Current low fat recommendations

I find it interesting to note how dietary recommendations have changed over the years.  It seems the more "low fat" the authorities recommend us to go the fatter we as a population are becoming.  Just today I heard a news report on the radio that commented on Australians now being as obese as Americans and that the rate of obesity has accelerated.  This has lead to calls for an obesity summit.  It does make you wonder if current dietary recommendations are working or are they in fact just plain wrong?
This leads me to compare three separate pieces of dietary information that I have encountered recently.
1. the High fat low carb diet I have been researching and experimenting with for the last few months;
2. a school newsletter article that came home yesterday stating current NSW Health and Heart Foundation dietary recommendations, and
3. An article from 1999 in a mothers' magazine that talks specifically about children's dietary needs of fat and the recommendations from the then Australian Dietary Guidelines for Children and Adolescence.

High Carb Low Fat

1. Low Carb, High fat flies directly in the face of current guidelines.  By reducing carbohydrates, specifically starchy and highly refined carbs we lose weight.  Sugars from all sources increase our blood sugar and trigger an insulin response.  Insulin's job is to process this excess blood sugar and shunt it off into the fat cells. Carbohydrates are digested more quickly than fats and proteins so don't provide satiety and lead to peaks and troughs in blood sugar levels and the resulting insulin responses. This is fueling obesity and other chronic conditions as many of us are developing a condition called insulin resistance by eating this way.  By increasing fat and protein content of our diet we are satisfied for longer so tend to eat less frequently. The fats are essential for satiety and for nutrients and actually assist with weight loss because they keep insulin in check.

2014 NSW Health and Heart Foundation recommendations

2. The school newsletter articles that came home from school yesterday are really interesting and encapsulate the current thinking. The accompanying flyer states a few  "facts" that I will list here:
Did you know?
* National surveys found that the combined level of overweight and obese children in Australia has more than doubled in recent years.
* A major study revealed that the number of overweight and obese children in NSW rose from 1 in 10 in 1985 to 1 in 4 in 2004.
* Healthy snacks help kids and teens meet their daily nutritional needs. Snacks based on fruit, vegies, reduced fat dairy products and whole grains are the healthiest choices. Limit snacks that are high in sugar or saturated fats - such as chips, cakes and chocolate- which can cause children to put on excess weight.
* Reduced fat milk for children over 2 years of age is a nutritious drink and great source of calcium.

And here is a recipe to make for your child's breakfast:
Ingredients
2 eggs
1 tablespoon honey
2 1/2 cups of low fat milk
3 ripe bananas, sliced
2 cups of self raising flour
2 tablespoons of sugar
2 tsp margarine
3 medium apples, peeled, cored and grated.
Method
In a large bowl beat eggs, margarine and milk. In a separate bowl mix flour and sugar, add grated apple and stir into the wet mixture until smooth.
Heat oil in pan over medium heat. Add 2-3 tablespoons of mixture. Flip when bubbles appear and cook until golden. Serve with banana and drizzled honey.
Makes ten.
The picture shows a serve as a stack of three with thick sliced bananas between each layer and a sizeable amount of honey drizzled over the whole thing.

Is it a coincidence that children are eating more often and are getting fatter?  At my child's Primary school there is a breakfast club where the kids can get a feed of cereal and milk or toast and a glass of juice before school.  Around an hour or so later the kids are encouraged to have 'fruit break' to maintain their energy and concentration levels.  Then another hour or so later at ten past eleven they have lunch.  Lunch has been pushed to earlier in the day and been swapped with recess because it was decided that the children's energy was flagging and they needed a nutritious lunch earlier in the day so that they could make it through the next session.  They then have a recess break, for another snack at 1.15pm.  That is a lot of the day focussed on feeding the kids so as to keep them mentally alert. Sounds like the peaks and troughs of a high carbohydrate diet to me.
Then we wonder why they are getting fat and now need to increase physical activity to counteract all the eating. I wonder what would happen if we fed the kids something substantial like sausages and eggs for breakfast.  How many of them would be needing fruit break or even that early lunch?  They'd be able to spend more time playing in their breaks rather than eating too.
A substantial lunch - at lunch time - and they wouldn't be rushing home from school absolutely ravenous and prepared to eat any junk that they could find.  Maybe just a small snack and then they'd be right until dinner.

Now number three, the dietary guidelines I found from 1999.

This article is in response to a mother asking how much fat she should include in her child's diet.  The article is from Nursing Mothers' Newsletter summer 1999 and quotes the then current Australian Dietary guidelines for children and adolescents.
The association between high fat intakes and diseases in adulthood has led to important public health messages urging Australian adults to eat less fat.  It is important to remember that children are not simply little adults and they have special nutrient needs related to their growth and development.
Fat is important for growth because it is a concentrated source of energy. Although children's growth rate slows down during toddlerhood and school years they still require a higher energy intake per kilogram of body weight than adults. A moderate amount of fat in the diet is important to meet those needs.
Fat not only provides energy but also other important components for growth, such as essential fatty acids for cell structure and central nervous system development and precursors for the synthesis of eicosanoids ( such as prostaglandins).  Fat is also a vehicle for dietary sources of fat soluble vitamins. For these reasons low fat diets are not suitable for children under five years......

So in the intervening years 1999 to the present low fat diets have become appropriate for the under fives.  We never hear about the positives to our nutrition of consuming fat.  Fat is labeled as just fat and hence bad for us.  No wonder people get confused about what to eat.  Our health authorities are not exactly being very honest with us. I also don't believe that all of those attributes of fat as an essential nutrient for our bodies cuts out at age five, either.

I am glad that I ignored the low fat advice for my children. I always believed that their growing brains needed fat ( I had never really considered all the other reasons they may have needed fat) and unless they showed definite signs of obesity I would not ever have thought to make them switch to low fat.  My children are 18, 16 and 12 and are slim.  They have never had or needed a low fat diet.  I am glad that I am more informed about fat now and just wish I hadn't spent years trying to adhere to a low fat diet for myself. My skinniest child is now 6 foot 3 and still a bean pole.  He loves his meat and fat.  If anyone is proof that a high fat diet doesn't make you fat, he is. His example is probably the reason why I thought that there may be something in this new way of eating and thus I decided to give it a try myself.

It's now more than two weeks since I have started eating low carb high fat again.  The transition has been much easier than when I first started in February. This time round the sugar cravings (so far) are less and my sweet tooth is greatly diminished, but like any good addict I'm sure it wouldn't take much to push me back to a life of debauchery. Already I have greatly increased energy, I feel lighter and have lost some centimetres around my middle.  I haven't weighed or measured myself, but my clothes feel looser.

Finally, I will end this blog post with some words of wisdom from Dr Seuss.  He has a quote for everything doesn't he? Ellie, my one year old loves the Dr Seuss' ABC book and every time I read this page I think of David Gillespie's Sweet Poison.....

Five weeks down

And yes I am still addicted to sugar!!  I would love nothing better than to jump into a big vat of chocolate and wallow around in it for a few hours. 
There have been loads of temptations over the last week.  I have lightened up on the kids and have allowed them more carbs and sugar than they were getting as they have been complaining bitterly about the totalitarian regime that they have found themselves under. So I relented and bought sugar and digestives biscuits and white pasta. I haven't eaten any and neither have I been tempted to. But Evan was brandishing around some fun sized chocolate bars and some lollies after getting home from camp last week.  So nice of the kids to want to share with their mother.  And it would have been so easy to just have one little one, I so wanted to.  Instead I popped it in the fridge for later, and as happens to anything vaguely yummy around here, IT DOESN'T LAST LONG. I looked a day or two later and it was long gone.  Good. Phew.
My brother is visiting atm and keeps popping over with yummy treats.  The kids are stoked.  I'm so tempted by the Lindt chocolates and chocolate smothered biscuits.  I have resisted so far.  But a girl is not a saint, so I don't know how long I will last.  Particularly as tonight they have offered to bring dessert. Sigh.
I do have a few strategies in place, however.  I have been making my own chocolate with coconut oil, cocoa and stevia which I keep in the freezer.  It is great to have when the cravings strike.  It hits the spot until the desire passes.  I have been eating ALOT of that lately.  Fresh whipped cream with a dash of vanilla is another great thing to have in the fridge.  It tastes so good and definitely feels indulgent.  A great big dollop of fresh whipped cream and a small sprinkle of blueberries makes a fabulous dessert and doesn't leave you feeling at all deprived.  My brother brought some strawberries over too which went a treat with the whipped cream.  Full fat plain Greek yoghurt works well too and of course nibbling on cheese instead of bikkies helps.  But you really do need to have something in place, because these tempting social situations crop up with surprising regularity.


I wasn't going to weigh myself this week, But I kinda did.  I started out just measuring myself with the tape measure.  I had noticed that my undies felt a little looser, so I checked out my hip measurement. Up until now that measurement has sat at around 108-107cm and really didn't look like moving at all.  This morning I clocked it at 105cm, so that would explain the extra room in my undies.  I went on and measured my waist and ribs. It looks like another 3.5cm have come off my waist.  It is now 88cm, last week it was 91.5cm.  My ribs seem to have stayed stable at around 86cm.
My waist started at 98cm five weeks ago.  I have lost 10cm, that is pretty impressive.  My size 16 clothes are now ridiculously baggy and I am wearing size 14 with comfort.  Some garments are even
starting to feel a little looser. than others.
Ok after those positive measurements with which to start the day, I had to jump on the scales. I know my scales are dodgy, so I don't place too much confidence in them, but it looked like my weight was sitting around 71kg...... I wonder, will I make it to below 70kg by Easter?  That is still another 4 or 5 weeks away, so hopefully if I keep on track I will.


Here's to a positive week, with my brother still here for a few days yet I wonder if I will fall off the wagon by next week?  Only way to find out is to tune in next week......

D Week

The time is drawing ever nearer.

The last of the family birthdays are over and we finally have a clear stretch until Easter to really give this diet a good go.

The run up time has been a chance for me to read up on everything that I can find about the different variations of the diet.  The latest book I am reading is Grain Brain, which I am particularly interested in seeing as mum is suffering from dementia.  It is such a horrible disease.

Mum had a reasonably healthy diet, she always maintained a sensible weight and she exercised regularly.  The two most notable things about mum's diet was her breakfasts and the obsession she had with eating fruit. 
She firmly believed that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.  She took to this idea with gusto.  Her mornings always started with a cup of warm water with a teaspoon of salt.  Not sure why she did this, maybe some sort of cleansing thing.  Then she made herself a big, and I mean BIG, bowl of cereal which consisted of a number of cereals; for example, weet-bix, all bran, muesli, and sultana bran. Then she would top her bowl of cereal with some more 'healthy' grains, any combination of: lecithin, unprocessed bran, and oat bran. Then on top of that she would slice up an entire banana, a goodly portion of dates, prunes and sometimes some stewed fruit.  This monstrosity would then need a full pint of milk to be mixed with it in increments so that she could get it all down.

But it didn't stop there. After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Mum would then cook herself a piece of toast which she would top with margarine and Vegemite and eat with a cup of tea.  In later years her tea changed from black tea to green tea as she found out about the importance of antioxidants.  If mum was having a particularly strenuous day, that is, on the days she played tennis, she would also throw in a hard boiled egg with her toast for good measure.  And just when you thought that this woman could not possibly fit anymore food in, she would finish off breakfast with a fresh sliced orange.

This breakfast process was epic.  It would take her ages to get through it all.  She would start before any of us even got up, and was still going as we were leaving the house for our various daytime activities.  The whole breakfast was like a ritual and mum relied on it to 'keep her regular'. She also tried to value add her breakfast with as many of the health food fads that were going around. She really did take the ' breakfast is the most important meal of the day' adage to a whole new level.

Of course, after all that breakfast she didn't need morning tea, and she would have a reasonably small lunch.  Lunch was often an egg or perhaps sardines on toast.  In later years, she became obsessed with having banana sandwiches for lunch.  Usually lunch was finished off with a cake, slice or bikkie with her cup of tea.

Mum was pretty good, she tended not to snack on junk, so generally didn't have afternoon tea either.  Though in later years when us grown up kids came to visit, she would (sociably) join us with cakes or bikkies for morning or afternoon tea.  She was good, though, and never over ate the sweet snacks.  I can't say that I was that self controlled. What she did eat a lot of, though, was fruit.  She loved fruit and would eat numerous pieces per day. She always had an apple a day, usually a Granny Smith, and during stone fruit season she would add in peaches or nectarines between meals.  She loved pears too and would always eat at least one of those a day in season as well. Rockmelon was also a particular favourite and dessert would quite often be sliced fruit and ice cream. After all fruit is good for you, right?  Therefore, more must be even better.

Dinner was pretty much the meat, potatoes and three veg.  Dad had gall and reflux problems, so food had to be kept pretty simple to keep him comfortable.  We didn't always have dessert, but it was definitely a preferred option when we could.  Mum credited herself as coming from a long line of sweet tooths, in fact they were just good eaters all round. A favourite family saying from her childhood was 'better food bills than doctor's bills'.

In the evening mum would finish her day with a cup of tea and usually a couple of wheatmeal biscuits.  She loved her fibre and whole grains.  These helped keep her bowels moving and her appetite under control. She would have a piece of fruit before dinner and also later at night before her evening cup of tea.

Basically, she had what would be regarded as an incredibly healthy diet.  It was well balanced, with plenty of fruit and veg and supplemented with a few of the fashionable super foods of the time. So for someone like mum to come down with such a devastating form of dementia is perplexing.  I know that my current diet is no where near as 'good' as hers.  It freaks me out a bit that she could eat so mindfully, healthily and still succumb to the ravages of that dreadful disease.  I wonder what if anything that she could have done differently. When you hear all the recommendations from the experts about how to ward off disease, mum was doing all that.

Her weakness for sweets did become more apparent as she aged ( I suspect the dementia was starting to kick in) and she, in an almost child like way, started to prefer dessert over main course.  She started to get a bit naughty and fill up on strawberry milk shakes and eat minimal main course so that she could get onto dessert. I thought that it was just the dementia bringing out the child in her.  But now a few years down the track, I am starting to read that dementia is possibly type 3 diabetes.

As the books say, correlation is not causation, but it has been noted that people suffering with dementia seem to have a very sweet tooth.  A handy way for nursing home staff to administer oral medication is by lacing it with jam or honey.  The dementia patients suck it down and look for more.

Does the sweet tooth cause the dementia or the dementia demand sweets? Or is there only coincidence and no cause and effect here at all?

One of the more interesting experiments of going sugar and grain free will be to see if (short term at least) the brain feels sharper.  Every now and then I get the odd brain fog day.  I often wonder whether this is a symptom, that will increase in frequency as I age to the point where I slip into dementia. I remember with mum's dementia diagnosis, she really didn't get the final diagnosis until we had effectively eliminated every other possible reason for her behaviour.  It was like we had to physically trip over it before we could accept it as true. Because the beginning stages are a slow progression that mimics so many other conditions, not the least of, just plain old fashioned ageing.

I am calling this D Week as it is the week to get started.  The kids have been warned, and have had a few weeks to get used to the idea.  They have been allowed to eat and drink and indulge the last of their favourite foods.  The popper of juice in their lunch boxes has been discontinued, much to many complaints.  I have put bread and pasta in the freezer, if they desire it enough they can go and make their own.  I personally wont be eating or cooking rice, pasta, bread, potatoes or any other grain.  If they want to supplement they can, but I shall not be doing it for them.  There is still a bit of sugar in the cupboard, once it has gone, it will be dextrose or nothing for them.  I will buy them honey and unsweetened breakfast cereals if they so desire, but I shall not be eating them.  Basically they are welcome to stick with their unsweetened grains and if they want sweet stuff, they can eat honey or go out buy their own......

I have already started cooking with the good oils and have ample butter in the fridge.  The Nutellex is still there too if they so desire, but I will stick with butter and the yummy A2 cream I have found.

Now it's time to just pick the day, and do that three day detox..........