Health
Habits
Food
Weight 
Better Than Butternut: Roasted Delicata Squash Recipe
10 Simple Ways To Eat Less Without Noticing
Juicing: Stupid and Pretentious or Nourishing and Enlightening?
10 Tasty Carbs That Won’t Make You Fat
How To Start Working Out When You Don’t Like To Exercise
Focus More on Your Brain and Less on Your Diet if You’re Serious About Losing Weight
Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control
10 Reasons You Aren’t Losing Weight When You Think You’re Doing Everything Right
How To Burn More Calories Without Breaking A Sweat
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Foodists
FOR THE LOVE OF FOOD: The critical role of hunger, Western diets devastate your gut, and why kale isn’t healthy
by Darya Rose | Jan 22, 2016
For the Love of Food
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
This week the critical role of hunger, Western diets devastate your gut, and why kale isn’t healthy.
Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app I just discovered to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!
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Links of the week
- The Hunger Mood <<The most important article I’ve read about weight loss since, well, this one. Finally someone else is talking about why psychology is the most important factor for getting healthy. (Aeon)
- Western diets damage gut microbiota over generations, in ways hard to reverse <<I can’t tell you the number of people I know with gut problems at the moment. Blame your parents. And yourselves. (LA Times)
- Weekend binges just as bad for the gut as a regular junk food diet, study suggests <<And speaking of your diet’s impact on your gut health, be careful with those cheat days. (ScienceDaily)
- No food is healthy. Not even kale. <<Important reminder that the words we choose have a deep impact on our understanding and beliefs around food. Choose them wisely. (Washington Post)
- Stop Counting 10,000 Steps; Check Your Personal Activity Intelligence <<Wow. I’ve always used 10K steps (+ strength training 4x/wk + high-intensity cardio 2x/wk + stretching/pilates 1x/wk) because there was no better measurement for accounting for average weekly activity. Looks like that may be changing finally, with some promising new data and devices. (WSJ)
- Confessions of a Paleo Diet Pioneer <<Oops. Turns out the whole business is more nuanced than the original paleo diet proponents knew. (WSJ)
- Laziness and lack of sleep can shorten your life, especially when combined, study says <<Interesting new data on the role of major risk factors in mortality risk. Most of this was known, but it’s worth reviewing. The number of lifestyle factors you need to account for is pretty small when you think about it. (LA Times)
- Heavier Waiters Make for Heavier Eating <<More new research on the subtle influences in our environment that trigger overeating. This kind of science always puts the concept of free will in perspective for me. (WSJ)
- When it comes to losing weight and getting healthy, procrastination kills <<This headline is a bit confusing. It is actually challenging the “healthy obesity” idea that has been circulating the last few years. (LA Times)
- Vegan Fish Sauce <<I generally like vegan food, but vegan Vietnamese and Thai food are always disappointing without the tangy amazingness which is fish sauce. I’d be all over this if I were vegan. (Food52)
What inspired you this week?
You’ve been saying this all along, but this really stood out to me:
“Diets cause the psychological struggle that causes weight gain.”
from the Hunger article
This is so important. Great quote.
I love the Graziano article on psychological factors behind appetite. Thank you so much for sharing this.
I struggled to get the concept of the hunger mood easily. Is there anything else I could read that will help me out. I’m struggling with weight loss at present & this seems to make sense but I’d like more information please
This is the first time I’ve seen the term. I took it to mean the baseline hunger level that you approach your eating decisions with. It is impacted by many things, including habits, triggers, nutrition status, stress, hormones, etc. Many of these things you have control over.
Man, I was all excited to see someone else jumping on the anti-kale bandwagon, but that’s not really what that article was. Too bad. 🙁
I’m reading more and more about gut microbiome depletion, including articles like that one that say once your microbiome’s depleted, diet and supplements can’t easily restore it. It sounds like the best solution for some people might be fecal microbiota transplants- do you have any stories from readers who have tried that?
I’ve encountered the opposite research, especially with using bone broth (detox, healing, and nutrition) and raw fermented foods, which supply an overwhelming amount of live, active probiotics into various parts of the digestive system and gut. The article’s research focuses on the significance of fiber and low carbs, which is in contrast to a nutrient dense supply of a variety of foods that do more than include fiber and carbs.
Many other research case studies that assess whole foods and quality nutrition tout that the gut balance can be restored through fermentation, which are way more prolific and effective than a supplement.
Turkey bacon equals mechanically separated meat. That’s pretty gross…it goes in the trash right now!
Loved the ‘Hunger Mood’ article! I really like how he mentioned that when we’re dieting, we feel like we’re DOING something and working toward our goal. Eating until you’re satisfied sounds harder (and less rewarding) that eating a certain amount of calories. It’s amazing how the “lazy” approach is the one that gets results. I’m so glad there’s more literature encouraging people to listen to their bodies – and that Summer Tomato helped me listen to mine!
“We expect progress to be punishing…”
“The more you try to micromanage your automatic hunger control mechanism, the more you mess with its dynamics.”
Hey Darya, I have a question for you about that sentence you inserted regarding your exercise regimen.
I’m a healthy person who just wants to stay where I am weight-wise, but I’m working on going from mild to moderate/high exercise in order to increase my endurance and strength. My current challenge is balancing enough exercise so that I’m making progress, but not so much that by body thinks I’m hungry all the time (hello, Hunger Tiger). I know that I’ve read on your site that you are familiar with this phenomenon, that too much exercise can throw your hunger off balance, leading you to overeat. However, I read your weekly exercise description–4x strength training, 2x HIIT, 1x pilates–and when I workout that amount, I get so, so hungry. I know everyone is different, but do you have any advice for how someone can discover a balance between the right amount of food and exercise?