In which the author questions whether her own attachments are, in fact, as cultlike as others’
About six weeks ago the BF announced that, as an experiment, he wanted to spend the month of January eating “Paleo,” or “Primal.” As described on MarksDailyApple.com, this involves deriving something like 50% of your calories from animal fat, plus avoiding all grains (among other things).
Hence followed what my mother would term a “conniption fit,” as I, having spent the better part of two decades eating mostly vegetarian and extremely low-fat (in fact, completely vegetarian for at least half of that time, and vegan for about six months), basically lost it.
“You’re going to have a heart attack!” I yelped, practically rabid. Thankfully, the BF is of stolid and mostly placid stock, and my outburst didn’t rustle his feathers (much). He just kept insisting that I look at the websites that had inspired him to try this crazy experiment. Whereas I just kept retorting that those websites were all commercial, with a financial incentive to convince him of their ideas! Not exactly sources I’d trust my (and his) precious health with!
Oh, I was in a raging huff.
After at least 45 minutes of tantrum, I got off my high horse long enough to plunk down in front of my computer, and, brow deeply furrowed in disgust, I searched for some sources I could trust.
Lo and behold, it didn’t take long to find some sources – good, old, dry, boring, medicalese sources – that showed, quite convincingly, that all the data around dietary fat causing disease is, in fact, very sketchy.
Skreee! (Sound of screeching car brakes and hastily executed U-turn.)
Suddenly, my 17-year conviction that my diet was the best, healthiest diet possible, a conviction that informed a significant chunk of my daily life choices and behavior, was on shaky ground indeed.
I won’t go into the details of the research that ensued. Suffice it to say that I had a major paradigm shift, and realized that, after nearly two decades of (mostly) rigidly following a certain set of rules, perhaps I had (ahem) made a mistake. Not only did I give the BF my (still rather hesitant) blessing, but I decided to join him in this eating adventure.
It’s been over six weeks since we started the experiment, and the results have been surprising, and almost 100% positive. I can share details later. What interests me here is that this radical change, this paradigm shift, made me realize I had been living my life according to a belief system that I didn’t even realize was a belief system! No, I thought I had access to The Truth, and that anyone who ate a different sort of diet was just sadly misinformed. Although I wasn’t (that) much of an evangelist, I was a True Believer of the most irritating sort, and I didn’t even know it!
As it happens, the BF was also a True Believer, also for 17 years (how’s that for random coincidences?), but in his case the belief system was not diet, but the beliefs of the particular Christian cult of which he was a member. He evangelized door-to-door, and like me, thought he had access to The Truth. Eventually his faith began to crack (I like to say his mind kicked in…), and after a painful internal struggle of some years he had his own paradigm shift, which was similar in some ways to mine: he came to the conclusion that perhaps he had (ahem) just made a mistake.
It’s incredibly liberating to let go of a belief system. Embarrassing to admit to a mistake, yes, but liberating to discover the choices suddenly available to you! In the BF’s case, his paradigm shift was followed by an intense period of “rebellious” activity that he’s still not quite through with. In my case, I’ve re-discovered the joys of such things as cheese! And butter! And as many nuts as I want!
I could wax on for days about the experience of eating almost 180 degrees from what I was used to, and how it has affected me (for one thing, I’m leaner than I’ve ever been.) The most fascinating part, though, is realizing that, like the BF, I was essentially the member of a cult. That the cult was one of food, rather than religion, is significant only in the degree of change and restriction it imposed on my life. I was blinded by my belief system, just as he was by his, and letting it go was painful, but ultimately liberating.
Now the open question is, how many other belief systems are hemming in my life? How many are hemming in yours? Food for thought, indeed.
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To read more fascinating essays on belief systems, see one of my favorite blogs, Belief Systems & Other BS.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Fascinating. However, your initial worry about too much fat should not be dismissed completely. It is not 100% accurate to say that avoiding all plant food is more ‘evolutionarily correct’. While it is true that many nuts and grains are “modern” inventions (i.e. within the last 15,000 years via domestication of wheat, peanuts, etc.), humans did eat their ancestors. Also, ever notice what apes eat? A whole lot of fruits and vegetables in addition to meat. You still need to eat a lot of fruits and veggies for a balanced diet! Part of the cause of your new “leanness” [as if YOU could get ANY leaner] could be that you are losing ‘good’ mass. Just a thought. I am hardly one to preach – while 90% of my diet is a well-sorted balance of lean poultry, fruits, veggies & grains, I eat way too many cookies…
I never actually said anything about avoiding all plant foods, and neither do any of the paleo/primal sites that I’m aware of, so I’m not sure where you go that notion. Grains, yes – if you’re eating paleo or primal, these you would avoid. The idea being that we humans are not evolutionarily suited for eating grasses, which have only been used for food for about 10,000 years. Vegetables, however, are to be consumed in great quantities! Many paleo/primal advocates also stay away from tomatoes and other nightshades.
There’s not consensus about fruits: some of the more extreme paleo sites preach that fruit is just “candy from a tree,” and most modern fruits have indeed been bread for high sugar content. On the other hand, the more moderate sites definitely promote fruit as part of a healthy diet. Me, I’m definitely more of a moderate eater! I LOVE fruit! Were I “Pure Paleo” I would avoid all dairy (though this is a contentious issue as well) and definitely avoid sugar, the evil of evils. But I enjoy my cheese, yogurt, butter, ice cream, and dark chocolate, and I don’t plan on giving them up anytime soon. (I also have a killer recipe for grain-free almond cookies that uses a tiny bit of brown sugar. Yummm!) :-)
I recently heard about the Paleo diet and I had the same reaction you did – that CAN’T be healthy. But that is mainly because on first glance, it involved no vegetables. Research showed that it does involve produce, and at it’s most basic, not overprocessed. I think if my FI wanted to try it, I would probably tell him that he can do whatever he wants, but he’s buying his own chest freezer to store the meat in.
As a vegetarian raised by low-fat “healthy” eaters, (which is funny because my dad weighs about 300lbs, but his problem is entirely portion control) I had also been raised to believe that fat = bad. When I started to diet/count calories, I realized that I was only getting about 10-15% of my daily calories from fat, instead of the recommended 30%. I told my mom that 30% was the recommended amount and she told me that I was wrong and that her low fat diet of eating 25 grams of fat a day or less was best. Trying to reform the way that I eat has been very difficult, and it can be very hard to eat meals with my mother where I use olive oil or butter instead of pam and margarine and she worries that whatever I’ve cooked isn’t “low-fat” enough.
I think the jury is still out on the connection between things like cholesterol in food and cholesterol in the blood; between saturated fats and LDL levels; between processed foods and organics. I think there never will be a “best” way to eat, just like we’ll never have an answer on religion.
Thanks for your comment Ellie. Before I switched to Paleo a couple of months ago I was eating about 10-15% of my calories from fat. (Not that I’ve actually counted for years, but I was a follower of Dean Ornish’s recommended diet, which is about that ratio.) I was a lot like your mother, and whenever I was served a meal cooked with oil or butter I feared my weight would balloon! I’ve been astonished to find that the opposite has happened — I’ve lost weight. I’ve always been slender, but in the past few years I haven’t been as lean as I would have liked. It seems the culprit was all the grain-based food (and food-like-substances) that I used to consume, not fat.
You’re right though, the jury is still out, and I don’t think there will ever be an answer. It all comes down to what works for each individual, which can take a lot of experimenting to find out!