Latest / Fit for Hiking / Ep. 22 Pitfalls of Modern Diets
Transcript
- Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a longtime fitness professional in Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. In combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for hiking podcast. 2s Hello and welcome back to the fit for hiking podcast. It has been a minute since I've been on the mic. I actually just got done moving. If you've been following along on Instagram, I've been sharing a lot about this because it's literally taken over our lives. I feel like for the last month, this is the first time I've ever like, bought and sold a home at the same time. And it is so much work you guys. Holy cow! Like especially with a one year old and when you're still just trying to work and we don't have any family here, so it's just so much to try to juggle. So the podcast kind of took a backseat there for a minute, but thankfully I had kind of like stocked up on some recordings, so we didn't skip a beat. But it feels good to be back on the mic. I'm officially recording for the first time from our new home. If you listen to the Mountain Lessons Mountain Living Lessons episode that was released a few weeks ago, then you'll know that we were previously living at 9500ft. And we really wanted to find something a little lower, but still in the foothills. And I'm happy to share that we are settled now in a home that's still in the same town, still mountainous, still about the same distance from Denver. However, we're at 8000ft now, so we're a little bit lower, and it's exactly what we were looking for spatially. So I'm really excited to be settling in here into my little home office recording this episode today. So now that I'm done with the personal update, I want to get into our topic today, which is Pitfalls of Modern Diets and just kind of what's wrong with dieting in general. I am a big, big advocate for the anti diet world because I think that diet culture is everywhere and very harmful, and it has personally affected me a lot. And I want to talk about that today. One thing I love about this show is I feel like I can talk about such an array of topics, from hiking and backpacking, mountain living, to fitness and nutrition and hormones for females and all these different things. So today I want to kind of talk to the nutrition side of things. And specifically, you know, for anyone who's been feeling a bit stuck in a dieting mindset or dieting cycle or just kind of struggling with like food obsession binging some of these things, um, you're not alone. And I feel like it's really important to talk about these things, because I struggled kind of in silence for a lot of my 20s with dieting and feeling really consumed with food, thoughts and how to, like, get out of that cycle. So I'll be sharing a bit about my personal story today. But you know, I'm really no stranger to dieting. Unfortunately, I spent, like I said, a lot of my 20s wishing away the body I had. I worked in fitness and I always felt like I was to, quote unquote, big for working in fitness and the fitness industry. I felt like I didn't look the part, which made me very self-conscious in my job. And, you know, being an authority figure in the fitness space, I always was comparing myself to other, more lean, more fit, more toned women wondering why I couldn't look that way, why my body just was a little bit bigger, more muscular and carried a little bit more fat. And so I was always looking for the next diet that I could find, in hopes that it would finally be the one that worked for me. I even have this. Vivid memory of going to a hair appointment, and I had just started this diet that only allowed me to eat like raw veggies for the first few days, or I don't even know how long I was supposed to be doing that. So I had a container full of raw broccoli that I brought to my hair appointment, and I was eating it in the bathroom because I was so self conscious of like what I was doing and how awkward I felt. And I have that memory burned into my brain because, I mean, how sad is that? That I felt like I had to hide in the bathroom and eat my little container of raw broccoli, and that's all I was allowed to eat. So needless to say, that only lasted for about two miserable days. And then I found myself right back at square one. So as humans, it seems like we're constantly looking for these extreme ways to accomplish what we want as far as our bodies fitness and nutrition. We want black and white rules. We want like super hard something to commit to, but not for very long, right? We always just want these like quick efforts. And after working in fitness for a decade now and also personally experiencing the pressures of diet culture. I really want to discuss some of the shortcomings and issues of modern diets out there, and even just the concept of constantly feeling like, as women, we need to be on a diet in general, a diet that has a name and the way that we typically think about dieting. So general dieting danger is that most diets are extreme approaches with very specific food rules, which, again, can sometimes feel good. When we're looking for that structure. We like rules. We like, okay, tell me exactly what to do and what I can't do. However, the issue with this is that it doesn't serve us in any sort of long term way. Because while these rules might be nice in the short term, they're usually not things that we can adhere to long term, and they have a lot of ramifications along the way. So get into that a little bit more later. But some of the most common diets that we see are things like no sugar, no added sugar, no carbs, keto, paleo, which has certain foods eliminated, whole 30 fasting windows, low fat and 75 hard. Obviously there's so many others, but I'm not going to get into all of them. These are just kind of some of the main ones that you see floating around and people jumping into. So I want to kind of break them down one by one and talk about some of the pitfalls and where they fall short for us as far as our female health and how they support us overall. So going into kind of a little lump together version of some of these ones that are pretty similar. So the no added sugar, no carbs, keto and paleo are all kind of in the same breath. Like they all adhere to similar rules. They're similar in nature because they typically demonize carb laden, processed and sugary foods. So while they're all a little bit different and nuanced in their own ways, that's kind of the gist of it, right? So. The average person obviously can stand to reduce the amount of refined carbs and sugars that we're consuming on a daily basis, but elimination can cause its own issues. Why? Because this simply isn't feasible long term. Like don't care how disciplined you are. Like you're not going to be able to do no sugar or no carbs for the rest of your life. So sure, we may rock it for a few days, maybe even a few weeks. But what happens is that most people begin obsessing over what's forbidden and off limits. This is just how our brains work. So then we find ourselves in social settings, feeling anxious about like all of these things that we want to have, but we deem as off limits. We feel out of control around these foods. We feel like we can't even be around them. Which, how are you ever supposed to go to a birthday party, or a wedding, or a bachelorette party, or even just a friend's weekend, or going out to eat without being around? Some of these foods that are going to tend to be off limits when we're trying to adhere to these types of diets. So then this begins a really negative relationship with food that can even lead to food obsession and restrict and binge cycles, which definitely have been there. It's also worth mentioning that we really do need carbs, as glucose is our body's preferred source of fuel, so I don't know if you've ever tried to do the low carb thing. I know I spent a lot of my 20s trying to be low carb, and if you've ever tried to go for a long hike, do a hard workout, or even just go about a busy day on essentially no carbs, you're going to feel like garbage. You're going to feel so low energy. And I've definitely been there where I've been on a hike or a run or whatever and thought, okay, what's wrong with me? Like, I know that I'm in better shape than this, and it turns out all I needed was like a really good carb focused meal. Like I hadn't been eating enough carbs. There's something like that's almost been sadly ingrained into my brain that's taken a lot of rewiring that, like, carbs are bad. I can't have carbs. I can't have like bagels or pancakes or processed carbs that are, you know, not of any nutritional value. And so I've just naturally kind of like steered away from those things for a really long time now. And I'm having to kind of deconstruct some of those thoughts in my own brain around carbs. And I'm assuming as a female millennial who grew up in this diet culture, I'm not the only one who has to do some of that. 1s So too low carbs can affect our leptin levels, which are which basically is in charge of our satiety and how we become full. And it can also mess with our reproductive hormones. So having carbs isn't just like something that, oh, you should have carbs so that you feel good or blah blah blah. Like it absolutely affects our hormone function, especially as women. So it's something that we need. We need all three macronutrients. So carbs, fats and proteins in order to support our hormone function and to just be a person who's living optimally and feeling good for some reason, like. Pulling away of certain macronutrients has become really trendy in diet world, which is just super messed up because we need all three working in harmony to function at our best. Okay, so the next one we have is Whole30. So it's a good idea in principle, right? There's some good aspects to it. And it can actually be really helpful for someone who's trying to get to the root of an allergy or a gut irritant or something like that, some sort of intolerance that they suspect may be going on. However, the beef I have with this is that a lot of people do Whole30 as a means to lose weight, and I know I have done this personally. So while Whole30 allows carbs, proteins, and fats, it's very, very strict on the no list. So all the list of things that you can't have while you're doing Whole30 are things like alcohol, dairy, processed foods, legumes, added sugars, and you can't even recreate baked goods with quote unquote clean ingredients because that's off limits, too. So having these no items again, really just leads to this fixation. And it's no surprise that so many people plan for these massive treat, aka binge meals at the end of the 30 days. And like when I did pole 30, I didn't even make it past ten days or so because I was so restricted. I started fixating on food and then I started bingeing. Like it's just such an unhealthy way to go about trying to. Eat a little bit healthier, right when we take it to this extreme level. All right. The next is fasting window. So this one again is not inherently bad. And what I like about fasting is that it doesn't require the elimination of any foods, but rather it's more about shortening the quote unquote feeding window each day. So I'm actually a proponent of fasting in some situations. I do think there are health reasons where it can be really helpful, and for men it actually can be really helpful. But the research done on fasting that shows its benefits is solely done on men. And it's quite a different situation for women because we are more stress sensitive because we are reproductive beings. So especially during our reproductive years, we're going to be more sensitive to over intensity as far as exercise and under feeding our bodies. So fasting is one of those things that we have to be really careful with because sure, like fasting from time to time situationally, maybe you don't have time to eat a meal because you run into the airport or got to catch a plane or whatever it may be like. There's going to be times where we just naturally fast, and that's okay. However, when it becomes a chronic thing, I've just always skipping meals, not eating until 1 p.m. every single day, or just under eating in general, and hiding kind of behind fasting to say that we're just, oh, I'm fasting, but really, you're just trying to under eat. This can lead to a lot of metabolic adaptation and hormonal repercussions. So especially for a high stress, intense exercise. Queen, this is for you. Like especially if you've been doing this for a long time, you fast every day and your body still holding on to body fat despite you feeling like you're doing all the things it's probably not serving you. It's probably maybe even contributing to this issue that you're experiencing and some of the symptoms that you're having. So it's definitely something where it's not one size fits all. And some women do really well with it, and some women really don't. And it can cause a cascade of issues, like I said, such as metabolic adaptation, nighttime bingeing, reproductive hormone shifts, loss of your cycle, loss of hair, a lot of different issues. So it's definitely not for everyone. So it's just important to know that that's not something that's just like a one size fits all fix, that every single person should fast. All right. Our next one is the low fat diet. This one definitely hasn't been quite as trendy lately, but it kind of ebbs and flows. It comes and goes in the dieting scene, so I wanted to talk about it. Fat is dietary. Fat is the most calorically dense macronutrient. So when we're looking at like the grams. Per calorie. So there are nine calories for every gram of fat versus proteins and carbs. You're only going to have four calories per gram of protein and carbs, so fat is just going to carry a little bit more caloric value to it than the other macronutrients, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But if you do tend to gravitate towards high fat foods. So thinking of words like creamy, cheesy, fried, crispy, smothered, nut butters, things like that, then looking at your total fat gram consumption on a daily basis can definitely be helpful. So it's not a bad thing to, you know, look at our total dietary fat and monitor it. However, fully eliminating fats is harmful to women, especially because healthy fats and cholesterol are necessary for estrogen production. So again, we just come back to this theme of when we take it to the full extreme of elimination, or trying to, like, barely have any, any, any. Then you're going to cause issues because we are meant to have all three macronutrients. They are essential to us, especially as females. So. Sure. Taking a look at your fat consumption and making sure that you're not going overboard. Like I personally love high fat foods, I love cheese, I love nuts, I love like creamy things. That's my preferred, preferred like form of eating. I would love to just have like cheese and ice cream and cream in my coffee every single day. So I have to look at that a little bit more closely versus some people love carbs and like, could eat pasta every day. For me it's more so the fats. So that's something that I do need to monitor. But I'm never going to try to fully eliminate it or cut it down to like 10 to 20g a day, because that's just too low. And it's not going to support my body the way that I need. All right. The last one is 75 hard. And this is a more recently popular diet kind of fused with a workout protocol. So the idea with 75 heart is that you complete two workouts daily, follow a diet of your choosing, and cut alcohol for 75 days. You also do a couple other things that are great, like trying to focus on a water goal and self development, books and stuff like that. But this is a really good example of an extremist approach working out two times per day without any rest days for 75 days. I would not recommend this for anyone, even the most fit individuals in the world. This is going to completely shoot your recovery. You're going to experience. Probably injury some insane inflammation way over stressing your body and your nervous system, let alone someone who's maybe a beginner and kind of drawn toward these extreme approaches because they want to get in a routine. So if you're just trying to develop some new habits around exercise and nutrition, then this is like, unfortunately, this is the type of thing that, like preys on those people. And it's the worst thing for those people because you're going to create a recipe of metabolic adaptation, making it really hard to maintain the results you get. So weight loss and regain immediately upon finishing a super common with stuff like this. And you're going to develop a really crappy all or nothing relationship with food and exercise. Because if your association with exercise is needing to do it two times a day, where you're so sore that you feel like you can't even get up in the morning, it's something that you dread because you're having to do literally 14 workouts a week, which is insane. Even seven workouts a week is too much. As a beginner, I fully recommend 2 to 3 days a week until you've nailed that down and you don't hate it. You're not super sore all the time. You're recovering. You're getting stronger. That is the best approach. However, of course it's not extreme enough for most people, and a lot of people want to jump straight into something really intense like this, unfortunately. So I'm not a proponent of something like this. I think that there are some good aspects to it, but it could be like way scaled back to a more moderate approach. It would be great also, especially if you are in the midst of trying to diet and you're adding in that much intense exercise, you're literally going to spin your wheels because you're increasing your hunger so exponentially when you're working out that much, and then you're not allowing yourself to eat, which is going to just create like a massive restrictive binge cycle. So the common denominator with all of these diets is that they are not doable long term. If we want to actually support our health, our relationship with food and metabolism, and actually maintain the results that we're trying to get from said diet. While I was caught in my dieting cycles, I found myself constantly thinking about food, like obsessing over my next meal and especially obsessing over the foods that deemed us off limits. So I would restrict for a little bit, maybe like 5 to 10 days, that I would binge and fall off the wagon. Right? That's what everybody says. I fell off the wagon. So it really wasn't until I took more of a moderate approach that I finally saw lasting weight loss, like 20 to £25 that I've maintained off my body now for the past. Um, like two and a half, three years. And that was even through a pregnancy. I was able to know I gained a healthy weight during my pregnancy, and then immediately got back down to where I wanted to be. And I haven't struggled to maintain this new weight because I haven't taken any extreme approaches, and I let the process go slowly. I wasn't in a rush to lose the weight, so I lost it over several years instead of trying to lose it over several weeks. So it's just to say that, like, it's so important to have a more moderate approach to see lasting changes, because you're also going to maintain a healthy social life, a healthy relationship with food, head space around food, and actually have control over these things. So what we do with in metabolic mountain metabolic coaching is we allow for all foods and we discourage the extremes. So we're kind of in the anti diet camp which is a little bit hard for some people. They kind of a lot of women want to be told exactly what they can't have exactly what to do. And we won't do that because it doesn't serve you long term. So instead we take a look at the current patterns around food and the intake averages by doing a food log. And then we set individual targets based on those numbers instead of just guessing or using a calculator. The reason why we do this is because sure, we could type some numbers your weight, your height, your age, your activity level averages into a calculator and it would spit out a number of like average calories. You should be having. However, issues that a lot of women come into this program in a drastically adapted state from over dieting. So while it could be true that in general, based on your body stats, you should be eating like an average of 1800 to 2000 calories a day. If you've been eating an average of 1000 calories a day for a while, the calculator is not going to be able to tell us that you can't really look at your metabolism in the same way as accurately looking at what are you doing currently, can tell us. So if you're eating a thousand calories on average a day, then that is going to completely affect the strategy that we take to achieve fat loss, because we really need to make sure that you're in a better place metabolically before we can have a successful fat loss phase. So that's why looking at things on an individual basis is so much more helpful than just like plugging things into a calculator and hoping for the best. So from there, we kind of focus on reducing calories slightly for fat loss. Not in a way that's going to make you obsess over food crazy hungry or get into these restrictive binge cycles. And we actually encourage having some of your in your mind off limits foods around and having them every day, having them frequently enough that you kind of let yourself take back the power over those foods. They don't have the power over you anymore, because they're no longer this like thing that you can't have and looming over you, and you don't even want to keep them in your cabinet. So if we're focusing on fat loss, we're going to slightly reduce calories by looking at just the calorie size or portion size, kind of depending on the person's dieting history and preference. So we can go either way with that. Either way, we have to make sure that we're in an energy deficit if fat loss is the goal. But there are different means to doing that, and it really is going to depend on that individual's preference, because we want to make sure that this fits your life, your dieting history, your mental state. All of these things can really affect adherence, and adherence is key. If you're not able to do it for very long, then you're not going to be successful. So rather than making you fit into a specific mold, we want to fit into what works with your life to still get you the results that you want. And we don't major in the minors, meaning that instead of being hardcore about little things like, oh, I have to track exact macros, I have to cut certain food groups or eat clean all the time. We focus on calories, protein, understanding portion sizes, and making small tweaks to make better food quality choices without demonizing foods. And that is really key because this takes the mental games around food away takes it out of the equation. So when things are no longer off limits, we don't have cheat meal type of foods or weakened foods or labeled bad foods. We have control again, so we can simply enjoy these things in moderation while making healthy choices 80% of the time, right? That's the goal. 1s So I also want to touch on the effect of dieting on the metabolism. So chronic under eating starts to signal over time to your body that food is scarce. The body starts to adapt to that accordingly to keep us alive. So this is going to lower our basal metabolic rate and our total daily energy expenditure slowly over time. Now, to simply exist, we burn less calories throughout each day, and our body is also going to try to slow everything down in an effort to conserve calories. And this is why losing weight becomes harder and harder the longer that we diet and the longer that we're doing it. And that's a natural response. Like it's not a bad thing. You're as you get smaller, your basal metabolic rate is going to drop naturally. So as you lose weight, your BMR drops. And that's a natural response. And it doesn't mean you're necessarily doing anything wrong. But when we try to drop weight really fast without maintaining our muscle mass through proper strength training, and we just tried to eat as little as possible consistently, then that is going to really wreak havoc on our metabolic function. So this is again why losing weight just kind of becomes harder the longer that we do it, and why it's so important to do it the right way to maintain a healthy metabolism throughout the dieting process. This is one of the best things that we can do for ourselves to to set ourselves up for success after we're done dieting. I think a lot of people only think about the during. They don't think about what's this going to require of me after I'm done with this, right? We tend to yo yo with our weight a lot more when we do take the extreme approaches, because there's no exit strategy, there's no plan to maintain, which is why losing weight is actually a lot easier than maintaining. Like a lot of people can lose weight over and over again. But can you actually maintain the weight that you lost? Because that is way more impressive to me than someone like dropping 10 to £20. Like if you can maintain it years and years after the fact, then you have done an amazing job. So it's usually when we do things really fast, take the extremes or take the easy routes instead of doing things the right way that we see that yo yoing and the lack of weight healthy weight maintenance after. So as you can see, dieting not only has the mental repercussions creating bad relationships with food all or nothing type of mindset, it also detracts from your quality of life. Being able to go to social settings and enjoy yourself, being able to go to events and have fun and just live. But it also has physiological repercussions over time as far as your metabolism. So if you do find yourself constantly thinking about food or jumping from diet to diet, or kind of unsure of how to maintain a healthy weight without going to extremes, this is exactly the type of thing that we focus on in Mountain Metabolic coaching. I'm so passionate about it because I have so much experience doing things the wrong way and feeling like something was wrong with me, and like I would just never get to where I wanted to be. And really, like I said, kind of hiding in the dark with all of these like, mental games. I was playing around food and it's exhausting. It's so tiring and sucky to constantly be thinking about food instead of just enjoying your life and focusing on other, more important things. So I would love to connect with you and connect you with the Mountain Metabolic team. If this sounds like you. The first step is to simply get on a call with me so I can kind of learn more about where you're feeling stuck, what you're looking for, and if this interests you, you can always check the show notes. We have the link to the Mountain Metabolic Coaching application form. That's the first step. And from there I will reach out and get you on a call and we'll chat. So I hope that this episode has been enlightening of just some of the ways that dieting and dieting culture really falls short for us and isn't doing us any favors. It's not serving us. And so pulling away from the mentality that we constantly need to be in some sort of diet is one of the best things that we can do to take back the power over our relationship with food, and just enjoying food again and getting the results that we want without having to go to those crazy extremes. So thanks so much for tuning in today. I'd love to connect with you. Head on over to the Fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page. You can send me a DM there. If you have anything that you would like to be featured on the show, anything you want me to discuss, I would love to hear your ideas. Any topics that you want to hear on here and if it's been helpful. If you could drop a share on Instagram, you know, post the episode of your story, tell other people about it. Word of mouth is so helpful. Um, you know, I'm kind of like a small business over here. Just a few women operations. So your word of mouth and support goes such a long way. And I want to know if these episodes are helpful for you. So give us a share, give us a shout out. We really appreciate it. And I will see you guys in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this. Be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at ponytail on a trail. Happy and healthy trails.