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 real reason you avoid change, the problem with gluten-free, and how to actually stick to an exercise habit
by Darya Rose | May 20, 2016
For the Love of Food
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
This week the real reason you avoid change, the problem with gluten-free, and how to actually stick to an exercise habit.
Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app I just discovered to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!
I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.
Links of the week
- Stop Lying: How Painful Realizations Can Unlock a Healthier Life <<One of the best articles I’ve read in awhile about the psychology behind making difficult change. Hiding is always and option. So is growing. Choose to grow. (Nerd Fitness)
- The Face Everything Technique: Why Avoiding Difficulties Doesn’t Work <<On a similar note, Leo Babauta notes that we avoid almost all difficult things unconsciously, but this is a habit we can (and should) change. (Zen Habits)
- How Accurate Is Your Wearable’s Calorie Count? <<Fascinating new research compares the accuracy of activity trackers’ ability to measure calorie expenditure. Not surprising: they aren’t that accurate. The good news: they aren’t that bad either, and more importantly they are consistent. I stand by my assertion that the calories aren’t actually as important as tracking movement in general, which the trackers are pretty great at. (Runner’s World)
- Exercise Tied to Lower Risk for 13 Types of Cancer <<While I suspect the conclusion here to be mostly true, this isn’t the best study. It’s about as useful as saying “healthy people are healthy.” (NY Times)
- The Harm in Blindly ‘Going Gluten Free’ <<I know far too many people who conflate “gluten-free” with “healthy.” This is far from true. (The Atlantic)
- New Reasons Why You Should Keep a Food Journal <<I’m a big fan of journaling, whether it’s for getting honest about what you’re really eating each day or finding your most impactful Home Court Habits. Journaling brings awareness, and as G.I. Joe would say, knowing is half the battle. (WSJ)
- Is eating at your desk really so bad? <<The so called “Rules” can be broken, so long as you understand the reasoning behind them. Consider this permission to be reasonable. (Nutrition Over Easy)
- Have Trouble Sticking To Your Workouts? Here’s How To Make Them Permanent. <<Michelle Segar’s book No Sweat, is one of the best I’ve ever read on making exercise a permanent habit in your life. Here’s a nice summary if you’re curious, but seriously though buy her book anyway. (Huffington Post)
- 9 Ways You Might Be Ruining Your Knives <<Great advice, although I would add that you shouldn’t put your knives in the dishwasher not because they bang around, but because the high heat can make the steel brittle. (Serious Eats)
- Lentil tabbouleh <<I dare you to click over and see how good this looks. I double dog dare you. Oh, and happy Food Revolution Day! (Jamie Oliver)
What inspired you this week?
That article about gluten is SO offensive.
If generalizations are the order of the day, based on my experience, I would NEVER go to another gastroenterologist, or advise anyone else to, for help with digestive problems.
I have been to many, and I have horrific symptoms. Without exception, the most common treatment I have received is indifference. If their standard, unimaginative ideas don’t fix the problem, then by their definition, you don’t have a problem.
If I eat gluten, my insides hemorrhage to the point that I can’t leave the house. The last (in every sense of the word) gastroenterologist I saw said she was “not concerned” about the bleeding. Funny, but I am, and being menopausal with low iron is not something to simply brush off.
In addition to avoiding gluten, I have to follow a vegan diet.
I’m not being “pretentious” or “trendy.” Though those who are make things harder for the rest of us.
Darya,
That gluten click bait from The Atlantic is so far beneath what I expect from you.
That doctor’s conclusion about the search terms (gf vs celiac): “I thought that was particularly illustrative of how the popularity of this diet has increased, totally out of proportion to any sense of awareness of celiac disease…” That was your tipoff that this article was going to be fluff. Only thing that illustrates is that Google recipes and menu ingredients in greater numbers than they Google diseases. A compassionate, intellectually curious doctor, should see those stats and wonder, among other things, why so many people are eschewing cheap, easy and time-tested recipes for expensive and tricky alternatives.
Okay, and gf kids are happier after a week at gf camp? Cool. I would conclude then that CAMP IS FUN. That’s it.
The “secret rice” paragraph? Please. This doctor must think she’s so much more clever than the health conscious parents who are capable of reading ingredients. If the FDA recommends a diverse diet then one where parents are sometimes giving kids food that isn’t rice, then I think the situation is probably ideal. It’s my observation, parents try to avoid giving kids gluten grains all-the-time and therefore mix it up by including rice. If this was an issue about arsenic and the overconsumption of rice, rename the article.
I could keep going… Bottom line: That article contained irresponsible journalism and medicine. It was not really about what the title said it would be about. I saw very little to now evidence that there’s heaps of people who “blindly conflate gf with healthy” and I think that the myth of these heaps is a red herring that detracts for further investigation into what’s really going on.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been gf for 10 years because I have been diagnosed with a “true” allergy to gluten. As my medical record would attest, I was so sick for so long. Even after that allergy test (which I insisted upon) showed positive, and I was reeling at the thought of life without Goldfish crackers, the allergist shrugged it off saying, “at least you don’t have celiac,” then started blithely lecturing me about how to use a netti pot to relieve my birch pollen allergy symptoms.
I want to edit the above for diction, etc. That’s not an option? I can’t even delete?
I so empathize with your difficulties finding a good GI doctor. I’ve had similar problems as you, and have eventually found a practitioner of what’s called “functional medicine” — a more holistic approach that looks at your entire health, not just where your symptoms happen to manifest themselves. If you want to look into it, perhaps you can find a practitioner in your area? Good luck!
Hi, Darya, Thank you for the Atlantic article!
Given your understanding of the science of gluten, your own observations of how gluten affects your health, and your personal “healthstyle,” I’m curious:
Do you think of gluten-containing food as an indulgence? Do you have your own rough estimate of the amount of gluten-containing food you prefer to consume each week? What are your favorite gluten-containing foods according to your personal tastes, whether or not the food is considered an indulgence?
For me, I still consume food items such as bread, but my approach is infrequent only because bread tends to make me feel bloated. I would love to hear your thoughts!
I also tend to feel quite bloated and lethargic after eating refined carbs like bread and pasta, and honestly, I find that the gluten-free varieties to feel a lot better. Either way, these foods are indulgences for me, so they’re by no means the core of my diet. If I can get through a nutrient-poor indulgence without being in pain, I’m all for it!
I felt like I was hit by a Mac truck when I read this line in the nerd Fitness article: “There is something profoundly difficult and imprisoning about our self-identities, especially when others feed their image of us back to us.” I have a 21 year old son who is trying to find his way in life. I really saw that his dad and I feed our image of him back to him. I realized that I have to keep in mind that he is his own person and not necessarily the person I have always dreamed him to be. I also need to realize that he’s pretty great doing his own thing and will make it one way or another. Thanks for that article, even though my take on it is not what was intended.
I wish to comment on the posted piece “Stop Lying: how painful realizations can unlock a healthier life”.
First, I would like to congratulate Kevin on his steadfast determination to get happy and the fact he achieved his goal.
Aside from Kevin’s success, this article contemptuously offensive! While admittedly true, you need to work in order to achieve your goals, this article completely crosses the line of respect and decency with the title and subsequent rant about “poor lifestyle”choices making me “fat and lazy” once I “woke up” and realized I had been lying to myself and made “good lifestyle choices” all my problems disappeared…….. the underlying tone of this article, let’s be honest( no lyin) is the same blah blah we have all heard ad nauseam for years…… If you don’t like the way you look it is because your stupid, lazy and now we have liar to add to ever growing list of character flaws possessed only by people who are labelled as “too fat” ……. Skinny people are never lazy, never lie and always make the wisest lifestyle choices….. That is why they are not fat…… Right?? Everybody regardless of their weight makes some poor/good lifestyle choices…..some people make poorer lifestyle choices than others; these changes are not often reflected in their weight. Let’s just stop judging everybody for weight, lifestyle choices etc…….you can’t judge people unless you have walked their path in their shoes……Next time anyone wants to voice their OPINION about anyone’s lifestyle choice…… Ask yourself……….
Is it true? …………you don’t know
Is it kind? ………most likely what you are going to say is nasty….. “Cruel to be kind”……. And “for your own good” are not kind
Is it necessary ………absolutely not!!!
We all know we shouldn’t talk politics and religion in polite company let’s add weight to the list of forbidden topics!! …… If you have nothing nice to say…..