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Good Foods and Bad Foods
Imagine your very favorite food. Bring to mind the way it smells and tastes and feels in your mouth. Now imagine I told you it was totally off limits–you could never have it again. How would that make you feel about this food? How would it make you feel in general?
Now imagine the same scenario, only this time I told you this food was available to you as often as you’d like. You could have it everyday for the rest of your life if you wanted. It was yours for the enjoying, and no one would ever take it away from you. How do you feel now?
In my work with clients, there is extensive emphasis on something called legalization. This means seeing all foods as equal. The reasons we do this are 1) all foods have some nutritional value, and 2) it decreases the risk of binging ‘off-limits’ foods. If you have foods on a bad list, you have to admit those are the ones you overeat.
It has been amazing to see the way food has lost its hold on my clients. Some clients have reported important realizations since legalizing. Some of the foods they binged in the past don’t even appeal to them anymore. When you legalize foods, you get to determine if you even like them. You don’t just binge them because they are ‘bad’.
When we take a look at the good food list and compare it with the bad food list, we see some interesting things. I find that things like fruit, brown rice and sweet potatoes are on the good food list. Then I see that white bread, pasta, and cookies are on the bad food list. It occurs to me that very obviously these items all share one important nutrient.
Carbohydrates. While much is made of types of carbohydrates, the fact is they are all broken down into the same chemical structure. Just like a molecule of water is H2O everywhere it exists, carbohydrate is identical when it is broken down. Dare I say what that molecule is called? Glucose–that’s right, sugar. It is the all important fuel for blood sugar in the body.
The reason people make a fuss over different types of carbs is because of how they affect the blood sugar. Ideally we want a nice, gradual rise and fall of blood glucose. The fiber in fruits or brown rice helps that more than in bread. But the newsflash is, most carbohydrates are eaten within the context of a meal anyways. You will already be combining it with protein and/or fat, which will slow the digestion of the carbohydrate just like fiber.
This is why dietitians in general pay no mind to glycemic index or glycemic load. We get that most people aren’t munching on single slices of white bread alone. If you have a cookie for a snack, you are already getting the benefit of the fat in it to slow the digestion–problem solved!
Now I am sure I will receive a number of comments blasting me for being a nutritional heretic. I used to be just like those people, pouring over calorie counter books and discovering the latest phytochemicals. I used to think that was what was important for health and weight control. Now I am clear on the real issues with eating: an abnormal relationship with food.
One of the major reasons people are not comfortable with food is because they give it moral meaning and attach guilt to it. This causes people to actually eat much more (rather than help them ‘control themselves’). There is no reason for it. Supplying people with a bunch of lists of foods to avoid has only resulted in rising numbers of people struggling with their weight. So picture your favorite food one more time…now go have it, and enjoy every bite!
type="text/javascript">44 Comments for “Good Foods and Bad Foods”
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