Have you taken the Transformative Eating Quiz? If you haven’t taken it yet, I invite you to do so here https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/slenderquiz so you can learn how close your eating is to an approach that actually succeeds in getting you to your most vital, slender body.
With this quiz, we’re discovering the areas that women are doing better with (see previous email, dated November 18, 2019 for more), and we’re discovering the areas women are doing worse with.
We are discovering some areas of great opportunity for improvement and we are discussing one of these today.
One of the areas of great weakness, or opportunity, among survey respondents is eating fruit every day.
It’s recommended that you eat 6 ounces of whole, fresh or frozen, fruit every day for breakfast and again for lunch.
This is an area in which most quiz respondents are falling short. The most common response in the survey was “I do not eat any whole fruit,” with > 32% endorsing this response.
The second most common response was “I have whole fruit 1 – 2X/ day most days” (>20% of respondents) and the third most common response (>17%) was “I have whole fruit at least once per day several times per week.”
This is a good start, but you’ll be more successful with your healthy eating and weight loss when you get consistent about having fruit every day for breakfast and for lunch. Less than 9% of quiz respondents indicate that they are consistently having whole fruit 2X / day every day.
This is a great missed opportunity! Whole fruit has so much nutritional benefit, and is so filling and satisfying!
We have to be wise consumers, and be wary about all the packaged foods that list nutritional benefits. The greatest nutrition is packaged by nature, in real, whole food, not the highly processed food like substances with packages that tout their nutritional benefits.
The nutritional benefits in whole foods just FAR outweigh the nutritional benefits of highly processed foods.
Just check out some of the nutrition in a strawberry—(that we know of — there’s likely many more beneficial elements we don’t know of):
- Vitamins: thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenic acidd (B5), vitamin B6, folate (B9), choline, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K
- Minerals: calcium, iron, magmesium, manganese, phosphorous, potassium, sodium
- Flavonoids: antocyanins, flavanols, flavonols, phenolic acids such as hydroxybenzoic acid and hydroxycinnamic acid, fiestin, ellagic acid, ellagic acid glycoside, and ellagitannins
And here is a very important distinction about fruit that flies in the face of so many diet recommendations: it is NOT recommended that you JUICE your fruit, or eat dried fruit.
Why? Juices and smoothies are sold to us as so very nutritionally beneficial.
But, the truth is that the greatest nutritional benefit of fruit is gained from eating it whole, not breaking it down.
Pretty much every time we break a food down like that– to juice or to a fine powder (such as in sugar and flour)– we reduce the nutritional benefit. At the same time, we often add non-nutritious elements to make things hold together.
So juice may have nutritional benefits, but not as much as the whole food.
Now, if you’re like me, this idea may be annoying. Juice or smoothies are enjoyable and easy to drink. So, if they have nutritional benefits, why not keep drinking them?
So, I want you to understand this big reason why: the delivery of sugar to the brain with both juice and dried fruit is excessive. What we discover about this is that it results in compromised hormone systems, including the hormones that indicate that you are full.
In other words, drinking juice, eating dried fruit, and eating foods with added sugars results in a broken satiety system– we can’t recognize when we’ve eaten enough.
Have you noticed that with sweets? You can feel full after your meal, but still make room for ice cream. In fact, you can eat and eat the ice cream until the whole container is gone, even after you concluded that you were too full to eat another bite of the “real good!”
That’s an indication that the hormones that give you feelings of satiation aren’t working correctly.
Not good! It’s definitely preferable to be able to recognize when we’ve had enough to eat, right?
Eating the overly sweet foods also produces an excessive dopamine hit to the brain, which tends to cause cravings and addictive behavior. And cravings make our healthy eating and weight loss journey just SO MUCH HARDER!
I experienced this as I experimented with reducing sugar in my diet.
When I first drastically reduced my sugar intake, I continued drinking juice and eating dried fruit. I continued eating dried mangos and took up drinking kombucha, following a rule not to exceed 5g of sugar per serving. This was only true of a minority of juices, and I felt very virtuous doing this!
I really enjoyed my kombucha and my dried fruit and I didn’t want to give them up!
In fact, when I took a step back and observed my behavior with these foods, it was clear that I overindulged in them.
I was proud that I wasn’t eating red licorice any more, but I was behaving very much the same way with the dried mangos as I had with the candy— I was eating them in an obsessive way, eating far more than I intended.
So I researched the issue further, and I discovered why my behavior with the dried mangos was the same as my behavior with eating candy.
It’s because the brain can’t really tell the difference. The brain reacts to the amount of sugar and the release of dopamine.
To your brain, there really isn’t a difference between the candy and the dried fruit. Both have excessive amounts of sugar, and both produce excessive amounts of dopamine response in the brain.
And the body kicks into compensation mode, sending us depressing chemicals to downgrade the excessive dopamine response. This is just part of the downside to eating excessively processed, pleasing food-like substances.
Listen, if you’ve heard my story, you know– I was very committed to improving my health and releasing my excess weight. My life was headed seriously downhill!
So, I decided to go the next step in reducing sugar in my diet, and eliminating cravings. I increased the whole fruit I was eating and I eliminated dried fruit and juice from my diet.
And the results were amazing! The cravings stopped and I quit “jonesing” for those sweet foods. And I have to tell you, eliminating cravings makes healthy eating and weight loss SO MUCH EASIER!
Another great benefit of eating whole fruit, while eliminating added sugars, juices, and dried fruit from my diet, was that the chronic pain and inflammation I had lived with for over 30 years virtually disappeared, leaving me free to walk and hike again to my heart’s content.
That made the sacrifice so worthwhile! Having my health, being free from pain, being able to be as active as I want—these are more important to me than enjoying “sweet treats.”
At this point, avoiding juice and dried fruit doesn’t feel like a sacrifice any more and I really enjoy my whole fruit twice per day.
So, I invite you to follow this simple guidance. For the next week, eliminate added sugars, juice, wine (juice + ethanol), and dried fruit and, instead, eat 6 ounces of fresh or frozen whole fruit with breakfast and again with lunch every day.
Notice how it makes you feel. I’d be interested to hear!
I am wishing you great health and sending my warm regards, Dr. Ginny
