Now I realize that I seem to be a little obsessed with food in my last 2 posts and here I am posting about a book that I recently read about food. Oh well. It definitely merits reading and I just happened to pick it up off my mother's kitchen table when I was visiting and it didn't even belong to her! Her friend was loaning it to her and I am eager to let her read it and hear her thoughts about it.
So far my pregnancy is progressing fine. I have gained weight of course, and it is more than I would like to gain (of course). I have been trying really hard to be good and eat healthy and not too much, but it is really hard to avoid the sugar and fat as I stated previously. So I was surprised when this book promised that you can eat to your satisfaction and live naturally thin. A lot of the principles made sense.
It focuses a lot on dispelling the notion that eating less will help you lose weight. The reason that makes sense is that our bodies are adapted to survive and if the body does not get its predetermined quota of nutrients it will (on its own--without your permission) begin survival techniques which involve storing fat. If it does not receive enough calories to store fat with it will canabalize your muscle tissue and slow down your metabolism in order to burn less calories. Then it will send messages to your brain to stock up on high calorie foods. You may ignore these messages for as long as you can, but eventually your will to starve will lose or you will die. So you give in and eat brownies, cookies, cakes, ice cream, bacon, cream cheese, and other high fat, high sugar (high calorie) foods like your stomach is a bottomless pit. The book calls it a famine/feast cycle. Some bodies are not very good at sending the signal for more food and are better at starving to death than others. Those people tend to be anorexic. Other bodies have a much stronger hunger sensation and refusal to starve and those people tend to be bulimic. I would have to be the in-between, because I don't starve myself intentionally, but I do occasionally binge on sweets or fatty foods without throwing up (except when I have morning sickness). So I end up storing most of it as fat.
This made a lot of sense to me. The cure makes a lot of sense too. If you are not eating enough nutrients then your body will tell you by sending cravings for sweets. So you should respond by eating more healthy food. How do you know that you are feeding your body the right amount? This is the most simplistic part: When you are hungry eat a healthy well-balanced meal until you are satisfied. Your body tells you when to eat and when to stop eating and that is pretty much it. It has more details than that and the book includes a list of "Real Foods" which is pretty much any normal healthy food that is high in nutrients and low in fat. But that means you can still have bread and pasta, along with your vegetables and fruits and lean meats. It still includes bacon and sausage, but recommends that they be used sparingly (more like once a month as opposed to every day) and keep the butter, mayonaise and salad dressings on the teaspoon level.
The best part about it for me is that I can do this while pregnant or not. My body is the one in charge of telling me when more nutrients are required. I don't have to calculate anything. It really makes sense when you think about the beginning of a pregnancy. You feel so sick all the time that you don't want to eat, but your body still needs food so it insists you better get some high calorie contents in there or you and your baby will starve. So my curiousity is piqued. If I had been listening better to my hunger signals before the nausea started, would I have avoided it completely? Would I have avoided eating the extra sweets and fats at the beginning if I had been eating as often as my body asked for it? Well I can't be sure for this pregnancy, but I will be better prepared for the next one! If you are someone who has tried dieting and ended up gaining back more weight when you went off your diet, I recommend this book. It just makes sense.
Post Script: Since writing this post I have had two more pregnancies and gathered more information that supports what Jean Antonello wrote and put it into practice in my life. I am so glad I read this book. I have written follow-up posts about my experience so no need to re-hash it here.
