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So you aspire to draw gasps of delight, rather than horror, as you pedal through Portland in the nude. Or, perhaps you just want to look good in a thong by summer. Well, you’re reading the right article. Your friends won’t tell you this, so I will–nobody wants to see a guy in a thong. Please, don’t leave the house in that. Now let’s address your body. If you’ve tried eating less and exercising more and that hasn’t worked, these tips will make the difference.
First, let’s just get this out of the way. Are you actually eating less? Rather than thinking of overeating as consuming more calories over the course of a day than you burn, start thinking of it as consuming more calories in a sitting than your body can readily utilize.
For instance, your friend Botswana consumes only 1500 calories a day—all in one meal—and she can’t understand why she’s not losing weight. Your other friend Mozambique eats five meals of 400 calories each, and keeps losing weight, even though he’s totaling 500 more calories per day than Botswana. Here’s the deal: Botswana is going so long without eating that her metabolism slows down. Even when she eats both lunch and dinner, her body still goes 17 hours from dinner to lunch the next day. So her body says to itself, “I’m gonna run on 1200 calories per day”—which she exceeds by 300 calories. But more importantly, she eats 1500 calories at once. There’s no way she’s going to utilize all that anytime soon.
Be like Mozambique. Eat frequently. Don’t go more than about four hours between meals (except from dinner to breakfast). Eat a protein-rich breakfast—egg whites, lean meat, beans, nonfat Greek yogurt, etc. Keep dinner light. Your metabolism will speed up. Stop snacking—don’t eat anything between your meals. Let your stomach empty out completely. You’ll get to eat again in just a few hours, so stop yourself before you get full. Didn’t your mom ever tell you not to pack the washing machine with clothes? They won’t circulate at all. They’ll come out dirty and moist. Well, the same goes for your stomach. The goal is not to fill your stomach to capacity; it’s to eat just enough to not be hungry anymore.
Now, if you’re thinking, “But Peter, the food I eat is so damn good, I can’t stop eating until my body will simply not accept any more!” then we need to have a different conversation. It’s called the Stop Going Unconscious While You’re Eating conversation. Wake up. You’re tuning out your body while you’re eating. It’s the only possible way to ignore your body’s cries of protest. Tune in instead.
If your food is so good, why not do everything possible to enjoy the experience? That means putting away your reading material and your cell phone, turning off the TV, placing a piece of duct tape over the mouth of your dining company, letting go of whatever you’re stressing about, pulling over if you’re driving, sitting down if you’re standing, and then savoring the hell out of that food. Always keep part of your attention on how your body feels, and as soon as you’re not hungry anymore—usually with an amount of food about one-and-a-half times the size of your closed fist—stop. Bonus: you won’t be in a food coma after lunch.
You’ll also have more leeway with meals if you limit yourself to only non-caloric drinks. Instead of soda or juice (which have a ton of sugar in them), or a latte (basically a huge glass of milk), just stick to water, unsweetened tea, or—if you must—coffee with just a dash of milk. If you want a calorie-free sweetener, try stevia leaf extract instead of the chemical stuff.
Meanwhile, make sure you’re getting enough deep, restful sleep—at least seven hours. Studies show sleep deprivation is associated with weight gain. Next, ditch the plastics. Most plastics contain chemicals known as exogenous endocrine disruptors that can throw off our hormones and contribute to weight gain. Never microwave anything in plastic, and stop buying water in plastic bottles. Haven’t you heard of that swirling island of plastic in the middle of the Pacific that’s half the size of the US? While you’re at it, stop eating food from cans, since they’re all lined with plastic containing bisphenol-A (BPA), a known endocrine disruptor.
Finally, remember this: In the whole history of the human species, we’ve only consumed large amounts of grains and sugars in the tiniest, most recent slice of time. Our bodies just can’t handle it—we get diabetic, fat, and hypertensive. Even in the last few decades, we’ve gone low-fat due to overly simplistic thinking about how we form body fat. In the meantime, our sugar consumption has ballooned, and so have our waistbands. If you want to lose weight, the single biggest change you can make to your diet is to cut way down on sweeteners and flour.
If you take my advice, you should be in good shape for the naked bike ride. Might want to get your suspension tuned up before then, too.
(Originally appeared in About Face Magazine, Issue 06)
Want to know more?
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Bitterness is a taste most of us try to avoid. Expressions such as “bitter enemies” and “a bitter pill to swallow ” show how averse we are to this flavor. We greatly prefer the other three primary flavors – nearly everything Americans eat is a combination of sweet, salty, and sour. These are sometimes accented with spiciness or “piquancy” and the rich quality known as umami. (Umami is a harder taste experience to describe, but it’s often translated as a “savory” or mushroomy quality, and it is the specific enhancement imparted by MSG.)
Perhaps we dislike bitterness in part because it’s the flavor our taste buds are most sensitive to. Compared to our perception of saltiness, sweetness, and sourness, we can pick up an infinitesimal degree of bitterness in food or drink. This is probably a useful adaptation, since many poisons are bitter. But many medicines are also bitter, and there are certain medicinal qualities that many bitter substances have in common. I believe that consuming moderate amounts of bitter foods is a healthy thing. It also provides a vital balance to our relative overconsumption of the other flavors.
In the ancient healing systems of China and India the therapeutic properties of foods and herbs are thought to derive largely from the flavors they possess. The flavors themselves are considered to be energetic characteristics that affect the body far beyond our perception of them at the tongue. Textbooks of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Ayurveda will often state that a certain herb has a certain therapeutic action because it has a certain flavor and an affinity for a certain part of the body.
Sweetness, for instance, is seen in TCM as having a nourishing and consolidating effect on our energy. This is why so many comfort foods are sweet, and most naturally sweet foods (like rice and bananas) tend to be easy on the digestion. But by the same token, too much consolidation can have a clogging effect. This makes us pack on the pounds – especially around our bellies – when we eat too much sugar, and it also makes us feel ill the day after Halloween.
Spiciness or pungency, by comparison, has an opening or expansive energy. It promotes movement, gets our blood flowing, warms us up. And it may even open our pores and sinuses – causing us to sweat and feel clearer in the head. Sourness has a moistening and astringent effect. This is why sour drinks often seem even more thirst quenching than water alone.
Bitterness has a descending or draining energy. Bitter herbs often help drain and clear excesses from our system. Many bitter herbs are detoxifying, and they often promote urination or bowel movement. Bitter herbs frequently act on the liver and gallbladder to promote bile production and secretion. Bile is essential for the digestion of fats, including the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. Bile also stimulates the bowels and kills some bacteria that may be present in our food. These effects are especially useful after overconsumption of rich foods.
The stomach is understood in Chinese medicine as having a downward directionality. That is, it receives food from the esophagus above, and, after working on it with its gastric juices, should send it down to the intestines. When the stomach isn’t functioning properly, because of illness, overeating, stress, food sensitivity, or eating too fast, the stomach’s contents may fail to descend, or may even go upward instead. When it goes up, it’s called “stomach Qi [energy] counter-flow” or “stomach Qi rebellion.” Examples are acid reflux (heartburn), belching, nausea and vomiting, bloating, hiccups, dizziness, and just plain feeling yucky in the middle and upper body. Because of their descending and draining qualities and their action on bile production/secretion, bitter foods and herbs are often very helpful for these conditions.
There is just a small handful of bitter things an American is likely to encounter. Two of the most common are beer (in which the bitterness comes from hops flowers, which are used to offset the otherwise overly sweet taste of grain malt) and coffee (which we usually de-bitter by adding milk and/or sugar). Unfortunately, these are not the healthiest of bitter medicines, though I do believe they can have some benefits. Nearly all leafy greens have some degree of bitterness, especially arugula, endive (escarole), chicory, and young dandelion greens. These are excellent, though fairly mild, bitter medicines. Coffee (usually as espresso) and salad are often consumed after meals in Europe to stimulate digestion.
Stronger bitter herbs are usually encountered only in preparations made specifically to highlight their bitterness. These are used in alcoholic beverages and as after-meal digestifs. Gentian root is the classic bitter herb. It is used to produce Angostura bitters, originally prescribed for sea sickness and stomach problems, and now an ingredient in several mixed drinks. Herbalists of the European and American naturopathic traditions consider gentian and other bitter herbs to have the ability not just to stimulate gastric activity, but to improve the tone and function of the digestive system.
Rudolf Weiss, a famous German doctor and pioneer in herbal medicine, said of gentian, “A pure bitter (the bitter taste is detectable even at a dilution of 1 part in 20,000). Stimulates gastric secretions and motility and improves tone. It is active as soon as it is absorbed through the mouth’s mucus membranes.” The old school American herbalist, John Christopher, said gentian is “one of the most valuable bitter tonics and best strengtheners of the human system.” He called its effect “invigorating.” When used to invigorate the digestive system (as opposed to promoting digestion after a big meal), a squirt of gentian tincture is typically taken in water 20 to 60 minutes before eating.
Quinine, which comes from cinchona bark (a South American tree), is famous as the first effective treatment for malaria. It’s intensely bitter and it shares some medicinal properties with gentian and other bitters. The bitterness of quinine is the standard to which all other bitter substances are compared.
Quinine is most often encountered in tonic water, which goes very well with a wedge of lime and some good gin. Cinchona (AKA Peruvian bark) has attracted some attention recently because it’s the distant source of the contentious COVID treatment hydroxychloroquine. However, this herb and its derivatives all possess a certain degree of toxicity. The amount of quinine in tonic water is strictly regulated for this reason, and there have been a few unfortunate deaths from over-zealous users of the related substance chloroquine.
Citrus peel is a wonderful bitter agent. It can be used fresh, extracted in alcohol, or dried and aged and taken as a powder or tea. Fruity and floral tones make it more interesting and less of a pure bitter than gentian or quinine. Any citrus peel can be used. Common fruits used for bitters include lemon, lime, orange, tangerine, bitter orange, and grapefruit. A delicious example is the famous Italian limoncello, a liqueur made from Sorrento lemon peel (or whole lemons).
Other common bitters include barberry root bark, goldenseal root, rhubarb root, artichoke leaf, cascarilla bark, wormwood leaf, yarrow flowers, and more. Over 20 years ago, when I was a novice herbalist, I had a friend who had gradually developed nausea, bloating, and a poor appetite. Most foods made her feel worse. At the time, I was focused on barberry and suggested that she might try some. I didn’t speak to her for a while after that, but a few months later she reported, “I love barberry! It fixed me!” She had been taking it as a tea twice a day and not only were her digestive symptoms gone, she also felt strong and vital in way she hadn’t experienced since childhood.
A wide range of aromatic herbs may be combined with bitters to enhance their effect when used to soothe the digestive tract. Mint, anise, caraway, cardamom, cinnamon, coriander, fennel, ginger, and thyme are some common ones. These bitters and aromatics are available in a vast array of commercial preparations, most of which originate in Europe. However, there has been a resurgence of interest in bitters in the United States, with boutique manufacturers popping up alongside thriving foodie cultures.
Consider broadening your taste horizons, or at least offsetting your sweet, sour, and salty consumption with a bit of bitter. See if you feel lighter than usual after dinner if you have something bitter. Even if your taste buds don’t love it, your body might.
Share with us about your experience with bitter foods and herbs in the comments section.
Be well,
Peter
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Here's a fantastic seasonal favorite from the Best of Dr. Peter Borten articles vault! Enjoy, and please feel free to share YOUR favorite chilled summer treat recipes in the comments below!
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Ah, summer. The warm, bright sun, birds chirping, bees buzzing, and the sound of ice cream trucks in the air. We crave cold, sweet things like lemonade, ice cream, popsicles, and gelato. Somehow the specialness of summer convinces us to let ourselves and our kids indulge a bit more in the sugar. But summer treats don’t have to be full of refined sugar in order to be yummy and refreshing. Try these healthier variations on summer staples. You’ll feel in the spirit of the season, but don’t have to worry about putting on extra weight at a time of year when you may feel self-conscious of your body in skimpy summer attire.
In Chinese nutritional theory, sour foods are considered to help generate fluids in the body. When we’re hot and thirsty, the sourness of lemonade often feels even more refreshing than plain water. But the sugar just adds tons of extra calories (Minute Maid has about 12 teaspoons of sugar per 16 ounce glass) and makes you feel full if you drink too much. Your first healthier option is simply lemony water. A squirt of lemon (or lime) juice makes me much more enthusiastic about drinking enough water throughout the day. If you’re accustomed to drinking fruit juice daily, you can easily make the switch to lemony water and lose the extra sugar. If you don’t want to bring a lemon to work with you, try getting one of those lemon-shaped squeeze bottles of juice. If you have access to a juicer or juice bar, another excellent substitute for more sugary juices is cucumber juice. It’s wonderfully cooling in the summer. I like it with a squeeze of lemon and/or some fresh mint.
If you really want the sweetness of lemonade, try some stevia powder. It comes from the leaf of the stevia plant, it has no calories, and it’s much sweeter than sugar. You can also use it to sweeten your iced tea. (Bottled, sweetened iced tea, like lemonade, is full of sugar.) Also, you may wish to try a virgin mojito. Crush ice over fresh mint, add lime juice, stevia powder, and sparkling water. Very refreshing. Stevia powder varies a bit in quality. The lower quality stuff often has a bitter aftertaste. Generally, the 100% pure kind (which is also more expensive) tastes the best. A bottle will last you a very long time, because you only need minuscule amounts. You can find it at Trader Joes and natural food stores. It’s not quite as good as sugar, I’ll admit it, but you can get used to it.
Next are popsicles. The least healthy ones are made with high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and artificial flavors. Slightly better are the fruit juice sweetened kinds, but keep in mind that they’re made with concentrated fruit juice so as to maximize the sugar content. Better still are homemade popsicles made with just plain juice, though they still have a decent amount of sugar. If you want a sugar-free version, I’ve come up with a good recipe that we make at home:
Brew several cups of fruity herbal tea. I like to use Lemon Zinger or Red Zinger (Celestial Seasonings) though there are many other options. Then add some lemon juice and stevia powder until it tastes right and freeze it using popsicle forms (or an ice cube tray with foil or plastic wrap over it and tooth picks poked through). I you really dislike stevia (first, I'd encourage you to try a few different kinds, including both a powdered one and a liquid one), a second healthier option is xylitol crystals, a plant-derived “sugar alcohol.” It tastes more like sugar than stevia, and it’s also somewhat more expensive. However, it’s not calorie-free – xylitol has about 40% fewer calories than sugar. But it doesn’t raise our blood sugar the same way that normal sugar does, so it’s a safe substitute for diabetics. Xylitol has some other interesting properties, such as helping to prevent tooth decay and treating allergies and upper respiratory infections (usually used in nasal spray or gum form for this). While it’s quite safe, consumption of very large quantities can cause gas and/or diarrhea. Another promising sugar alcohol called erythritol has fewer calories than xylitol, the same health benefits, and less potential to disrupt the digestion. You can find erythritol and even combination erythritol+stevia products (including the popular Truvia) at many grocery stores.
One other easy popsicle substitute is simply frozen berries. Blueberries are the most popsicle-like to me, and because they take longer to eat, you won’t eat a whole box at once. We always have some bags of frozen blueberries, raspberries, cherries, strawberries, and blackberries in our freezer. They are my daughter's dessert of choice.
When you really want ice cream, frozen bananas can be a surprisingly close substitute. Break them into small pieces before freezing them. Once frozen, put them in a food processor or a strong blender with a dash of vanilla extract, and puree them. You may need to open the blender a few times and push the banana back down into the blades (I recommend turning it off before doing this) in order to get all the lumps blended. In the end, you should end up with something that has the consistency of sherbet or soft serve ice cream. Kids love it. You can also add other kinds of frozen fruit to change the flavor. Another option is the addition of raw, organic cocoa powder. Usually, the sweetness of the bananas is enough to offset the bitterness of the chocolate, but if not, let the bananas get extra ripe (brown) before you freeze them, or try adding some stevia extract. If it’s not creamy (fatty) enough for you, you can add some coconut milk or pureed cashews and re-chill it for a while to help it thicken.
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So you aspire to draw gasps of delight, rather than horror, as you pedal through Portland in the nude. Or, perhaps you just want to look good in a thong by summer. Well, you’re reading the right article. Your friends won’t tell you this, so I will–nobody wants to see a guy in a thong. Please, don’t leave the house in that. Now let’s address your body. If you’ve tried eating less and exercising more and that hasn’t worked, these tips will make the difference.
First, let’s just get this out of the way. Are you actually eating less? Rather than thinking of overeating as consuming more calories over the course of a day than you burn, start thinking of it as consuming more calories in a sitting than your body can readily utilize.
For instance, your friend Botswana consumes only 1500 calories a day—all in one meal—and she can’t understand why she’s not losing weight. Your other friend Mozambique eats five meals of 400 calories each, and keeps losing weight, even though he’s totaling 500 more calories per day than Botswana. Here’s the deal: Botswana is going so long without eating that her metabolism slows down. Even when she eats both lunch and dinner, her body still goes 17 hours from dinner to lunch the next day. So her body says to itself, “I’m gonna run on 1200 calories per day”—which she exceeds by 300 calories. But more importantly, she eats 1500 calories at once. There’s no way she’s going to utilize all that anytime soon.
Be like Mozambique. Eat frequently. Don’t go more than about four hours between meals (except from dinner to breakfast). Eat a protein-rich breakfast—egg whites, lean meat, beans, nonfat Greek yogurt, etc. Keep dinner light. Your metabolism will speed up. Stop snacking—don’t eat anything between your meals. Let your stomach empty out completely. You’ll get to eat again in just a few hours, so stop yourself before you get full. Didn’t your mom ever tell you not to pack the washing machine with clothes? They won’t circulate at all. They’ll come out dirty and moist. Well, the same goes for your stomach. The goal is not to fill your stomach to capacity; it’s to eat just enough to not be hungry anymore.
Now, if you’re thinking, “But Peter, the food I eat is so damn good, I can’t stop eating until my body will simply not accept any more!” then we need to have a different conversation. It’s called the Stop Going Unconscious While You’re Eating conversation. Wake up. You’re tuning out your body while you’re eating. It’s the only possible way to ignore your body’s cries of protest. Tune in instead.
If your food is so good, why not do everything possible to enjoy the experience? That means putting away your reading material and your cell phone, turning off the TV, placing a piece of duct tape over the mouth of your dining company, letting go of whatever you’re stressing about, pulling over if you’re driving, sitting down if you’re standing, and then savoring the hell out of that food. Always keep part of your attention on how your body feels, and as soon as you’re not hungry anymore—usually with an amount of food about one-and-a-half times the size of your closed fist—stop. Bonus: you won’t be in a food coma after lunch.
You’ll also have more leeway with meals if you limit yourself to only non-caloric drinks. Instead of soda or juice (which have a ton of sugar in them), or a latte (basically a huge glass of milk), just stick to water, unsweetened tea, or—if you must—coffee with just a dash of milk. If you want a calorie-free sweetener, try stevia leaf extract instead of the chemical stuff.
Meanwhile, make sure you’re getting enough deep, restful sleep—at least seven hours. Studies show sleep deprivation is associated with weight gain. Next, ditch the plastics. Most plastics contain chemicals known as exogenous endocrine disruptors that can throw off our hormones and contribute to weight gain. Never microwave anything in plastic, and stop buying water in plastic bottles. Haven’t you heard of that swirling island of plastic in the middle of the Pacific that’s half the size of the US? While you’re at it, stop eating food from cans, since they’re all lined with plastic containing bisphenol-A (BPA), a known endocrine disruptor.
Finally, remember this: In the whole history of the human species, we’ve only consumed large amounts of grains and sugars in the tiniest, most recent slice of time. Our bodies just can’t handle it—we get diabetic, fat, and hypertensive. Even in the last few decades, we’ve gone low-fat due to overly simplistic thinking about how we form body fat. In the meantime, our sugar consumption has ballooned, and so have our waistbands. If you want to lose weight, the single biggest change you can make to your diet is to cut way down on sweeteners and flour.
If you take my advice, you should be in good shape for the naked bike ride. Might want to get your suspension tuned up before then, too.
(Originally appeared in About Face Magazine, Issue 06)
Want to know more?
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