So we need to deal with the King’s men, Starvation, Deprivation and Justification. The first player we need to deal with is Starvation. Now we are starting to appreciate why three-quarters of the National Weight Control Registry eat breakfast. So we send Breakfast in to deal with Starvation.
Perhaps the most relevant story on this subject came from one of my hospital group patients who, as I was discussing this issue, was struck by a FOBO – a flash of the blindingly obvious. Excitedly she interrupted, You know I could never work out why I used to lose weight on overseas holidays and now I know! Whenever we travel overseas we get hotel packages that include breakfast. To save money we would start our day by making the most of the hotel breakfast buffet. We would eat until we were really full – all high calorie stuff you know, pancakes and croissants – but I would always come home lighter!’
I suggest to people that they use breakfast as the meal in which they eat their daily fibre. As I have mentioned, fibre is a core part of a healthy diet. There is a huge range of bread/toast and cereals that are all very
edible and high in fibre that could be eaten for breakfast.
Foods that are high in fibre are excellent for breakfast – not only are they good for our bowels, as we have mentioned, but they are slowly absorbed. So not only do we not feel hungry as the morning progresses, we don’t get a sudden blood sugar jump and then a fall that gives us a craving for more sweet food.
One of the more common causes of being hungry not long after
breakfast (after just having a cup of coffee and a good look around) is having just fruit for breakfast. This is most often the case with fruits that are higher in water content such as stonefruits, bananas and various berries. The best thing to do with these fruits is have them on your cereal. It makes the cereal taste better and you get the energy delivered
over an extended time.
While it is a good idea to have something for morning tea (more about this later), the backup for breakfast in dealing with Starvation is a big lunch. This is something that the French have known about for a long time. Let’s just take a quick sojourn in Paris.
The French Paradox
When it comes to eating well and getting away with it, the French are a force to be reckoned with. They may be completely unable to design a good looking motor vehicle, or lead the way in humility, but they are doing something spectacular when it comes to loving and eating good food. Despite their penchant for rich and creamy food, they enjoy one of
the western world’s lowest rates of obesity and heart disease. This unexpected finding is known as the French Paradox.
I, like many professionals working in the weight-loss field, have taken a particular interest in the way the French approach eating.
I will repeatedly return to what we have come to understand about their eating culture.
There are many elements to this culture and at this stage it is difficult for us to be entirely sure which are responsible for allowing them to eat rich and tasty foods without gaining weight. Fortunately none of the aspects of their culture that I will share with you appear to have any downside – so we can afford to be over-inclusive.
The first observation that we will make about the French is that they love fresh ingredients and home cooked meals. Three-quarters of French people eat at home or eat a meal that they prepared at home. Compare that to the fast food cultures of most western countries. What’s important about home cooked meals is that they are usually cooked with raw ingredients. In contrast, fast foods contain highly processed ingredients with the main casualty of processing being fibre. I will come back to this
later.
The second observation about the French is that lunch is the main meal of the day. where we eat our largest meal at the end of the day as we wind down to go to sleep? Here the French have a big advantage over us in that their culture not only supports this but requires it. So embedded in their culture is this practice that some employers subsidize lunch for employees, complete with wine, through restaurant vouchers! Offices close down for a couple of hours in the middle of the day as people are given time to both prepare and enjoy their meal.
Now of course my clients point out that, strangely enough, their employer does not shut down for a couple of hours during the day– let alone offer vouchers to a nearby licensed restaurant! All true. But weekends and holidays are the place to start. And these are good places to start because these are often times that we over-indulge. Whenever possible, my wife and I will plan social get-togethers with friends or family for lunch on Saturday or Sunday. Even if we’re not catching up with others, lunch will be the most elaborate meal of the day. As we tend to eat late, we will often finish lunch around 3.30 p.m., so come tea time we’re not at all hungry. Having a light meal is then dead easy for us and requires no self-discipline at all. Often we will have
something simple like soup or fresh corn on the cob with butter,pepper and salt.
By eating lunch when we were not starving we were not as likely to over-eat, and by not being hungry in the evening it is easier to have just a light supper – a perfect energy match – the French way. Women who have the most important job of all – being a mother at home – have the opportunity to eat their main meal at lunchtime, even though they may have to cook the main meal of the day for their partner in the evening.
Lunch for those of you who can organize this does not have to be an elaborate affair. The goal is simply to make it filling – in simple terms that means meat, cheese and high fibre bread along with the salad you might otherwise have had. By having a large lunch you will find it easier to have smaller portions of the same meal as your partner in the evening.
After a good lunch you will find there is no need for afternoon tea or to graze before tea time. You can see that even if you were to eat the same for lunch as you did for dinner (and then eat as much for dinner as you would for lunch) but then skip afternoon tea and the pre-dinner grazing you would consume less energy in the day – which is the ultimate goal.
A light evening meal after a big lunch is also going to decrease the need for supper. For many of my clients – a big lunch means they find it easy to skip the afternoon tea, the pre-dinner grazing and the late supper!
Each of these meals would typically have comprised rich carbohydrates(e.g., potato crisps, chocolate or bread) or energy-dense savory foods(e.g., cheeses, spreads on crackers) or foods rich in both fat and carbohydrates such as ice cream.
So simply by reversing the main meals of the day and avoiding the evening over-eating as the unholy trinity of deprivation, starvation and justification come to visit, our overall energy intake goes down. This appears to be one of the key elements of the French Paradox.
We need to study the French Paradox fairly quickly because recent reports suggest that in a few years it may be gone. France is being slowly invaded by fast food chains while hypermarkets are replacing the outdoor quality food markets. As we will discuss later, the longer we Breakfast like a princess …
Perhaps the most relevant story on this subject came from one of my hospital group patients who, as I was discussing this issue, was struck by a FOBO – a flash of the blindingly obvious. Excitedly she interrupted, You know I could never work out why I used to lose weight on overseas holidays and now I know! Whenever we travel overseas we get hotel packages that include breakfast. To save money we would start our day by making the most of the hotel breakfast buffet. We would eat until we were really full – all high calorie stuff you know, pancakes and croissants – but I would always come home lighter!’
I suggest to people that they use breakfast as the meal in which they eat their daily fibre. As I have mentioned, fibre is a core part of a healthy diet. There is a huge range of bread/toast and cereals that are all very
edible and high in fibre that could be eaten for breakfast.
Foods that are high in fibre are excellent for breakfast – not only are they good for our bowels, as we have mentioned, but they are slowly absorbed. So not only do we not feel hungry as the morning progresses, we don’t get a sudden blood sugar jump and then a fall that gives us a craving for more sweet food.
One of the more common causes of being hungry not long after
breakfast (after just having a cup of coffee and a good look around) is having just fruit for breakfast. This is most often the case with fruits that are higher in water content such as stonefruits, bananas and various berries. The best thing to do with these fruits is have them on your cereal. It makes the cereal taste better and you get the energy delivered
over an extended time.
While it is a good idea to have something for morning tea (more about this later), the backup for breakfast in dealing with Starvation is a big lunch. This is something that the French have known about for a long time. Let’s just take a quick sojourn in Paris.
The French Paradox
When it comes to eating well and getting away with it, the French are a force to be reckoned with. They may be completely unable to design a good looking motor vehicle, or lead the way in humility, but they are doing something spectacular when it comes to loving and eating good food. Despite their penchant for rich and creamy food, they enjoy one of
the western world’s lowest rates of obesity and heart disease. This unexpected finding is known as the French Paradox.
I, like many professionals working in the weight-loss field, have taken a particular interest in the way the French approach eating.
I will repeatedly return to what we have come to understand about their eating culture.
There are many elements to this culture and at this stage it is difficult for us to be entirely sure which are responsible for allowing them to eat rich and tasty foods without gaining weight. Fortunately none of the aspects of their culture that I will share with you appear to have any downside – so we can afford to be over-inclusive.
The first observation that we will make about the French is that they love fresh ingredients and home cooked meals. Three-quarters of French people eat at home or eat a meal that they prepared at home. Compare that to the fast food cultures of most western countries. What’s important about home cooked meals is that they are usually cooked with raw ingredients. In contrast, fast foods contain highly processed ingredients with the main casualty of processing being fibre. I will come back to this
later.
The second observation about the French is that lunch is the main meal of the day. where we eat our largest meal at the end of the day as we wind down to go to sleep? Here the French have a big advantage over us in that their culture not only supports this but requires it. So embedded in their culture is this practice that some employers subsidize lunch for employees, complete with wine, through restaurant vouchers! Offices close down for a couple of hours in the middle of the day as people are given time to both prepare and enjoy their meal.
Now of course my clients point out that, strangely enough, their employer does not shut down for a couple of hours during the day– let alone offer vouchers to a nearby licensed restaurant! All true. But weekends and holidays are the place to start. And these are good places to start because these are often times that we over-indulge. Whenever possible, my wife and I will plan social get-togethers with friends or family for lunch on Saturday or Sunday. Even if we’re not catching up with others, lunch will be the most elaborate meal of the day. As we tend to eat late, we will often finish lunch around 3.30 p.m., so come tea time we’re not at all hungry. Having a light meal is then dead easy for us and requires no self-discipline at all. Often we will have
something simple like soup or fresh corn on the cob with butter,pepper and salt.
By eating lunch when we were not starving we were not as likely to over-eat, and by not being hungry in the evening it is easier to have just a light supper – a perfect energy match – the French way. Women who have the most important job of all – being a mother at home – have the opportunity to eat their main meal at lunchtime, even though they may have to cook the main meal of the day for their partner in the evening.
Lunch for those of you who can organize this does not have to be an elaborate affair. The goal is simply to make it filling – in simple terms that means meat, cheese and high fibre bread along with the salad you might otherwise have had. By having a large lunch you will find it easier to have smaller portions of the same meal as your partner in the evening.
After a good lunch you will find there is no need for afternoon tea or to graze before tea time. You can see that even if you were to eat the same for lunch as you did for dinner (and then eat as much for dinner as you would for lunch) but then skip afternoon tea and the pre-dinner grazing you would consume less energy in the day – which is the ultimate goal.
A light evening meal after a big lunch is also going to decrease the need for supper. For many of my clients – a big lunch means they find it easy to skip the afternoon tea, the pre-dinner grazing and the late supper!
Each of these meals would typically have comprised rich carbohydrates(e.g., potato crisps, chocolate or bread) or energy-dense savory foods(e.g., cheeses, spreads on crackers) or foods rich in both fat and carbohydrates such as ice cream.
So simply by reversing the main meals of the day and avoiding the evening over-eating as the unholy trinity of deprivation, starvation and justification come to visit, our overall energy intake goes down. This appears to be one of the key elements of the French Paradox.
We need to study the French Paradox fairly quickly because recent reports suggest that in a few years it may be gone. France is being slowly invaded by fast food chains while hypermarkets are replacing the outdoor quality food markets. As we will discuss later, the longer we Breakfast like a princess …
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