I’ve dieted in the past, and while I kept to “healthy” foods, I still had trouble with adherence. Back then, I created a (mental) list of foods that I must avoid to prevent me from blowing my diet.
These were 10 of those foods:
- Nuts – Pure Calorie Bombs
- Nut butters – peanut butter, almond butter, whatever, contains “butter” I’m not eating
- Breads – white bread, wholemeal bread, rye, pumpernickel, it’s out
- Full Fat Yogurt and Ice Cream – takes 10 seconds to down a scoop
- Eggs – I could literally swallow these in seconds
- Fatty Meat – same as eggs
- Rice – Used to down bowls of this as a fat teenager; too easy to overeat
- Fatty Sauces/Dressings – Mayo gives you heart attacks
- Cereals – don’t get me started
- Oatmeal - I dunno why this never really satisfied me, but I kept it there because it was supposed to be “power food”
So many “healthy” foods were foods that didn’t really satisfy me, and yet I kept them in my diet because so many people said they were great dieting foods. I failed to recognise that the best diet is one that you can stick to. The corrollary is that the best dieting foods for me were foods that I could eat and feel satisfied afterward.
But where could I start? I was entrenched in all that bodybuilding dogma (bullshit) and didn’t DARE to venture out. Long story short, I finally got fed up, and searched for an alternative. That’s when I found Martin Berkhan’s leangains system.
That wasn’t the be all end all solution though, it simply gave me the mental clarity to ask myself the right question. It was then that I proceeded on the long path of experimentation to find the foods that I liked.
Back then, I knew couldn’t stand fatty foods and craved carbohydrates. Still, some forms of carbohydrates (listed above) are simply trigger foods for me. On the other hand, I do find full-cream milk to be particularly satisfying.
We can argue all day about how this is affected by insulin sensitivity and a whole host of factors, but the sure-fire way is to dive in, try something, and note your response. You won’t get anywhere without being willing to ask yourself these questions, and then really diving in and tasting it (literally).
Over time, I developed a sense of the foods that I could live with in the long term. That list includes things like fresh fruit, potatoes, lean meats, corn cakes etc. But for someone else, that list may contain full fat dairy, nuts and the like. With total caloric content being equal and protein requirements settled, it really is a matter of taste.
With all that said and done, you can now take your list of foods you hate, and your list of foods you love, and slowly work your way to that happy middle ground.
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