategy that acts in line with our beliefs and knowledge at the time. Sometimes it is very challenging and there can be many real barriers - time, money and access can be some of them and these need to be taken into account also.

My food hierarchy:

In my perfect world I would be hunting and gathering 100% wild food - for many reasons I love this and think it is beneficial however I haven't even learned the necessary skills for this yet so wild foraging only makes up a small portion of my diet. In my opinion the next step down is bio-dynamically sourced food, organic, all local if possible. I try my best to avoid imported and highly sprayed and processed foods. This includes veggies, fruit, meat and other accessory foods. So In summary it looks like this.

1. Wild food (sourced from quality land/soil that is not sprayed or polluted) - locally sourced

2. Byodynamic food - locally sourced

3. Organic food - locally sourced

4. Locally sourced non organic food (usually sourced from local farmers markets)

5. Supermarket fresh/local food

My meat it is mostly wild caught or organic, my eggs are organic free range and my fruit and veggies are mostly local. I top up with a mixture of organic and non organic local food.

Things that are rarely a part of my diet:

Highly processed foods Big corporate brand takeaways Factory farmed animalsSoy, non organic wheat, non organic cornProcessed sugar or foods containing highly processed sugar

I purchase and source food from:

My local marketOrganic health shopMy gardenSupermarket Forage my own herbs, greens, berries, flowers etc

Why?

I understand that eating organic can be perceived as expensive, inconvenient or has overhyped health promises attached. We are beginning to understand more and more about the harmful effects of mass produced food (meat, veggies, grains, legumes and of course sugar), imported food, food grown on undernourished soil and heavily sprayed with all sorts of chemicals (including Glyphosate). The impact this has on our health as a person and the entire planet. There is a lot of information and misinformation, how does one begin to sort through it all and make smart decisions and create a strategy based on all of this?

Well I wish I could give you a simple answer but I can't and Im still learning a lot! I have drawn a few conclusions myself but I think its important we do question what is being force-fed to us (through the media, marketing claims, 'research' and on our actual plates!). It is important to remember that every dollar we spend is a vote - therefore there will be ramifications. As consumers we drive the market therefore if we invest in factory farm meats and kidney beans that have travelled half way across the planet it will affect the planets health as well as your own, your children's health as well as possibly contributing to the growing wealth disparity. You are also helping to create the world that your children and your children's children will be living in.

Where to start:

Think about how much you value your health.Think about how much you value your families and friends health.Think about what sort of world you want to live in and leave behind.

Once you have answered the above questions:

What do you know about the food you are consuming? - Where does it come from, how does it get to you (from earth to table), what has it lived off (what is it consuming - plants or the soil it grows in).

Basically - are you acting in line with your values and beliefs?

I know its not always easy to do but I do know that if you aren't it will have an impact on your health at a deep level.

For more information on this topic:

Connect with food on a deeper level with Dr Verena:

Live for future generations and the wellness of the planet with Frank Forencich:

I talk about food, the future and more:

I HATE FAT PEOPLE! No…not me personally, but that’s an actual comment that was made to me in a recent conversation. I’m sure you would agree that hate is a very strong word; especially when it’s directed at someone not because of anything they might have done to you but simply because of how they physically appear to you.

A younger less mature version of myself would have gotten angry at this statement. Yet, the current, more mature (well sort of) version of myself chose a different response, fascination.

(Robert Cappuccio is a behaviour change expert, author, presenter and creator - click on his photo above to listen to his interview on BestMe Radio.)

Was the young lady I was speaking to (although quite attractive now) once overweight? Did she lose someone in her family to a lifestyle related illness? What made her so hostile as if she was burnt so many times in life that she was now the equivalent of human toast?

And not the light buttery kind, but the kind that’s been charred and blackened in the bottom of the toaster and it has to be thrown away because no matter how much of the burnt part you try to scrape away with a knife, there’s still more burnt toast beneath; the kind that not even starving birds in the winter will eat, that kind! I really wanted to know.

So I had to ask…”why do you say that?”

“Because…” she said, “they lack discipline.” “It’s their fault they’re fat!” she goes on saying “they complain how bad they feel and how depressed they are…just stop eating!” “That’s why I’m not a trainer anymore, I couldn’t stand listening to people whine.” Lovely girl.

Well…that certainly is one way to look at it. But as a fitness professional I have a problem with that. You see I like you work in an industry where we could conservatively estimate that about two-thirds of the people who seek our assistance, to some degree, desire weight loss. So, hating two-thirds of your prospective market is not exactly a brilliant business strategy. Not to mention, that attitude from an ethics perspective is analogous to a doctor refusing to treat a lung cancer patient because his medical history indicates that the patient used to smoke. People don’t pay us for our judgments, but for a solutions.

Even if we think we understand the problem, we will likely be ineffective unless we understand the person. This requires unconditional positive regard.

Maybe the root cause of why some of our clients are overweight doesn’t lie in what they’re eating, but in what’s eating them?

In his article “Feeding the Psyche”, featured in the October/November 2007 issue of “American Scientific Mind”, Michael Macht explains that much of what we consider undisciplined “overeating” is actually “emotional eating.”

Simple carbohydrates and fats elevate a person’s mood by lowering stress hormones.

Sweet foods elevate pain relieving chemicals in the brain, while acting on our pleasure centers the same way addictive drugs do! So what I’m suggesting is that many of our clients aren’t simply acting on glutinous overindulgence, they’re trying to self-medicate.

German Psychiatrist Hilde Bruch suggests that the more frequently a mother offers sweets and fatty foods to an upset child as a means of pacification, the greater likelihood he will continue to use them as a coping strategy in adulthood. I wonder if that ever happens in our society!

What are the emotions that trigger food addictions?

Emotions like sadness, anxiety and other emotions creating emotional duress can trigger overeating of sweet and/or fatty foods. To deal with emotional eating we must first identify the connection.

At the University of London College Psychologist Georgina Oliver et al, categorized 68 men and women as either emotional or non-emotional eaters. They were then divided into two groups, both comprised of emotional and non-emotional eaters. The first group was then asked to perform the stressful task of creating a 4 minute speech that the researchers said would be videotaped and then critiqued. The next group was simply asked to listen to a reading in a relaxed environment.

Shortly after at a lunch buffet, the emotional eaters who were in the high stress group consumed far more food comprised of energy dense fats and sweets than the non–emotional eaters in the same group. In the low stress group both the non-emotional and emotional eaters showed similar food choices.

Richard Wurtman, a Neuropharmacologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) suggests that there’s evidence that high carbohydrate foods elevate mood because they increase the levels of the amino acid tryptophan in brain, which is used to produce the neurotransmitter serotonin. On of the functions of serotonin is to regulate emotions. Wurtman also states that people who are inclined to use food as a coping strategy may have naturally lower levels of serotonin.

So what do we do?

At Stanford University, Psychologist Christy Telch, et al. studied 44 women with eating disorders. Some of the women received no treatment, while others underwent dialectical-behavior therapy (DBT) which taught alternative strategies to dealing with negative emotions other than eating.

By end of study women who received DBT had fewer episodes of over eating. Eighty nine percent stopped binge eating. Six months later, fifty six percent of those women had no regression in behavior.

When feeling stressed, sad or anxious recommend to your clients that they acknowledge those emotions and write them down. This will give them a space between stimulus (emotional state) and response (emotional eating).

The next step is to identify what triggers emotional eating. The Dutch Eating Questionnaire asks participants to answer questions based on a rating scale of 1-5.

1 never2 rarely3 sometimes4 often5 very often

The questionnaire includes questions such as I have a desire to eat…

when depressedWhen feeling lonely or let downWhen worriedWhen emotionally upsetWhen restless and boredWhen afraidWhen irritated or angryWhen aloneWhen with others

By understanding what triggers his behavior an individual can choose alternate strategies such as substituting overeating with:

Going for a walkExerciseListening to musicCalling someoneAnything that alters their state without requiring food.

The problems that our clients face is not always evidence of a lack of discipline, but a lack of strategy. Ashbey’s Law of Requisite Variety States that “only variety can absorb variety”. For our clients this means that the more responses they’re able to generate in their external world, the less inept they will be at making better choices amidst the emotional changes in their inner world. This (all things being equal) greatly increases their chances for success.

I NEVER cheat when it comes to my diet.

Dr Brett Hill - Here is a link to our interview

Now I know some of you will be reading this and thinking OMG. That would be right. That Brett, he is such a zealot. Of course HE doesn’t cheat.

Some of you will be screaming at your screens LIAR! I have seen him eat…

Some will go straight into guilt mode and start berating yourself for the times you slipped off of the wagon. Others will go straight into justification mode and start extolling the virtues of the 80:20 rule or the benefits of a “cheat meal” on your metabolism or maybe even the dangers of Orthorexia and why we shouldn’t be too rigid with our rules around food.

So before you all start screaming at me at once give me a sec to explain first.

When I say I never cheat, that doesn’t mean that I perfectly follow my Paleo diet 100% of the time. What it does mean is that I just choose not to feel guilty about it, and I actually don’t consider it cheating. I make conscious choices about what is the best for me right now and into the future.

Wellness is about much more than just your diet.It is about your mental health, your social life, your relationships, your exercise, your sleep and so on and so forth. And for the most part find that the Paleo Diet ticks all of these boxes for me and I find that the more closely I follow The Paleo Diet the better I do in all of these areas.

Sometimes though I am out and about and there aren’t any or many Paleo options available or the ones that are available just aren’t that appetising. Sometimes I have been travelling or on the road or just insanely busy and I have some very important work to do and I choose to have a black tea or even a coffee to get me through. Sometimes I just have a craving for something that isn’t Paleo (dark chocolate is probably my biggest weakness now days) .Sometimes I choose to join in on a social activity that includes alcohol or non-paleo foods (like having a drink with my cricket mates after a grand final as promised, or having a slice of pizza with some mates at a bux show rather than fast).

I know that there are consequences when it comes to my health when I don’t fuel my body the way it is designed to be fuelled. I am also lucky that I don’t have any true intolerances and severe reactions to any of these foods so I get to make this choice.

I also know that I need to be really careful that these VERY occasional exceptions don’t start to become occasional exceptions and then perhaps even more frequently. Not necessarily just in sickness or in symptoms but well before it gets to that stage in loss of productivity and vibrancy and creativity and joy.

But I also know that I need to take into account more than just the chemical component of my diet and lifestyle too. Thatsometimes I just need the mental break of not following the rules. That sometimes I do need a coffee to be physically able to get done what I need to get done to help all of the people that I want to help and to be there for my family and loved ones in the way that I want to be there for them. That sometimes just joining in and having fun with my mates warms my heart and makes me feel alive and youthful again.

I think that labelling something as a “cheat meal” is attaching feelings of guilt to that particular food. Guilt is a negative feeling of being judged (by yourself or others) because you have done something wrong and feeling guilty about the choices I have made isn’t serving anyone. By definition if you are making your decisions based around guilt you are not being authentic, you are doing what you think you SHOULD be doing rather than what you want to do which denies you the opportunity to learn your own lessons about health and life. You are acting out of fear of what people will think rather than out of love for you and your body. In extreme cases this can even lead to sickness, malnutrition and mental disorders like Orthorexia.

So there’s a really fine line to follow, and I’m not just giving you a free pass here! For some people they will just choose to go 100% either because their particular health concerns mean that is the only way to go for them or because they just find it easier to be 100% than to try and follow the thin cave drawn line and so long as you are doing that out of love for yourself not hate or fear or guilt then that is fine. For many people like me we will choose to walk that line. Knowing that sometimes we will slip up and get too far off track but also knowing what it is like to be on track and just how good that feels. We also know that sometimes the best lessons are learnt when you fall off the wagon and that sometimes it is just what you need to take the next step in your evolutionary health journey.

So I NEVER cheat on my Paleo Diet. Sometimes I choose not to follow it 100% and I am ok with that!

Yesterday I spoke with Chef Dipen about why he became a chef, what got him into foraging and why he loves it. Dipen shows us some of the local greens that he foraged and talks us through how they taste. Below he sent me a simple and yummy recipe! Enjoy :)