Normal Eating. Agree or Disagree?

pineapple_jojo wrote: »

Normal is as normal does. What is normal?

I think that is kind of the point, normal is what we make of it. Its different for different people and at different times.

ccruz985 wrote: »

Written in 1983, before we had such a large amount of sugar and sodium added to our foods, before so many things on our table were processed the way they are now. Food itself isn't the same as it was in 1983.

I remember 1983 very well. That's not really true.

Things available in 1983 include fast food restaurants, regular restaurants, "processed foods" (whether you mean frozen meals, which we called TV dinners and which were on average probably less nutritious than the ones available today, frozen veg, frozen fries, pop tarts, koolaid, soda, mac & cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt (less common than now), pasta sauce in a jar, dried pasta, sliced and packaged bread, potato chips, ice cream, packaged cookies, etc.).

Some of these choices were high cal, low nutrition, and had lots of sugar and sodium.

Some were not, but merely made cooking a nutritious meal out of mostly whole foods easier for some (things that I mostly do not use now, but we did when I was a kid in '83: salad dressing, Hamburger Helper, canned vegetables and fruits (we lived in a cold climate and while we ate some frozen veg I think eating canned not frozen was more common then), canned soups, bread, canned tomatoes (we didn't have "pasta" just "lasagna" or "spaghetti"), ground beef, so on. Also, sigh, fish sticks, which I have a weird nostalgia for even though I lived in a place where we got fresh fish a lot and I appreciated that too.

There were fewer low sodium options for things like canned beans and soups than now, and like I said TV dinners were pretty bad compared to many of the options now.

The difference is that the packaged options and cooking helps available now are more interesting and diverse and come in a wider range, which may mean more people use them more often, but if they choose the healthier ones who cares if they are "processed." And if they don't want those, well, there were people who could and did live on canned (high sodium) soup, cookies, and mac & cheese back then too.

I do think there's been a cultural shift where food is more commonly available (and often more appealing -- if someone brings in a variety of interesting sweets from a local bakery or a lunch place that has good desserts I', more likely to be tempted or overeat than if they bring in a bag of Oreos or even a box of girl scout cookies, and that is more common now than then, when the latter would have been the more available option). I also think going out to eat or ordering in is more common, because the options are wider, but again that doesn't mean less healthy -- in 1983, the only options where I lived for take out was Chinese or pizza or fast food (maybe Thai, but I think that was later where I was), and same with delivery (pizza and Chinese). As of 1993 and certainly now (although this is partly living in a big city), the options for delivery or take out are endless, and include lots of much healthier options, but also are more tempting because there are more choices. Same with the prepackaged stuff at supermarkets or the deli options at many supermarkets, probably.

Again, it's not about the foods being different -- it is EASY to eat from whole foods now (easier, in fact, in that much more is available there too), and it was EASY to eat not very nutritious packaged foods then if that's what you wanted to do.

An even more significant cultural shift is that I think it's more acceptable to not cook at all now, probably because so many people don't learn how, live alone for ages (cooking for a family used to be a pressure to cook real meals, i.e., healthfully), maybe by now people grew up not learning what a normal meal is (although I think this varies a lot from subculture to subculture, as I don't see that being the case with my co-workers or neighbors), so on.

Anyway, I would agree that it's easier to overeat now if you don't think about it and lack internal breaks that kick in sufficiently regularly, but NOT because the food is meaningfully different in terms of being inherently less healthful or more caloric.

I think there are things to disagree and agree with in that passage about what normal is.
It was a lot of words to say normal eating is not needing to think about eating so much and just do what feels right for you.
I don't know that the normal described is a starting place for many people these days.

If I were writing about what normal eating is I might say something like:
Normal eating is not cutting a lot of foods out of your diet unless medically required. Normal is not being afraid to eat what those around you eat.
Normal eating can be 1 meal a day, 3 meals or more. Meal timing and size of meals are preference as long as you stick to the right number of calories. Do what works for you.
Normal is not having to eat a particular list of foods to be healthy. You don't have to have a perfect diet to manage your weight. Just need the right calories.
Normal is realizing that different people have different calorie needs and you should figure out your own. Your partner or kids can and should eat differently.
Normal is using tools. If you feel like you need to track what you eat it is a helpful tool. If you feel like you need to be more accurate a food scale is helpful. If you need to look up nutritional information and read labels then do so. If you need to plan or limit your menu most days go ahead. Pay attention and learn while using tools so you can be more flexible someday.
Normal eating is having perspective. A very high calorie meal every once in awhile is not going to do you in. It is not normal to gain or lose 20 lbs of fat in one week. Get to know about water weight fluctuations. They are normal. Look at loss or gain over time. It is not normal to be devastated if your weight goes up 1 lb.
Normal is not assigning a moral value to food. Food is food. It isn't normal to hate yourself or call yourself names because you ate a cheeseburger or some chocolate instead of broccoli. You did not kick a puppy or commit a major crime so don't act like it.
Normal is eating enough to fuel your body. You don't have to starve yourself or eat or drink weird things to lose weight. Set a reasonable goal and lose more slowly. Realize that your body works fine and does not need jumpstarted or detoxified.
These days it is normal to overeat. Eating to satisfaction can be somewhat unreliable so it is okay to stop before you feel full. You might learn to recognize full over time. If you don't that is not the end of the world. You can be okay knowing you have eaten enough even if you could eat more. Type of food may make a difference in how satisfied you feel rather than just amounts.
It is normal to feel sad, angry, bored, etc. Food often accompanies our emotional events. There is a level of medicating with food that is not normal or healthy. If you have a history of always using food when you are bored or upset it is a very good idea to develop and practice different coping tools. It is hard to go through life abusing food, alcohol or drugs and help is out there.

Yeah, no. My husband and I were talking yesterday about how we ate last year before my diabetes diagnosis and the things I miss most. We used to have oven fresh chocolate cookies almost every day, plus fresh baked biscuits with every meal. The sweet spot on cookies was between two (enough) and three (plenty.)

Each of those cookies has about 45g net carbs, which is about the maximum amount I can have before my blood glucose levels spike to the point that they are actually doing damage. Except testing shows that refined flour and sugar spike me worse than other foods, so 30g is about my maximum. I'm just guessing and not about to try it, but I suspect one whole cookie would put me at about 150, two cookies would put me at over 180 and three, over 200. And that's eating just cookies, not cookies as a dessert following a high carb meal including biscuits. My safe amount of cookies to eat is about half a cookie.

Half a cookie is not normal eating. It sucks. It is not satisfying, it's sad. But eating to my impulses and stopping when I felt satisfied gave me a deadly disease.

First of all, the body's natural impulses didn't evolve to deal with this much abundance, and second, they were waylaid by a lifetime of eating giant portions served by my mother. My natural impulse is to eat until I'm full, which means eating what I have eaten my entire life - about three times the portion I need to eat to stay at a healthy weight while exercising moderately every day. Add in Netflix and video games, and my natural impulse is to enjoy myself doing the things I like to do, not to work out, or run, which are things I hate to do. Very few animals in the wild torture themselves every day to stay fit. But actually exercising hard every day, to the point of sweating, is why my doctor uses me as a success story for his other diabetic patients.

I think I'll keep up my abnormal eating, and let the author and other people like her deal with foot amputations and the like. Yes, the universe is extremely unfair that we can't all eat whatever we want whenever we want it and stay healthy. Calling the universe unfair and writing articles about how it "should" be is childlike.