The Truth Behind the Diet Rules We Grew Up With [Ep. 145]

0:00 This is the Eat Well Think Well Live Well podcast. I am Lisa Salisbury and this is episode 145. The Truth Behind the Diet Rules we grew up with. Welcome to eat well. Well, the podcast for busy women who want to lose weight without constantly counting, tracking, or stressing over every bite. I'm Lisa Salsbury, a certified health weight loss and life coach, and most importantly, a recovered chronic dieter here. You'll learn to listen to your body and uncover the reasons you're reaching for food. When you're not truly hungry, freeing you to focus on a healthier, more fulfilling approach to eating. Hi all and welcome back to the Eat Well Think Well Live Well podcast for this last week in April.

0:47 First I wanna remind you I've got a survey link in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you and what your burning questions are. I did this about 18 months ago and it was so fun to be able to develop episodes and seek out guests specifically to answer your questions. I also did a rapid fire answering of some of the questions that were less in depth, didn't need an entire episode, and I loved that too. So no question is too small. Please go fill out. That survey should take you like four or five minutes, and everyone that does so will be entered into a drawing for an Amazon gift card. Yay. Okay, so today we're gonna talk about those old diet rules you probably grew up hearing in the eighties and nineties, depending on how old you are, But I know some of these perpetuated even longer than that.

1:33 Some of them sounded so absolute. Like if you ate after 7:00 PM you'd instantly gain weight. So I wanna revisit a few of these classic rules, air quotes there that actually had a sliver of truth, but the way they were taught made us feel guilty, obsessed, and just. Bad. Let's see what grain of truth they had and how we can possibly reframe them if there's any useful tidbits in them at all. And before you're like, Nope, I've heard all those. I don't need to hear'em again. I just wanna tell you why I'm doing this. It's because fad diets are always going to exist. Always.

2:13 We didn't get away from them in the eighties and nineties. They still exist. I will talk about a couple of the current ones today in this episode. So no matter how much people like me try to shout it from the rooftops that lifestyle change is better than any of these fad diets. There will always be some weird trends and people that say some off the wall stuff to you, and I wanna empower you to look deeper, look deeper into those things, and see where the truth is, see what is actually true and why these fad diets latched onto these rules. So that you can get back to the actual truth of how wellness or diet type rules might actually help you in your effort to improve your health.

2:57 Alright, so let's start with that classic one. Don't eat after 7:00 PM. So what we were told is eating late causes weight gain, period. That's all we were told. I remember thinking that those calories must turn straight to stored fat if I ate after 7:00 PM The truth behind it is this, eating large meals right before bed can disrupt your sleep and possibly your digestion. Having a rest period for your digestive system is super beneficial. Most professionals I have spoken to about this have set a general guideline would be about 12 hours. This isn't an intermittent fasting thing, it's just the time that we don't eat primarily while you're sleeping.

3:42 That is super beneficial to digestion. The second truth here is that really, if we are eating past seven in America, that typically means past dinner. If you're in Europe or other countries where dinner starts at eight or even 9:00 PM then this rule can be confusing and if not downright stupid. But traditionally, if felt like 6:00 PM was dinnertime in American households in the eighties, right? So if you're eating past seven, you're eating past dinner. That's, that's the crux of this rule. And often that eating would be like an entire meal's worth of calories while you're watching TV or snacking, doing homework. So it's not that this rule worked because your body did some magical shift at 7:00 PM It's that it worked by reducing your caloric intake by eliminating those after dinner calories.

4:33 Here's how it hurt us. Made people afraid to eat even if they were genuinely hungry, and equated food timing with some sort of moral failure. If you are genuinely hungry before bed, absolutely eat a small balanced snack, but not an entire meal. You don't need a lot of food to fuel your body while sleeping. You would just want to eat if the feeling of hunger is keeping you awake. But don't beat yourself up for that. Just take note and make some changes to your dinner maybe the next day. You aren't going to automatically gain weight if you haven't over eaten during the day. The reframe here is thinking about it being less about the clock, and more about listening to your body and honoring rest.

5:22 It's also less about the clock and more about prioritizing a huge factor in weight loss, which is sleep. And this is something that was not talked about at all in the eighties and nineties, how much sleep impacted. Your weight loss. So ask yourself, what do I need to sleep well tonight? If you seriously won't be able to go to sleep because you're extremely hungry, yes, definitely grab a snack. I already said that. But if you are just wanting a little something, something, you know what I mean? Like this is classic emotional eating, under my definition of being hungry in your brain and not in your body. Then. Consider prioritizing sleep instead and just go on up to bed.

6:04 All right. Number two, fat makes you fat. What we were told is that fat, dietary fat right is bad, and you should avoid it to lose weight. You remember all the 100 calorie snack packs that would be fat free. We got the fat free yogurt. The fat, fat-free cookies, the fat-free salad dressings. Do you know that snackwells weren't even discontinued until 2022? That was like three years ago. Like that's crazy. I can't believe people were still eating those fat-free cookies until just a few years ago. But you know this era where we all, or maybe your parents switched to cooking spray to cook everything.

6:45 This also fed the era of the so-called light recipes. In quotes there I subscribed to cooking Light for years, that magazine, and it's my understanding that they had to reduce the fat to a certain threshold of percent of calories, and I. Don't remember, I think it was like less than 30% of the calories had to come from fat in order to make it into the magazine. So what you would notice, um, and especially on the dessert recipes, is they would be higher in sugar to boost the total calories up so that the percent of calories from fat would. Be less, right? Does that MA math make sense? And then they would just make the serving size small in order to then go back to reducing the calories.

7:29 So we're talking like a really high sugar, lower fat brownie that's like one inch square. Uh, how, how is this like satisfying in any way? Um, and many of those low fat store-bought treats would also have an increase in sugar to make up for the flavor and texture lost by reducing or eliminating the fat. This all created products or recipes that were either the same or actually higher in calories than their regular counterparts. But we were told that since fat was bad. These were the better choice, and that's how you would lose weight. The truth behind this is fat is calorie dense.

8:11 Absolutely. So portion awareness matters. The truth is that fat has nine calories per gram, whereas protein and carbohydrates have four calories per gram. So that's what what it means when people say fat is calorically dense. It has more calories per gram. But the good news is that a little goes a long way. You don't have to eat high fat items to benefit from the flavor and texture that the right amount of fat in a recipe will contribute. So this. Diet rule hurt us because we ended up demonizing healthy fats and we prioritized eating low fat, processed junk food instead, or in my case, high sugar, low fat cookies that I could eat a lot of in one sitting.

9:00 We also missed out on the satiety and brain supporting nutrients that those healthy fats give you. Obviously, we wanna avoid trans fats. But healthy fats such as olive oil, avocados, nuts and seeds and fatty fish are essential and help you to feel satisfied. So let's reframe this rule by remembering that not all fats are equal. In one of my favorite books about cooking and food, it's called Salt Fat Acid. Heat by Samin Nora, she says the aim is not to use more fat, but to make better use of it. I think that's such a great reframe here. And obviously we're not looking to make our food greasy, right?

9:41 We don't wanna just eat, uh, put in, you know, stick in as much fat as possible. But she says quote. fat coats the tongue, allowing various aromatic compounds to stay in contact with our taste buds for longer periods of time, intensifying and prolonging our experience of various flavors. So I think that is just so helpful to thinking about dietary fat. It's really, it's not the aim to just use more fat or to avoid fat, but to make better use of it. So ultimately this rule is debunked and we can think about the healthy fats we want to incorporate into our daily diets, knowing that it's the overall quantity of food that is causing the weight gain, not the including of the fat micronutrient.

10:27 Okay. Following up on that. Fat conversation leads us into the next trend, which was number three, carbs are bad for you. So what we were told was that carbs equals sugar, equals weight gain. We swung the other way from the fat conversation and landed into the all fat and zero carb conversation. So the truth behind it is that refined carbohydrates, cans spike blood sugar and lead to more cravings. There's no doubt about it that when my clients eat less sugar, they end up. Eating less sugar. And what I mean there is that when they first are working on processing their cravings for sweetss and treats and they eat a little less through their thought work that we do and their commitment to their goals, they notice that their desires for more sugar go down and they end up craving it less.

11:17 Which helps them continue to eat less sugar. So regardless of what studies say on blood sugar spikes from refined carbs, basically foods composed of primarily sugar and flour, you need to pay attention to your own body and note how eating these items or not eating them affects you. This rule hurt us because it created tons of fear around fruits, grains, and even vegetables. Eliminating carbohydrates also leads to encouraging restriction binge cycles because eating low carb or no carb is not sustainable for the vast majority of people. And that's okay. You aren't broken if you can't stick to keto as the fall guy, Ryan Gosling reminds us you need carbs.

12:02 Your brain runs on glucose. I did a bootcamp style challenge. Where even onions and bell peppers were off limits because of the carb content. Super ridiculous. Do not fear vegetables or fruits of any kind. I've had zero clients that tell me once I start eating an apple, I just end up eating the entire bag of apples I bought. And I think that's the problem. Why I can't lose weight? No, no one says this. Fruits and vegetables are not the problem, and even rice and oatmeal and other whole grains are not the problem. So the reframe here is that quality matters. Whole carbohydrates can and should.

12:42 Fuel your body and brain. Women need carbs. End of discussion. Again, similar to the um, fat makes You Fat Rule. This rule is basically debunked. Not all carbs are bad. Okay, number four, this is a favorite of mine. This rule is eat six small meals a day. What we were told was eating constantly would stoke your metabolism. Oh my goodness. I can barely say this one without laughing. The truth behind it is that regular meals can help with blood sugar stabilization for some people, but the idea that you had to eat six times per day as if that was some magic number.

13:25 I mean, really. I know tons of you out there are thinking. Yeah, I was told the six meals. I mean, why weren't some people told five or seven or eight? I don't know. We definitely want to eat on a regular basis for sure. But there is nothing about eating frequently that actually can help with your metabolism in a meaningful way for weight loss. Studies have consistently shown that when controlled for calories, eating six times per day, overeating three times per day, did not provide any meaningful metabolic benefits. This rule hurt us because constant grazing made us lose touch with true hunger and fullness, and I see this all the time.

14:08 This is the major damage. I know. I used to set my alarm to eat every two hours during one, particularly strict diet I was on, and the meals, if you can call them, that were so tiny, in order to keep me in a calorie deficit by eating so many times a day, I would just be counting down the minutes to the next one. So instead of responding to my true hunger for an actual meal, I would continue to eat these small snack like portions to just get through to the next one. Feeling satisfied is just as important to feeling hungry when it comes to the hunger scale. This idea also became one more food rule to micromanage. I barely wanna think of what to feed myself three times a day, let alone six or more times per day.

14:53 Okay, what's the reframe? You don't need a set number of meals. Learn what rhythm works best for your body and prioritize waiting for hunger to eat and then eating an actual meal to get to that positive three on the hunger scale. And feeling that enough feeling so that you can move on with your day and not have to think about food again in an hour. So again, this six times a day rule would be debunked because it doesn't do anything for your metabolism. But we do wanna remember that eating on a regular braces and having breakfast and fueling our bodies regularly is beneficial.

15:34 So we want to eat. We want to eat regularly, but there is no magic number of meals. Okay, number five. Is, and you've heard me talk about this, I've done a whole episode on this one. Okay. Number five is clean your plate, or Let's be in the Clean Plate Club. We were told, don't waste food, finish it all, regardless of being full. And it was often tied to where the starving children were in the world. But the truth behind it is food waste matters, and gratitude for food is important, but wasting food. Doesn't actually make you a bad person or automatically ungrateful.

16:17 The truth is that we will have to waste food sometimes, because again, another old saying, sometimes your eyes are bigger than your stomach. That's what my grandma would say if I couldn't finish something, and that is okay. Sometimes you just don't dish up the exact right amount, or you're at a restaurant and they bring out the standard portion. They don't care how hungry you are. The truth is that when you are in touch with your hunger and fullness cues. You will waste food sometimes, and that's okay. We are human beings. We are not robots and know exactly how much food to put on our plates for the amount of hunger that we have. So this rule hurts us because it basically taught us to ignore our fullness cues.

16:58 The eating six times a day, I think taught us to ignore our hunger cues. But this one I think is more about the fullness cues. We also connected eating with guilt and obligation. If you had parents or grandparents or whoever was feeding you, telling you that if you didn't eat, you were ungrateful and that it was hurting starving children elsewhere. So we wanna reframe this one. It's okay to stop eating when you are full. And actually the reframe here is just the Clean Play Club is not even cool. Like you don't even get your picture in the yearbook or anything like it's a dumb club. You just throw out your membership card.

17:38 Um, and honestly, leftovers, if you're in a place where the extra food can be saved, are a gift to your future self. That's what I had for lunch today, like literally right before I recorded this. I had leftovers from last night, and I was so happy. You also may want to reframe with thoughts about the actual waste. I mean, I get it. Nobody likes wasting food because it feels like you're wasting money, but is it really better to waste it in your body? Then in the garbage, you're not a human compost bin. You don't have to finish it. Just because it's there constantly eating more than you need, then stressing about how to burn it off is also a waste.

18:20 A waste of time and effort either way. That food's not doing what you hoped. Okay. So the problem with all these diet rules wasn't the original intention. It's possible they even came from well-meaning dieticians that had the truth in mind when they handed them out. It's how. Rigid and shame inducing. They became, and it's like a bad game of telephone. I think one dietician somewhere was like, Hey, let's try not eating after seven and see if we can't eliminate some of that late night stacking. that's keeping your weight loss stack. And then it got passed around until we all believed that any calorie consumed after a certain time was going straight to our hips. It's just this bad game of telephone where the original intent is completely lost on most of these rules.

19:06 So if you find yourself still hearing these old voices in your head. I invite you to replace them with curiosity, compassion, and your own body wisdom. Not only that, but when you hear of new diet rules, think about what might have been the original intent, how it's gotten distorted, and if it's something that could be useful to you or if you want to just throw it right out. I think the one that's coming to mind for me is the. Um, the trend right now to prioritize protein, which for me is not a trend. It is something I work heavily with my clients to prioritize protein so that we are maintaining or building our muscle mass, and it's gotten blown completely out of proportion with the carnivore fad dieting.

19:51 And so I think that's where you can look at like maybe the original intent of prioritizing protein has gotten completely and utterly distorted and all of a sudden now we're not eating. Any fruits or vegetables which compounds with the carbs are bad rule. So if you can see how like one tiny rule gets completely blown out of proportion, watch for those. This isn't the end of fad diets. There will be a new one in a few years and it will be just as crazy. I'd love for you to DM or email me with the diet rule that messed you up the most, and if it's a real doozy, we might even do a whole episode on it. Don't forget to fill out my podcast survey for a chance to win that Amazon gift card.

20:33 And if something in today's episode made you think differently or gave you that little nudge you needed, that's exactly why I do this. If you're ready to take it further, I'd love to support you. Start with my free, what to do when you overeat Course that is for you. If you find yourself eating too many times in a week to see lasting weight loss, you'll get the Reset and Recover guide and figure out how to reduce your overeats and not beat yourself up about it. You can also schedule a free consult session to see if my full 12 week one-on-one coaching program is right for you. All the links are in the show notes. Remember, it's not just about the food, it's about empowering yourself with choices that truly serve you.

21:14 Have a great week and as always, thanks for listening to the Eat Well Think Well Live Well podcast.