What is The Diet Trap?

First it’s not one trap; it’s the many myths the food and diet industries have taught us – like “a calorie is a calorie.”

All calories are not created equal, maybe in terms of energy released in a calorimeter (the most common device for measuring the heat of combustion or caloric value of a material). But our bodies treat them differently, depending on their nutrient “packaging.”

Calorie theory doesn’t account for what the human body cannot absorb, or what is used in the digestive process or what the body can utilize in the first place vs. what it will store as excess weight and be forced to eliminate from the body if it can even do so, in an unhealthy state.

Calorie theory does not consider the impact empty, nutrient-poor calories have on the body when they overwhelm and poison our bodies and compromise our health.  Most conversations about calories don’t even discuss the phytochemicals that determine whether a food is really health promoting and protecting or not.

Diet traps are popular “common-sense” answers (like “eat less”, often combined with “exercise more”) that seem innocuous and beneficial – and at face value make sense as a solution to overweight, but not if your diet is nutrient poor and your lifestyle is not balanced and healthy.

They’re false information we’ve been fed all our lives – like the idea that you have to eat meat and dairy everyday to lose weight, get protein and calcium to grow and build strong bones and be healthy…

They’re short-term methods with negative long-term effects. Low-carb, low-cal and low-fat diets, where we manipulate nutrient and caloric concentrations in extreme ways, all fit into this category! Even if they masquerade as “lifestyles,” they’re still diet traps!

They’re tricks we think help us keep our weight down, but don’t – like using caffeine as an appetite suppressant only to overeat later, because we’ve confused our hunger signals and made ourselves sick.

They’re beliefs that sabotage our quality of life and our success – like thinking that losing weight is about willpower, motivation or self-control alone. You can’t measure anyone’s will power or self-control by looking solely at their weight or when they are under the influence of nutrient poor foods.

Diet traps are powerful food, weight and fitness beliefs and behaviors that keep us overweight and obsessed with losing weight.

Diet Traps snare not only our health and our self-esteem, but our ability to perform at a high level.  They keep us stuck.

They include commercial diets, but they’re not limited to them by any means.

They are rituals, tactics and marketing messages that induce unnatural weight loss or promote unhealthy, unsustainable weight management, because in most cases they keep us dependent on the nutrient-poor and barren foods that are at the root of the problem.  Meanwhile those messages sell you short, thinking that “you can’t handle the truth” or that you’ll never buy the fact that our diet needs to be comprised of 90% or more, vegetables, fruits, bean, legumes, raw nuts and seeds and whole grains.

And the consequences are clear:  weight gain, disease, depression, sickness – and so many more.

Diet Traps are unsuccessful strategies because they don’t free us from our food addictions or fulfill our complete nutrient needs.  They promise success and freedom, but don’t deliver anything but short term weight loss. And that is trap! For anyone wanting to lose weight, without changing their lifestyle, they will fall for short term weight loss strategies all the time.

Today, the “truth teller” approach is to point out all the “traps” and then sell you right back into one.  That is not going to happen here, especially when you get free of the ultimate diet trap!

If you haven’t read “The Diet Trap” go ahead and do so, then I would love to hear your thoughts, and even some of the diet traps that you have identified.

Let’s us know!

He’s talking about an experience we shared in 2005 when he was diet trapped and suffering from debilitating hand pain and I recommended that he get off animal products to deal with his arthritis. All this at a time when he was extremely skeptical of doing so as a very active athlete.

Watch the video to here what he had to say.
Note: it’s very important to know how to eat Nutrient Rich, listen as even athletes in transition to eating for health, can run into unwanted results if you eat too much of certain foods.

As weight is gained all 3 components vary according to several factors; the most common include genetics, the personal energy level, diet quality and activity level, and environment.

If a persona has a predisposition to gain weight relatively easily, their personal energy is low (burn out), food energy intake is too high, physical activity is low and the time its taken to gain weight is over a longer term, as much as 90% of the excess weight will be made up of mostly extra fat stores. However, a small percentage of any gain will comprise lean weight and water.

When weight gain is short term, all other lifestyle factors aside; it’s not just the food, it is the affect of the food that really makes the difference. This is a major diet trap.

For example, a gain in water weight is often due to an increased daily sodium intake.

Sodium in the body is mainly found in the fluids that surround the body’s cells, such as the blood and lymph fluid. When sodium intake exceeds the amount the body can handle it builds up within the interstitial areas and the kidneys have to work extra hard to excrete a constant rise in daily sodium intake. A build up may cause the body to hold extra fluids in the blood and around the cells which contributes to increased blood pressure and also excess weight gain from water.
Daily sodium intake will always be high in the standard western diet.

The average diet in the western world is commonly made up of fast, packaged or convenient foods with long shelf life due in part to preservation affects of sodium. These typically nutrient poor foods, typically again, consist of high levels of salt and salt contains sodium. If a diet is mainly composed of high sodium foods then naturally the sodium intake also rises thus extra weight is gained quickly as the body holds onto water. It has been estimated that many people in the UK and USA may be carrying up to 5 pounds of extra weight due to the effects of a high sodium intake.

The opposite effect also happens when an individual reduces food intake in order to lose weight quickly. A percentage of the loss will be water because a reduction in high sodium foods means a reduction in daily sodium intake which results in water loss as the kidneys have a chance to finally rid the excess sodium from the body. This also helps partly explain why a dieter may experience the yo-yo effect when dieting, water weight is lost with food reduction or a temporary change in food quality, but quickly regains the weight when old eating habits are back to normal and daily sodium intake rises once more.

Here’s the reality.

Just because you eat a food that has 200 calories for example, does not mean if you were overeating, you would gain .057 lbs of weight – 200/3500 calories (the amount of calories in a pound).

If that food is very high in sodium, and depending on how your body reacts, you could gain many pounds as your body holds excess water to keep the excess sodium away from negatively affecting the function of the cells. This throws many people off, particularly those who eat packaged diet foods, or unknowingly eat less of foods that are very high in sodium.

According to Joe Fuhrman M.D. we don’t need more than 1000 mg of sodium per day, (which would probably increase if you were an athlete); basically, the amount of sodium you would get eating a 2000 calorie nutrient rich diet, full of nutrient rich foods that have natural sodium levels approx, 1/2 mg per calorie.

If you are eating a nutrient poor diet, and not eating for health, it’s not uncommon to be eating foods that take your sodium intake upwards of 2000 – 3000 – 5000mg of sodium and that’s is a formula for major weight gain, even if the excess calorie intake does not equal the amount of pounds gained.

It’s not just the food and its calories, it’s the quality of the food and it’s affects on the function and performance of your body, that often determines weight gain and of course, your health.

We are at a major shift in the nutritional landscape, about how we think about eating, and eating for health, for that matter. 

For decades, we have been operating on the “nutrient poor” model of nutrition, where nutritional advice has focused mostly on what foods and substances people should limit – saturate fat, salt (sodium), cholesterol… – as if to acknowledge their consistent presence in the diet with “a little more of the healthy stuff” to be added in.

This moderation in everything nutritional approach has been a disaster; it’s not even a nutritional principle, it’s an economic one.

The old “take your vitamins” model of eating, where people would eat their standard nutrient poor diet and then make sure they were ‘eating their veggies”, ”taking a multi” or then, when they get sick “drink orange juice”, defies common sense.

Imagine nutrient rich foods as a side dish!

Today the trend is eating Nutrient Rich foods that result in health, peak function and performance, and natural weight loss as THE way to eat! If you want to include the nutrient poor stuff, if anything they are the side dish.

The beauty is, once you start eating Nutrient Rich foods, it get’s harder and harder to even consider those food stuffs as a “side dish”, because your body won’t tolerate them. Once you clean your diet up and therefore your body, just like any high performance machine, a clean machine, will not tolerate junk.

The nutrient poor approach to nutritional advice, of “what you should limit”, is also uninspiring and ineffective; especially when you consider that everywhere around us we have intelligent people promoting the very foods and substances we are supposed to limit. It’s confusing, it makes you feel left out and it gives rise to the “eat less” dieting industry.

In the book The Wellness Revolution, we learn that the nutrient poor model of nutrition was really in fact, an economic force. It had little to do with your health, and everything to do with the platform for various industries. Now I’m not into stepping on people toes, or hurting their bread and butter, but I do have a problem with industry practices that make people overweight and sick.

Don’t you?

As a result of these economic forces, most Americans today are not only overweight, but are overfed while undernourished. And it’s because they are missing out on the valuable array of nutrients their bodies need to stay healthy and function; the ones that are found in nutrient rich foods and nutrient rich food products.  

If they were to eat Nutrient Rich foods, and food products, they would get these nutrients, and they would not suffer the problems they they do when they eat nutrient poor foods that are rich in calories, stimulants (drugs) and poor in nutrients. They also wouldn’t suffer the withdrawal symptoms they experience when they try to stop and eat better. 

That is the diet trap.  

Of course eating Nutrient Rich foods, isn’t nirvana overnight, espspecially when you just begin making the transition to Nutrient Rich; there are a great many ins and outs, “nuances” to eating Nutrient Rich foods successfully, to look and feel the way you want and perform better. You can even still get overweight eating the world’s best nutrient rich foods, it’s just allot harder.

The Nutrient Rich Way (NRW) to eat has many of the same nutritional rules around around calories only the interpretation and the expereince is very different. Nutrient Rich calories are very different from nutrient poor calories and the implications are startling. The most successful way to eat for health, it is also a positive way of eating that focuses on a food’s complete nutrient profile, shifting the focus from foods to avoid to foods you enjoy.

Nutrient Rich is the “eat better” way to lose weight and when you lose weight, it happens naturally, especially when your lifestyle is successful. Eating Nutrient Rich is not like going on a diet that you need to stick to, it’s a quality standard that you set for yourself in your life and then transition to as the way you eat.

The Nutrient Rich Way is inspiring and not confusing.

The big question is, how do you make that transition, from nutrient poor to Nutrient Rich foods? This is the challenge, because it’s not just a matter of changing your diet, your body goes through allot of changes too and sometimes its difficult to interpret what’s going on.

Sign up for the Nutrient Rich RSS Feed at this site and stay tuned for the upcoming teleseminar – “How to Get Rich, Nutrient Rich!” the Most Successful Way to Eat for Health, Peak Performance and Natural Weight Loss!

Intoxication feels good, just drink a glass of wine or beer! It is just the withdrawal effects that nobody likes.
Well, last year, I found a deeper explanation for why this lethargy happens. I am not saying it’s the only answer, because Joel Fuhrman M.D. also explains and I paraphrase our conversation…

“the toxic metabolites of animal products that are flowing through the body, once consumption of animal products is dramatically lessened or eliminated, the presence of these toxic metabolites creates this hangover feeling.”

Like a hangover from alcohol, this feeling is the process of withdrawal or detoxification that a healthy body that is always trending towards health will initiate. That hangover from animal products like beef, is saving your life!

Note: there is much more to the personal energy equation, but when it comes to food, this is a BIG factor.

I realized this morning, that I had never done a blog post about this, particularly highlighting a new finding.

Here is what I found…

According to George D Pamplona-Roger, M.D. in his book “Foods That Heal” –

“The stimulant hypoxanthine, not any special properties of its protein, vitamins, or minerals is responsible for the satisfying and stimulating effects of meat. It is similar in chemical formula and effect as caffeine.

It has been known since antiquity that those who regularly eat meat experience some degree of enervation when they are deprived of this food for some time. This sensation that “something is missing” always results from abruptly removing meat from the diet, even when it is replaced with plant foods and dietary supplements providing as much or even more protein and nutrients as meat.

He goes on to say, “that the enervation that some persons experience when they stop eating meat products is not due to a lack of its protein or other nutrients that some consider irreplaceable. It is due to a type of stimulant found in meat. Today it’s known that the muscle cells of meat contain Hypoxanthine, which increases in concentration as the meat ages.

Hypoxanthine and other similar substances, such as inosinic acid and guanylic acid, are present in meat. They have a chemical structure similar to that of caffeine in coffee or the theobromine in cocoa, with similar effects. They are central nervous system stimulants. They are addictive.

Hypoxanthine explains the stimulating effect of meat and it’s capacity to create a certain level of addiction, which manifests itself when meat is given up abruptly. Because of this, it is recommended that those wishing to replace meat with plant-based foods follow a transition diet to help avoid the effect of sudden deprivation.

~ John Allen Mollenhauer

Lifestyle trainer and founder of www.NutrientRich.com, Eat Better, Not Less! John Allen Mollenhauer “JAM”, will teach you the most successful way to eat better food, for better health and natural weight loss. “After years of eating the standard American Diet,” and then low cal, low fat and low carb diets to lose weight, says John Allen, “I was experiencing the same low quality of health, diet and weight issues that most people experience. For years I searched for the best way to curtail hunger, be healthier, and get rid of the mystery around how to live at or at least near my ideal weight.”

What John Allen found was a way to eat that made him feel more satisfied than ever before – a way to eat that focused more on what you want in your diet, not what you don’t, that focused on the way to eat better foods rich in all the nutrients you need to succeed, in great tasting ways. He learned that you don’t want to eat less of foods the cause the problem to begin with, that’s dieting; now, John Allen is healthier than ever and is helping thousands of others make the transition from nutrient poor to Nutrient Rich and get the same benefits!

With the guidance and reinforcement of a world class lifestyle health and science advisory team , the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted (The China Study), and personal experience with thousands of clients, John Allen produced the Nutrient Rich Lifestyle System™ and launched the Nutrient Rich Revolution to help free millions of people stuck in dead-end diet traps, and eat better, not less. Diet traps, prevent otherwise motivated people from living normally and naturally, free of diet weight and long-term health issues.

John Allen is also the founder of Performance Lifestyle Solutions, the lifestyle training and coaching company. In a Performance Lifestyle, your life, your lifestyle, and your real goals, are back in alignment. Your health and success are back on the same team and your focus is on the best use of your energy. You learn how to manage your energy like a pro to look, feel and perform better, and achieve the goals your passionate about, at any age. When you are driven by goals that make you happy, and you achieve them in a healthy way, changing your lifestyle is simple. That’s when you’ll be successful at eating, exercising and live at your ideal weight.