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The 4 Most Common Food Myths My Patients Struggle With · Doctor Turned Health Coach

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  Today, we're going to be focusing on common food myths. So these are the things
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  that I've heard over the years with my own health coaching clients,
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  with my patients, and I've looked them up. I've looked them up many, many times.
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  And here's the evidence. So number one, the first one that I hear a lot is,
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  no, it's okay because it's sea salt. It's not regular salt. So salt is sodium chloride.
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  Right. And sodium is the actual, I will say, problem that a lot of people deal with.
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  When you have too much salt in your diet, it tends to draw in a lot of water.
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  You retain water. At night, it makes you pee a lot more. It can raise your blood pressure.
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  And then it can also actually make you more hungry. So an issue with salt is the sodium.
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  So whether it's sea salt, pink Himalayan salt, whether it's some sort of fancy
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  salt that you got, it doesn't matter.
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  Whether it's iodinated or not iodinated, that does matter.
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  We certainly need a certain amount of iodine every single day.
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  That's a different discussion so when it comes to sodium the goal is to get
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  a healthy amount of sodium most of us probably are going to do fine with around 1500 a day.
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  Once you go above that you might run into problems some people can have 3 000
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  5 000 a day and they're not going to have any issues so what matters is your own body,
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  the next one is that it's a complex carb so it is okay and only simple carbs are bad for me.
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  The reason this is a myth is because your body is not your neighbor's body.
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  And if at the moment you're dealing with a lot of metabolic issues,
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  struggling with high fasting insulin, high glucose, high hemoglobin A1c,
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  then the last thing that we want to do is give you,
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  something that might be considered a complex carb, but drastically shoots up your blood sugar.
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  A classic example is oats, whether it's rolled oats or steel-cut oats.
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  Some people are going to unfortunately respond really poorly to that,
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  and their blood sugar is going to go up.
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  And of course, the best way is to just experiment. If you're on a weight loss
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  journey and you add oats, and you see that your weight is becoming even more
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  stubborn, well, it might be a good reason to stop it.
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  But of course, always remember, what are you replacing, right?
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  So if you're replacing a white flour pancake that has a lot of sugar in it with
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  oats, that's always going to be a better choice. But if you add.
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  Oats into your diet, hoping that it's going to have some sort of an improvement.
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  Remember, your individual body is going to be different, and you can always
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  test that with biomarkers.
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  You can do blood tests, and you can just see how even your blood pressure changes,
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  whether you feel more puffy in the daytime, whether your weight is becoming,
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  more stubborn or coming off nice and easily.
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  The next one that's actually interesting is that potatoes and carrots are bad for you.
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  Potatoes are bad for you because of starches, and carrots are bad for you because they are sweet.
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  So I have never, never actually in my medical practice experienced that even
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  the worst diabetics, these are people who are on high amounts of insulin or
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  have very high hemoglobin A1Cs in the 13, 14 range.
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  I have never seen anybody perform or respond poorly to adding carrots or any kind of potato.
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  Now, if the carrot is fried or if the carrot is cooked in honey,
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  if the potato is deep fried that's a different problem because now we're adding
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  more calories and maybe different types of nutrients that we don't want or anti-nutrients but if it's,
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  baked potato, whole potato even a.
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  Little bit of oil on top of it that's perfectly fine and it's going to do your
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  body a lot of good because it's going to bring in a lot of fiber and tons,
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  tons of nutrients and guess what?
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  It even has a little bit of protein since protein is the talk of the town these days.
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  The next one is, speaking of protein, that protein is very important and you
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  need to add more protein.
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  In fact, you need to add a certain amount, a certain gram per your body weight.
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  This is an absolute myth. There's no research on this whatsoever. That's convincing.
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  When we look at other evidence that's much stronger in the sense that if you
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  are eating 2,000 calories a day, 1,800 calories a day, and you're eating a balanced
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  meal, you're going to get more than the required amount of protein anyway.
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  So some people are worried that, well, I don't get enough protein in my diet.
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  Well, that's probably because you're eating too much sugar, carbs,
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  and other stuff. So once you cut those things out, naturally,
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  your balanced meal, your food, for example, let's say a Mediterranean-style
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  diet, is going to have plenty of protein.
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  On top of that, when you add more protein, when you add more animal-based products,
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  even if they're lean, you're still going to get excess saturated fat.
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  It still might be a very calorie-dense food that your liver is going to have
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  a hard time metabolizing. It might put you at higher risk for fatty liver disease, for diabetes.
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  It might cause problems with your bacterial flora.
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  And so all of those things are important things to consider. So.
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  And everybody says that protein is very satiating.
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  That's not true for everybody. Some people actually are much more satiated with
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  fiber, but it is absolutely true that some people really respond well to animal
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  proteins. Having some beef, for example, makes them feel really satiated.
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  So it would be a good idea, of course, to always think about your food as a
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  whole balanced picture, not just one single macronutrient.
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  However, in certain circumstances, when, for example, you're going through a
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  phase where you really have to fix your metabolic health, where you really have to fix,
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  obesity or some other health issues, yes, it can make sense to make adjustments
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  to your diet in that time so that you can get the ideal result.
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  But remember, that's only a temporary dietary change. It's not a lifelong plan.
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  Most people would not be able to maintain that.
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  The next one that's actually very related to this is protein powder,
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  that you need protein powder to be healthy and that protein powder is actually
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  good for you there is no data and i've looked very carefully there is no data,
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  and most nutritionists and dieticians will agree that adding ultra processed
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  of anything is generally not a good idea and.
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  It doesn't get much more ultra processed than a powdered protein of any sort
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  even if it's chickpea flour or or chickpea protein or whey protein.
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  That's a lot of talk coming from the social media space, coming from health
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  influencers, but it is not evidence-based.
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  So if you need more protein, there are many ways to get more protein.
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  And it's always better to go for whole, unprocessed or linearly processed foods
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  before you reach for something that's ultra-processed.
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  And the last one I'm going to leave you with today is that you must eat only
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  three meals a day, you must intermittently fast, or you must eat five meals a day,
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  the idea here of course is that there is this one theoretical perfect food structure
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  that's going to work for everyone that is.
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  Absolutely a myth because every single person is different.
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  Some people need three meals a day with a little bit of snack in between.
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  Some people prefer to eat just one meal a day and they can do
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  really, really well because your metabolism, your muscle structure,
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  the way your body processes insulin, the way your body stores fat,
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  glycogen, is very different than mine,
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  which is why we can see somebody can be an ultra marathon runner and another
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  person is a powerlifter.
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  No way could you get the ultra marathon runner to be a powerlifter in no way shape or form
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  you take a powerlift but they will never become that level of an athlete and
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  vice versa the powerlifter is never going to be so lean that they're going to have the adequate.
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  Fast fast twitch slow twitch muscle ratio to be able to perform that exercise
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  so remember there is no one size fits all the
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  diet plan the nutrition plan and the way you eat, the frequency of your meals has to do with you.
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  It might work really well for you, it may not. The best way to do it is to keep
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  a journal, make an attempt, see what your results are, and make adjustments slowly based on that.