01.18.10
I’m Not Low-Carb… I Just Don’t Eat Flour
I find myself defending this too often, so I’m posting online my thoughts on food and eating healthy. I’ve been thinking and reading and listening a lot about this since I quit my job in an effort to become a more healthy person, and food is an integral part of that. Here’s what I’ve learned:
1. Holy cow, everybody says something different. You can find a statistic, a doctor, a study, and a politician to tell you anything is satan in food form… and that anything is healthy.
2. So… you have to pick out what makes sense to you, do that, and pay attention what happens as a result.
Kinda like… everything else in life.
But here’s some things I’ve gleaned from my Mission: Impossible – figure out what’s healthy.
- There’s vitamins and minerals that make your eyes and skin and teeth healthy. Those are important. But that’s not got much to do with weight. Weight has to do with how your body uses and stores energy, and that’s a combination of 3 things: protein, fat, and carbohydrates.
- You need all three of these things. Protein builds muscle, fat allows your joints to move smoothly, carbs provide blood sugar for your brain.
- Different types of carbohydrates produce different insulin responses in the body, and this is where things get complicated and everybody tells you something different…
“When you eat a food containing carbohydrates, the digestive system breaks down the digestible ones into sugar, which then enters the blood. As blood sugar levels rise, special cells in the pancreas churn out more and more insulin, a hormone that signals cells to absorb blood sugar for energy or storage… A new system, called the glycemic index, aims to classify carbohydrates based on how quickly and how high they boost blood sugar… Foods with a high glycemic index, like white bread, cause rapid spikes in blood sugar. Foods with a low glycemic index, like whole oats, are digested more slowly, causing a lower and gentler change in blood sugar.” – Havard School of Public Health
If you want to read arguments that will last until forever, google “glycemic load.” Basically I’m going with two things:
- Carbs are not evil; they are healthy and we should eat them. Just most people in America eat too many carbs per day and double the pain by eating the kinds that cause glycemic index freakouts.
- Vegetables are carbs, and for the vitamin and mineral content as well as low glycemic load are a much more fabulous way of consuming those necessary carbs than flour, regardless of whether or not that flour is “whole grain”
I’ve read in several places now (and been told by a homeopathic dietitian, but my cautious fandom and loving distrust of homeopathic anything is another post) that a lot of people who aren’t necessarily gluten intolerant or have celiac’s disease are still gluten reactive. (My personal take on this goes with the idea that man was around a long time before we became farmers, and a lot of us still haven’t evolved into grain-eaters, but that’s just the theory that sounds logical to me.) Basically, there are theories that say that in a lot of people, gluten can cause minor inflammation on a cellular level. So, from what I understand, a small part of the population was born with a body that handles gluten, no sweat. A small part of the population was born a body that flips a gasket when fed gluten. The rest of us have bodies that don’t keel over, but would run more smoothly without gluten.
So, to sum all that up, if I’m getting my very necessary carbs from bread instead of spinach, I’m not getting the vitamins and minerals, getting a higher insulin spike, and, as I’m gluten semi-intolerant, causing my body minor internal havoc.
Back to my title.
So, I’m not low-carb. I eat apples every day. And vegetables. And sometimes I eat pea soup (which is a lentil, not a vegetable). But I can’t remember the last time I had pasta, whole grain or otherwise. At first I thought this was a big deal, a huge sacrifice. Then I went Paleo for a month and that really did change the way I think about food. It was amazing how much in week two I thought I couldn’t live without a Snickers bar (but I did). But what was more amazing was how I came out the other side not caring that much about cookies, candy, sugary-drinks… pretty much the only things I still wanted that I’d been denied was alcohol and cheese. The whole experience made me a firm believer in the idea that sugary carbs mess with our brains in a serious way. 30 days of Paleo made eating healthy seem not like a chore, but something that I want to do. Bok choy tastes better than pizza, and right now if you asked me which one I want, I can with no hesitation tell you bok choy. A month of paleo a pain in the butt to do, but from a having done it perspective, I can’t recommend it highly enough. (Just don’t cheat… there seems to be a very strong correlation between the people who cheat and the people who don’t get it after it’s over. Week two is freaking hard. Put the cookie down.)
In the end, it all comes down to that commercial from the 80s… sing with me now!
You are what you eat from your head down to your feet Things like meat and fish and eggs you need to build up muscle tissue Uh Oh! Appitite control? More Protein! We need energy. All the motors in your body need a lot of fuel to go on Things like carbohydrates fats and proteins, vitamins and so on. What’s left over forms the building blocks you need, indeed, to grow on! Yes you are what you swallow so the next time you feel hollow Don’t just fill your face with any old kind of treat! This goes for every kid or 6 foot athlete Yes you really are is what you eeeeeeeeat!