14: Am I "allowed" sugar, butter, flour or milk?

0:00:00
 Welcome to the No Wellness Wankery podcast and my favorite little episode each week, we answer your questions. I know I get to ask Lyndi so many questions, but I want to share the love around a little bit. My name is Jenna D’Apice and I’m here with Lyndi

0:00:46
 Hello, Lyndi Cohen here. And guys, thank you for sending us all your questions.

0:00:48
 We have so many good questions, so many.

0:00:49
 I'm like, oh, that's a good one. I would've thought of that.

0:00:54
 Yeah, and if you have more, please send me a DM on Instagram, nude underscore nutritionist, leave me a voice message, and then we can all benefit from answering your question on the podcast, that'd be so great, thank you. Today's podcast question comes from Erin, let's hear. Hi, Lindy, my name's Erin. I adore you and your podcast. You have helped me so much in the last few days of listening to it. I've listened to every episode and yesterday finally deleted my fitness file. Yay! So my question to you is, in the way that the world is currently in regards to our food access, I feel like a lot of us are having to go back to basics with our food and use things like flour, normal sugar, real butter, full fat meats. And I guess I'm just wondering how do we remove our worry and our fear about the calories in these kinds of foods? I personally really love cooking but I still have that fear and worry in the back of my mind of should I be eating real flour, full fat butter, fat on meats, real sugar. It's very much ingrained in our brains and I guess when these are the only foods we have access to, how do we eliminate that worry? Oh, you got cut off there for like a little moment Erin, but this is such a good question. Firstly, yay for deleting my fitness file. You know I'm a fan of that. Very proud of you and very happy for you. And anyone listening, if you want to go ahead and delete it too, I think that's a really great move. This is such a good question. So basically what you're asking is, how do we be okay with the And I think let's take a ride back and think about those people who a few generations ago didn't have to worry about how many calories they were eating. They simply cooked more at home and they ate the food and they moved on with their lives. And I think something that can help us let go of that guilt and the worry is to think about them and go, they live happy, normal lives. And in fact, as a result of eating foods that sometimes have a little bit more fat in them or a bit more of that real deal, it can sometimes help you feel a little more satisfied in the food you're eating. Think about the French way of eating. They tend to eat butter, they eat the full fat delicious version of it. As a result, you can feel more satisfied eating food and therefore as a result, you're just not thinking about your next meal. I don't know about you but when I was eating low fat, that healthy idealistic way of eating, I would first constantly think about food, and then I would never feel fully satisfied after I'd eaten. So I think there is such benefit in us going back to basics, as you say, and eating a little

0:03:27
 bit more closely to a traditional diet. I found this happening a lot in my life at the moment. So I've moved in with my partner about a year ago, and he has not been on a diet his whole life and he really loves cooking. So there's a lot of juxtaposition in what I would normally cook and eat. Like even so similar to this question, every time the bag of flour comes out, my head's like what are you doing with flour or why are we going through the butter so quickly and all of these things. But the biggest difference I have noticed is I hardly ever snack after dinner anymore because I've had a really nice meal and I'm really satisfied Whereas before and I was like cooking up a little bit of meat and some vegetables and nothing I would like fight the temptation to have about 1200 snacks after dinner because I was just never satisfied Yeah, and then eventually you would have 1200 snacks after dinner. Yeah, 1201 So it's such a different you're right. It's so satisfying.

0:04:26
 It is so satisfying and I think this whole pure, clean, healthy aesthetic has ruined those very normal foods for us. So, we think about, well, why can't you have normal sugar? Well, what's the healthier alternative is often honey. When you look at honey versus plain sugar, your body kind of uses them the exact same way. Sugar is sugar to your body, but for some reason we've been told that honey is a much healthier alternative, it's not. It's still just sugar. So I think we just need to see it as such. And you're having refined flour. Well, what is so awful about that? What are you really using it for? I think when we're demonizing these foods that are perfectly normal, that can be part of a healthy diet, I think we're going in the wrong direction. My only advice would be to crowd in vegetables and fruit and whole grains and eat all those back-to-basics stuff, cook at home, and then just aim for those five serves of veggies a day. I don't want that to feel like another food rule, like one more thing that you have to strive to do, but only 5% of Aussies are eating enough vegetables. We keep looking for the golden answer when it comes to our health, and that golden answer is to eat more. Eat more vegetables. It's not to cut out, become obsessive about those small amounts of these other things you're having in your diet. It is naturally just crowd in more of the healthy stuff, cook at home more, make foods that are really satisfying for you, and move on with your life. I think that is a really healthy way to live.

0:05:56
 Another part of that question that really interested me was when she was saying full fat meats. I know I've always grown up, you buy the more expensive meat because it's heart smart and it's extra lean. And then I've seen when I've gone to cook at other people's houses, I can immediately taste the meat is not heart smart, extra lean because it tastes different. And it's a lot cheaper and it makes me think, is this not as healthy for me to be eating? Should I be eating this more sometimes? Or if it's just a more budget-friendly way, is eating meat like that fine?

0:06:26
 It is a more budget-friendly way and I think the way that people used to eat meat is that they would eat an entire animal. And I think we've kind of gotten really far away from that where we go like, we'll just eat the chicken breast and we won't eat the entire animal. I think what we want to be doing is generally eating a little bit less meat than we all do. And personally, I would go for the normal version. It doesn't have to be the lean meat because I think sometimes what happens is you go for that lean meat, you don't feel satisfied, you eat it all the time, you eat one type of meat all the time, one kind of recipe and I just don't think that's satisfying or enjoyable. I like the idea of you should be able to have the full fat meat, whatever that means, and then adding in lots of those vegetables, adding in the legumes and not eating it all the time. I don't know if you know this, but in the Mediterranean diet, when you look at the frequency of eating meat, they typically will only eat meat like once or twice a month.

0:07:20
 Once or twice a month?

0:07:22
 Yeah.

0:07:23
 It's all like fish or what do they eat?

0:07:24
 Yeah, it's a lot of fish, a lot of vegetarian meals as well. Yeah, mostly seafood and maybe a little bit of chicken, but a red meat would only be once or twice a month. And it's like a more of a special occasion kind of thing because if you think about it, let's say you had an animal, you're on a farm, you slaughtered an animal to eat it, you would work your way through that food and you wouldn't get to eat all that much animal because it wouldn't. Whereas nowadays we have such an oversupply of eating animal that we only eat one part of the animal, we leave the rest for other stuff and we eat it often. So I've recently been trying to generally eat less meat, not as a diet rule but just something I want to do for my health. And so when I do eat meat, I do want to have, maybe I'll have lamb on a Friday night as like a yummy thing to do. And I do still eat a bit of meat, but just definitely not nearly as much as I used to.

0:08:13
 The part of the question I think that stands out to me is like, how do you reduce the worry about eating these foods? How do you? Is it about just making sure every recipe has loads of veggies and things in it so you can still feel good about it? But shouldn't you just still feel good about it regardless of that?

0:08:35
 Yeah, I think nutritionism does tell us that there is one way to be healthy. We think it's this high protein, low carb way of eating and remembering that there are many ways to be healthy. And that way of being healthy for you might look like cooking all your food at home or a lot of your food, which it sounds like you're doing, Erin, which is amazing, and using ingredients that are familiar and pretty unprocessed foods, really, and cooking them at home and enjoying them. Most of the time, they'll have lots of vegetables and whole grains and sometimes it'll be a cookie and it'll be delicious or sometimes it'll be just a meat cook-up and that's going to be part of a healthy diet, but it doesn't have to be perfect all the time and you definitely don't have to go for those healthified versions of all of those things to be perfectly healthy. So whenever you're kind of in this state, just think about, are there people who live healthily eating this style of diet? Yes, there absolutely are. There's not just one way to be healthy. And this is just going to be your version of what feels good in your body, what makes you feel healthy. And of course, if you're ever concerned, you can go get a blood test and be like, okay, cool, I've been eating this way for a while.

0:09:40
 Yeah, and I'm fine.

0:09:40
 And see how it is. Yeah, exactly. And then just like, you know, get the blood test results to make yourself have that peace of mind.

0:09:47
 I think that is such a good question, especially when people are at the moment looking at their grocery bills and all these things. And sometimes these are just the cheaper options. You're like, honey's expensive. And a bag of sugar really isn't.

0:09:58
 Absolutely. So we've just got to find what works for us.

0:10:01
 Great question. And as always, if you have any questions you've been wondering, record yourself with a voice note, send it through to lindynude underscore nutritionist on Instagram, and we'd love to

0:10:12
 answer it. Thanks guys.

0:10:14
 Thank you, Erin, for your fabulous question. We'll see you next time.

0:10:16
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