The Nutrition Grouch

50: What's Enough? Part II: Obsessions

Half of the things that we think we “have to do” are not essential.  “I have to watch that football game”.  “I have to get my daughter’s teacher a Christmas present”.  “I have to get new clothes for work”.   “I have to get to the gym today”. And many of the things that we “obsess about” and the goals that we pursue in the long term, really aren’t all that important in the grand scheme of things.  And yet we keep ourselves so busy pursuing things that are not essential to our health and happiness.   In today’s episode the Nutrition Grouch suggests that you take the time to figure out what your “core essentials” are to your health and happiness on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis.  Figure out what you actually “really” need to take care of to further your health and happiness and what things can you forget about or let slide. I’m not saying that we forgo our duties and responsibilities, aim for mediocrity, be lazy or take the easy path, rather there are things in this life that matter and things that do not.  Put your time and energy into the things that matter and minimize the rest. Some of the topics in today’s episode include:  * Not everyone needs the drive of Tom Brady to be successful (1:57) * Sometimes the right conditions are more important than talent for success (3:50) * Aaron Rodgers won a Super Bowl and said, “now what?” (8:50) * Singular obsessions and mastering your craft (10:08) * Everyone’s got trauma: my PhD and career are mine (11:44) * My obsession with nutrition education hasn’t led to success (13:08) * I’m just not willing to “play the game” (14:04) * Changing the culture of health & wellness and your relationship with it (15:29) * The dark side of obsessions: unintended consequences (19:21) * Finding like-minded, science-based wellness people is nearly impossible (23:20) * Team up together or get squashed (26:12) * Do what you are designed to do (29:06) * A Buffalo Bills Super Bowl will never be enough (32:28) * I HATE Christmas (37:15) * My problem with “Forced Holidays” (37:57) * Giving and receiving gifts is not my cup of tea (40:24) * The time I found out why saying “Good Morning” is SO IMPORTANT (41:39) * I have a two activities per weekend limit (43:21) * If you seek tranquility, do less (44:43) * Our pace of life, diet, and lifestyle are NOT normal, but it doesn’t have to be this way (46:09) * What’s enough?: daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals (51:41) * Unrestrained moderation (53:58)

49: What's Enough?

How much of anything do you really need?  What’s enough to make you happy?  In today’s episode The Nutrition Grouch wrestles with the idea of “what’s enough?”. So many of us have so much, and yet, it never seems to be enough.  Humans have an insatiable appetite for more.  But more isn’t always better and more doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness. In obesity, we clearly have exceeded, “what’s enough?”, in terms of calories.  But why do we consume some so many calories in the first place?  I think it at least partially has to do with our appetite for more, leading us to overextend, spread ourselves too thin, and stress ourselves out. So, in asking, “what’s enough?”, I’m not only asking you to consider what’s enough in terms of calories and pleasure, but I’m searching much further into everything outside of nutrition in your day-to-day lives, material possessions, needs, wants, and desires. By asking, “what’s enough?”, and scaling back on both our caloric and non-caloric needs, wants, and desires, perhaps we can reset our “what’s enough?” equilibrium and carve out more time for meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking, things that will ultimately lead to increased health and happiness. Some of the topics in today’s episode include:  * What’s Enough?, is not minimalism, it’s more like essentialism (1:41) * The myth of “having it all” and being able to “do it all” (2:10) * It sucks getting rid of something you later actually need (6:16) * What were some of your greatest Christmas gifts growing up? (9:05) * Expectation setting (9:05) * The Joneses aren’t that happy (11:32) * Can money buy you happiness? Yes and no (13:39) * Focusing on what you don’t have rather than what you do have (18:02) * “If you’ve got your health, you’ve got the world by the balls” (25:52) * How many cups of coffee do you drink? (28:19) * Use only what you need (29:29) * Flattening your high (31:36) * Dopamine fasting misses the point (34:01) * The Hungry Brain’s advice: moderate palatability foods (36:06) * What’s Enough: Food Frequency, Portion Size, Energy Density (42:27) * Mel Robbins: The Let Them Theory (49:26)

48: What Will Weight Loss Advice in 2035 Look Like?

The world, technology, and the pace of our lives seems to move faster and faster each year.  Your life not that long ago is different in so many ways from the one you’re living today.  But what about the food you eat?  Has that changed?  To any casual social media observer, dietary advice and what you’re supposed to eat seems to change every day. And yet, dietary advice has barely budged in the last 40 years!  Starting in 1980, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) have encouraged Americans to limit saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, alcohol, and yes, excess sugar. In today’s episode, The Nutrition Grouch talks about how the low-carbohydrate advocates rail against the DGAs as being too carbohydrate based, yet their wish to make the DGAs more fat and protein based are historically, environmentally, health, and budgetarily impractical. Overly reductionist scientific factoids and tidbits are great for producing unlimited social media content but lack the big picture programming, interconnectedness, and nuance, housed Ato Z in one location, required for successful lifestyle change and optimal wellness. And finally, the Grouch wishes we could burn all of health & wellness down and start over, beginning anew with only those who meet a minimum bar of competence.  But he knows that won’t happen because marketing, persuasion, and entertainment are what drives nutrition, not cold hard facts and science.  Weight loss advice in 2035 will probably look a lot like it looks in 2025.  The 5 Universal Laws of Weight Loss, Your Behavioral Obesity Risk Score (BORS), The 3 and Only 3 Ways to Cut Calories, and Nutrition Rules and Decision Fatigue will remain pillars of any good lifestyle management plan.  There are no magic cures, quick fixes, or even science (outside of GLP-1s) coming to save us.  Some of the topics in today’s episode include:  * 1980: the first edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) (3:27) * The 7 dietary guidelines of 1980 (3:50) * The 4 dietary guidelines of 2020 – 2025 (4:13) * The DGAs have NEVER promoted eating sugar (5:28) * It’s easier to reduce saturated fat than it is to reduce carbohydrate (8:12) * It’s completely impractical for everyone to eat low carb (8:54) * Food labeling is so deceptive (and yet within the rules) (10:58) * When fad diets become part of your personal identity (14:01) * Mainstream, regular diet advice is BORING! (16:34) * Why are we obese? Occam’s razor: too many calories (17:24) * Keeping the nutrition waters muddy is advantageous to most (22:27) * Why social media cannot and will never work for nutrition education (23:24) * People are ok with being lied to if it makes them feel safe/ok (28:32) * In dieting, nothing is ever new, everything is just recycled (30:09) * All of nutrition can be viewed through one of two lenses/camps (32:45) * Exercising cells in a flask is not exercise (36:48) * I hate supplements, especially in grocery stores (40:10) * An endless amount of overly reductionist nutrition advice (42:18) * Who is best at giving nutrition advice? (43:52) * Timeless nutrition advice (49:32) * Blow up health & wellness and start over from scratch (54:22) * Marketing and entertainment will always dominate nutrition (56:17) * The ENORMOUS DANGER of non expert persuasive speech (58:55)

47: Food Addiction

Food addiction is a somewhat controversial topic.  Can you really be “addicted” to something necessary for life (i.e., food, air, water)?  Based upon the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS), the technical answer is, yes. In today’s episode, The Nutrition Grouch asks whether the identification of food addiction is helpful to clients and practitioners in losing weight or whether it provides a “permission structure” enabling them to continue eating junk food and becoming an excuse for their ultimate failure. Based on the YFAS, 25% of people with overweight or obesity are food addicted but interestingly, so are 11% of normal weight individuals.  Is food addiction concept creep or a simple expression such as “I’m starving” or “I’m freezing” or is there something more to it? While there’s no clear answer to any of these questions, the frontline therapies for people with and without food addiction for weight loss are very similar: medications, lifestyle modification, and bariatric surgery.  We love to blame individuals for addictions; however, culture and environment are often overlooked, ignored or downplayed. Some of the topics in today’s episode include:  * Food addiction as concept creep (0:28) * Is food addiction a permission structure to eat junk food? (3:51) * Food addiction OR life circumstances and food environment? (5:53) * Sometimes your best still just isn’t good enough (7:52) * I’m a defender of fast food, carbs, and ultra processed food (15:36) * Junk food in “selective moderation” (15:57) * Nutrition rules, self-binding, and setting boundaries (17:26) * Eliminate problematic foods you can’t control from your diet (18:14) * The two most accepted methods for identifying food addiction (21:15) * Food addiction prevalence: 25% with overweight/obese and 11% lean individuals (27:07) * Food addiction may be relatively short lived, transient, and self-correcting (31:08) * Is food addiction real? Yes, but you may have to squint to see it (31:48) * How do we treat food addiction? (32:20) * There’s essentially no difference in how you treat someone with or without food addiction (37:08) * I prefer “level of problematic eating” to the term food addiction (39:19) * Chocolate, sex, nicotine, cocaine, and amphetamines (41:40) * What heroin users during the Vietnam war taught us about addiction (45:00) * The woman who just couldn’t stop eating McDonalds (48:12) * I can’t put food addiction in the same category as other addictions (49:47)

46: Food Judgement and Demonization is Holding Us Back

There’s literally nothing you can eat that is universally agreed upon to be good for you.  Not even fruits and vegetables.  You can build out the old food guide pyramid with the foods that people are judging, demonizing, and vilifying with every single category: grains, fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy.  So, what then are we supposed to eat? The basis of all fad diets is fear, avoidance, and demonization that is largely determined not by scientific evidence or superior results, rather, is based upon personal preference and rationalization/justification. In the United States we have a calories problem and there is no “superfooding”, or “nutrienting” our way out of it.  Food judgement and demonization makes some foods untouchable and off-limits but then also limits the options that we have to reduce our calories through portion control and selective moderation. Each food is a tool, a means to an end.  There are no “good” foods or “bad” foods.  Some foods are nutrient dense and fulfill our nutrient needs while others are for pure pleasure. Some of the topics in today’s episode include:  * Food situations I have been judged for (0:50) * Everything You Eat Will Kill You! (8:48) * Clean eating perfectionist health nirvana utopia (11:03) * Weight Loss: It’s Not (All) About the Food (12:48) * Is It Better to Eat 5 or 15 Servings of Fruits and Vegetables? (14:15) * I don’t really like eating fruits and vegetables (15:33) * Everyone rationalizes and justifies what they eat (17:25) * I really like clean eating, but they take it a step too far (21:12) * When the benefit of clean eating wears off (22:27) * I’m not a huge fan of cheat days (27:27) * How Much Junk Food is Too Much Junk Food? (28:34) * The basis of all fad diets: fear, avoidance, and demonization (30:33) * Different purposes: there are no “good” or “bad” foods (35:05)