Feast Without Fear by Gin Stephens

Author:Gin Stephens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Intermittent Fasting, Diet, Lifestyle, Weight Loss, Weight Maintenance
Publisher: Gin Stephens
Published: 2017-09-30T04:00:00+00:00

Farewell to fear

After everything I have learned, the emerging picture seems pretty clear. The foods that the longest living people in the world feast upon are the same foods that feed our gut microbiomes well. These are also the same foods associated with positive health outcomes in study after study about the power of a Mediterranean-type diet. When we add these foods to our plates, we can Feast Without Fear.

Some of these foods may include items you believe that you should avoid if you’re a long-term dieter. This is because when we focus on specific macronutrients, as many diet books do, we tend to fixate on whether a food is a “carb” or a “fat”, and we then lump all carbs and fats into one category as either “good” or “bad.” Actually, though, our bodies need all macronutrients. In fact, it can be said that the overall quality of the foods we choose is a lot more important than the ratio of the macronutrients found in these foods.

The long-living people in the Blue Zones don’t count calories or restrict macronutrients. Participants in most of the studies related to the Mediterranean diet weren’t counting calories or restricting macronutrients, either. The bacteria living in our gut thrive on a wide variety of foods, and the greater the diversity of what we send down to them, the healthier our gut microbiomes will be.

If you want to Feast Without Fear, you need to follow the lessons from all three of these sources: eat a wide variety of real foods.

It is important for us to realize: we should no longer fear “carbs” or “fats” or even “protein.” Or grains. Or beans. Or dairy. Or meat. Don’t fear any real foods that humans have been eating for generations. The key is “real foods.”

Remember that a healthy gut microbiome prefers real foods to overly processed foods. These are the same types of foods that are linked to longevity in populations from around the world. These are also the types of foods linked to lowered risk of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular risk in study after study on the benefits of the Mediterranean diet.

Does that mean that every person will be able to eat exactly the same way and get precisely the same results? No, and we will discuss that in the next chapter. We do have individual differences that make it impossible to have any one-size-fits-all meal plan.

Still, though, we can use these overall recommendations (from the Blue Zones, Mediterranean diets, and what feeds our gut microbiomes well) to develop a template of what foods work well for most people (see chapter 14!) Once we do that, we understand that we can and should include a wide variety of foods into our diets without fear.

When we Feast Without Fear, it’s important to reframe our thinking. As an example, we should not be afraid of “carbs,” but we should make sure to add in the right types of carbs. What does that look like? Think about real fruits and vegetables that are close to their natural state.

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