After December’s food and drink free-for-all, January is the month of sober second thought.
If you’re trying to be more conscious of your food intake, read the nutritional content of snacks printed on the side of the package. It doesn’t usually sound so bad — until you realize the portion size is often impossibly small.
Here’s a more realistic tally of what your holiday snacking might have included:
Lay’s Original Potato chips (425 grams): 2,428 calories, 152 grams of fat
Nutella (950 g jar): 5,000 calories and 30 grams of fat
Oreo cookies: One row, or 15 cookies: 800 calories, 35 grams of fat
Since a healthy adult should eat around 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day… well, you can do the math: it’s not good.
If you want to make some changes to your diet, you may be considering a commercial diet plan. We’ll look at the pros and cons of four popular diets.
1. Weight Watchers
Weight Watchers has been around for 50 years, helping members lose weight with meetings and peer support. Clients track points that correspond to their food and activity, and the online system incorporate FitBit activity trackers.
In a study published earlier this year, Johns Hopkins University researchers found that Weight Watchers participants had 2.6 per cent greater weight loss after 12 months compared to the control group.
However Vancouver-based Registered Dietitian Jessica Tong says that her impression of the diet is that it’s not long lasting.
2. Paleo diet
The Paleo diet rules out coffee, dairy products, grains, including breads, cereal, pasta and even whole grains like quinoa and barley. It is designed to replicate the diet of meat, nuts and berries that people living in the Palaeolithic period would have eaten. That period ended about 10,000 years ago.
Tong explains that eating like cavemen used to doesn’t make sense today, because our bodies function differently now, and our environment is very different. “I don’t agree with that diet,” she says.
“You’re eliminating quite a bit. Things like processed foods, refined sugar, alcohol, I would totally agree with that, and most commercial diets would advise that anyway,” says Tong.
Any diet that is so restrictive is really hard to maintain, she says. “Going to a social event or restaurant, it’s very difficult and very limiting, and you risk missing out on a lot of healthy and beneficial nutrients.”
“In the long run anything that’s commercial tends to be quite expensive, so when you’re not able to afford the program anymore or not able to invest so much in the program, then you fall off the wagon,” says Tong.
“I think that the Atkins and Weight Watchers diets are somewhat obsolete - I rarely have clients ask about them,” she says.
3. Juice Cleanse
Juice cleanses are sold as a quick way to get a flat stomach, have more energy and detox your system, if you listen to the marketing claims of juice cleanse companies and celebrity endorsements.
Dietitian Jessica Tong says a three day juice cleanse won’t harm your body, but do it for longer periods and you “risk disturbing your blood sugar balance and affecting your metabolism.” She adds that our organs don’t “need a break,” and that following a healthy, balanced diet is the best way to treat your body.
“With the juices you get a quick influx of sugar, because it’s pre-digested, pre-chewed fruits and vegetables that are absorbed very quickly so you get that blood sugar spike,” says Tong. “But then what goes up, must come down. You’ll feel lethargic, light-headed or dizzy. because your blood sugar is very low and you don’t have any food in your stomach to prevent that.”
BluePrint, an American company that couriers its products in the U.S. and to parts of Canada, suggests first-timers start with a three-day cleanse, which consists only of six bottles of juice per day. “Acceptable cheats” include celery stalks, a quarter of an avocado, or half a cup of black coffee. Their cleanses are $65 U.S. per day.
If you’d rather make your own juice, the Internet has a vast supply of recipes which you can make with your own juicer ($60-$500).
The Dietitians of Canada list five tips for spotting diet misinformation on their website, including “Is the person or product promising a quick fix like fast weight-loss or a miracle cure? If it sounds too good to be true, then it likely is!”
4. The Mediterranean diet
The Mediterranean diet emphasizes eating lots of fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains and nuts. Olive oil replaces butter, and protein should come from primarily from fish and poultry. Red meat, which is limited to a few portions per month.
This diet complements Canada’s Food Guide, is recommended by the Heart and Stroke Foundation, and is the one that Tong can recommend.
“Mediterranean diet does make more sense to me because it preaches the philosophy of balance,” she says.
But she adds that it’s not for everyone, as health concerns, ailments and pregnancy can all affect diets.
What should I do to get healthy?
If you made a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight, be kind to yourself, think of the things you’re doing well, and keep track of what you’re eating, says Kate Comeau, Spokesperson for Dietitians of Canada.
“The most successful plans are when they keep track what they’re eating. We have a free app called eaTracker that uses Canadian data, and there are others too, or use a pen and paper.
“People tend to lose more weight when they’re tracking the food they’re eating, and we also see positive impacts on fruit and vegetables consumption,” says Comeau.
“I’ll never eat ice cream again”
When we make an absolute change it can be really hard to stick with because it’s all we think about. It becomes the elephant in the room, says Comeau.
“A better strategy is to focus on the positive, creating a goal such as ‘I’m going to bring my lunch from home three of five days this week,’” says Comeau. “And so it’s a smart goal, it’s realistic, it’s measurable, you’ve put a time frame. When you achieve that goal, setting the next goal. That’s a strategy that works well.”
What message are you sending?
Comeau points out that hearing a parent talk about losing weight or eating different meals from the family can have a negative effect on children’s body image and self esteem. It’s much better to focus on having vegetables at every meal, making portion sizes smaller and eating nourishing foods, she says.