Critical Thinking & Nutrition

As an avid reader books to me are fascinating and transforming. I love being transported to another time, place or way of thinking. One such book in the health and wellness genre was Gary Taubes “Good Calories, Bad Calories.”

I’ve spoken in numerous posts, here, here and here how Taubes’ “thinking” not only improved my joint related issues but shook up my brain cells on calories, carbohydrates and exercise. For years I accepted the notion that the key to a healthy weight is a question of calories in calories out. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

What I loved from Taubes’ book was he made me “critically think!” I was forced to ask important “why” questions related to exercise and weight. For instance, why one person stores more fat than another individual may not be related at all to how much or how little they exercise. It might be a question of how insulin sensitive their body is.

Foods that raise insulin signal the body to store fat. Thus, you can be exercising hours on end and ingest consistently carbohydrates and sugars which promote fat storage. Thus, potential weight gain might be more related to foods eaten than just how little or much one exercises.

I’m not saying that “weight loss” is the only component of a healthy lifestyle. Not by a long shot. As Denise Minger so eloquently states in Death By Food Pyramid:

“Acknowledge that health is about a lot more than what you put in your mouth, and treat yourself kindly in all areas of life—-which means getting enough sleep, exercising, minimizing stress, maintaining strong social connections, getting fresh air and sunshine, and taking care of your psychological and emotional well-being.”

However, for many individuals controlling weight gain will significantly improve their quality of life. From my perspective critical thinking is the way forward to improved nutrition. That doesn’t come from a daily review of a Twitter feed, watching Fox News or reading the health section of a newspaper.

There are many definitions of critical thinking but let’s just apply the one below for simplicity sake. Consider how this applies to creating healthier attitudes in nutrition.

“The process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion”

In a nutshell it means one can’t be swept away by the latest headline grabbing news on eating healthy. Look at the fine print in articles, research and news on diet. Components to investigate are study size, funding sources, potential bias in researchers or participants, long-term ramifications, clinical trials and most important your gut reaction.

Two key points

1. Do your homework
2. Healthy = works for you!

Do your homework

Certainly there is no shortage of literature on diet and nutrition, start digging in. My advice is look for points of convergence in the diverse nutritional perspectives. For example, whether it is the Mediterranean diet, Atkins or Paleo they all discourage processed foods and vegetable oils. On the same token both vegetarians and carnivorous folks promote avoiding high sugar intake. The overlapping components offer an excellent starting point and simplify the process.

Investigate authors like Gary Taubes, Denise Minger, Zoe Harcombe, and The Weston A. Price Foundation who go against the grain of conventional diet advice. Whether in the end you subscribe to “their ideas” or not you are forced to critically think about your own food choices. Next on my reading list is The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet’, by Nina Teicholz.

It’s all about you

Whether you subscribe to the thinking that genetics is a major contributor to our nutritional path or not, it’s easy to comprehend we are all just different. It is not an excuse to give up and say, oh that’s me I’m doomed. But to say, OK, I have zero tolerance to sugar, maybe not a good idea for me to consume it on a daily basis.

Or wow, when I eat bread, pizza or pasta in no time at all I’m hungry again. Hum, unless I want to consistently be fighting off hunger and eating all day long I need some new food choices.

Or if you were like me and your body was stating very clearly that the diet consumed was not working. The need to change was physical. Short and simple my arthritis was aggravated by a vegetarian diet, high in carbohydrates that acerbated inflammation of the joints.

Make your food choices enhance performance, not a number on a scale.

Final note

Questioning is healthy, just because it’s been done this way or that for fifty years does not by longevity make it right. Peal away the layers of nutritional noise. Make real food sources guide the way forward.

“Above all else, stay anchored in your own truth rather than falling under the spell of groupthink. Just as we shouldn’t outsource our thinking to gurus and federal branches that don’t always have our best interest at heart, we shouldn’t outsource the interpretation of our experiences to minds other than our own.”

“Make your diet work for you; don’t work for your diet.”

Denise Minger, “Death by Food Pyramid”