Thursday, 10 May 2012

My rules to eat by


I don't believe in diets, eating plans or fancy fluff.  I don't believe in any of the dribble that goes with it.  I am not a nutritionist or a dietitian and I do not proclaim to know any more than the average person.  There are millions of books out there, hundreds of different trends, a thousand opinions and even more approaches to these options.

With each different 'plan' comes an interpretation.  Old 'Noakes' and his Carte Blanche extravaganza sent this country into turmoil and a giant heap of confusion, should we eat animal fat, shouldn't we eat fat, should I cook like this or like that?  It makes me feel sick to the stomach.

I have a simple set of rules that I live by, and that's it.  I do not count calories, I do not weigh my celery sticks and I do not stand on my head while I eat chocolate to avoid it going to my hips.

If I got a buck for every stupid weight loss/weight gain technique I'd heard of, I would be suntanning on the deck of my house in the french riviera sipping a glass of Armand de Brignac.

It's simple, if it has come from the earth, I eat it.  I am also a meat eater, in fact there is very little I do not eat.  I'm not going to sit here and tell you how packed with protein and how low in saturated fats Impala and Kudu are because you cant just walk into your local and ask for 2kgs, so its pointless.  What I can tell you is to stop being fooled by the labels 'free range' and 'hormone free' the birds are about as free as a man on death row and hormone free just means that the hormones are out of the animals system.

All I can advise is to speak to your locals and find a good source, they are out there.  If you are serious about your meat source I can suggest you get your hands on a book by Jonathan Safran Foer called 'Eating Animals' http://www.eatinganimals.com/ (Not pro vegetarianism) but it will give you some fantastic direction and some great options.

Eat your salad and eat your vegetables,  support your locals and buy seasoned goods. The darker the produce, the better for you.  Beetroot and spinach outweigh button mushrooms and lettuce tenfold.

I try stick to non wheat wholegrain as in my opinion now a days the wheat available has been mutated to far along for safe human consumption.  In fact bread and its derivatives are an entire blog post on its own... yawn.

I am allergic to nuts, so if I cant have it, you cant hear about it.

Your body needs fat to survive, don't think for a moment that cutting every type of fat out of your diet is going to do you good, I live on olive oil, if I could order it on ice I would, olive oil goes everywhere, including my home made ice cream - try it, black pepper and a drizzle of good Italian olive oil, you will never look back.

Organic sugar, fruit sugar, date sugar, invert sugar...the operative word here being sugar, get rid of it.

I have a sweet tooth, I love chocolate, I can make love to chocolate, sometimes I wonder if my purpose here is for the chocolate, however I stick to 85% - 90% cocoa, the list of benefits are overwhelming - google it.

Salt is my weakness, I sometimes put it on my toothpaste to improve that taste.  If you share my sentiment get rid of the white salt its highly processed and coloured salts contain more trace minerals, I use Himalayan, its affordable and available almost everywhere.  Sodium is low in high protein users so the higher the protein intake the more salt you may need.

I don't drink calories, I drink water.  People are so quick to cut out what they perceive as bad in their diets but they'll quickly chug down an energy drink, a soft drink or a low fat milkshake.  Vital mistake.

I don't get too excited about fruit, the body converts fruit to fat if you eat to much of it.

My biggest rule of all, don't ever reward yourself with food - you are not lucky enough to be an animal.