It’s time to kill the calorie.  It’s an inappropriate measure of proof.- Robert Lustig, MD

No one wants to hear this but that is exactly why it is so important.

Do you know how absurd it is that we continue doing things that don’t work?  Instead of admitting we just don’t want to change something, we make excuses and pretend it works.  Brilliant, humans, just brilliant.

Enough already.

When are we going to grow tired enough of our failed conceptions of diet that we rebel and live in the truth?

Almost daily someone tells me they eat too much, need to restrict (count) calories, need to eat less fat, need to diet, need to work out more to lose weight, need to follow some magic formula, etc.

How is that going for you?

Collectively, we are fat and sick.

Language shapes how we think.

The language around our most common food discussions is wrong but we accept it and, in turn, it prevents us from having an accurate understanding of food.

We need to STOP with the calorie bull.  It is an antiquated idea that manipulates you so you buy into a bogus paradigm.  If you think 300 calories of ice cream is the same as 300 calories of tomatoes, you are delusional.

I, too, grew up with the idea of calories in, calories out.  It’s crap.

It is predicated on the idea that a calorie is a calorie, a concept that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  The term does nothing healthy for humans and should be dropped.  It only serves those who use it to manipulate you.

Do you know what I think when someone starts on the calorie thing?  I think, “Bless, you’ve drank the Kool-aid and we’ve all been there.”

What else do we say, and therefore think, that we need to drop completely?

How about the idea that you can exercise and avoid the consequence of what you eat?  I get piles of exercise and it does all kind of things to help me but it doesn’t erase what that tub of ice cream last night did to my liver and microbiome.

Less, less, less, less…most of the time this term is being used by someone talking about the human diet, it is just to perpetuate the idea that we are all sick because we need to eat less.  If you follow my Facebook videos, you know how I feel about this.  The problems we face are rooted in what we need more of, not less.  The psychology here, matters.  While it is true we need to eat less garbage, the way to do that is by eating more food.  We should be talking about more most of the time.  We need to eat more food, less trash, and the only way that is sustainable is to crowd out the crap with the real thing.  We will be in a better place when most people are walking around saying they need more:  “I need more greens today.” “My body needs some carrots.” “I need more water.”

The term portion control needs to be pushed off a cliff, while we are at it.  This goes right back to all the less talk.  Only a very specific personality type responds in a healthy way to this concept and is able to maintain it.  If you are eating garbage, you need portion control.  If you rarely eat that stuff, it makes you feel sick and you regulate your intake naturally.  If you are eating unadulterated produce, you NEVER have to think about portion control.  You stop eating when you don’t want to eat anymore.  It’s pretty simple.  But we have taken this term and enshrined it as the banner goal for every person on the SAD.  You hear it in health class and from disapproving mothers, mostly the ones who made an art of it themselves and now enjoy the smug superiority that comes with self deprivation.  You hear it from men who hold this sort of control as a virtue and medical professionals who tow an outdated line on nutrition advice.  Many people, not all, can stay thin by eating less but you can’t be healthy by living on trash, no matter how little you eat.

Since we have completely denatured the term, just like most of the edibles in this country, let’s go ahead and stop referring to processed, sugar based foods as treats.  A treat is something you get on rare occasion.  That isn’t a thing in the US anymore.  What used to be a treat is now ubiquitous, daily, and ordinary.  We are literally committing mass suicide with our sugar consumption.  That is not an exaggeration and is well backed by science.  A genuine treat to the average US body is a piece of produce grown without synthetics, ripened on the plant and eaten fresh.  That thing you get many times a week, or a day, is not a treat.  It’s just a regular part of your diet.

How about hungry?  The vast majority of us in the US, particularly the middle class, have NEVER been hungry.  True hunger is not an empty stomach.  Hunger is an empty everything without knowing where or when you will have another meal.  I have friends who have experienced hunger.  If you asked me when I was breastfeeding if I was hungry in the mornings, I would have said yes, but even wanting to eat and having an empty body, I knew where and how to obtain food and it was never an issue.  We are all guilty of this but that isn’t an excuse.  Our flippant whining about being hungry while we are carrying around extra weight and making choices about what to eat from a plethora options is morally repugnant when viewed less myopically.

The single biggest joke in our language is the use of the word food to describe that which doesn’t nourish the body or soul.  For the love, this shouldn’t be an issue.  We are so foolish as to put things in our mouths, the ingredients of we can’t even identify or explain, but we are confident they qualify as food sans any evidence or proof.  Those things make us sick but we don’t understand it and just can’t believe the government would allow things that aren’t food to be sold.  Bless.  The Standard American Diet is without conscience and adheres to the lowest possible standards.  And we are just culpable, sick, miserable sheep.  Hell, we are spreading it around the planet.  If only we were spreading actual manure around the planet instead of figurative manure, at least we’d be increasing fertility instead of decreasing it.

So how do we elevate our thinking and our behavior when we are still using language of the system that got us here?  I contend we cannot.  We are just puppets, helping to perpetuate the faulty system that feeds chem ag and sickness when we accept this language.  The only out is to refuse to buy in to this absurdity.  Only refer to food as food and teach our children the same standard, crowd out the fake out by consuming the real, don’t believe the calorie myth and ban the word hungry from your home, unless it is true.  

Chew on this:

This week, the EPA decided to permit a known danger to human health, chlorpyrifos pesticides.  These products were banned for good reason.  Despite claims from Scott Pruitt, the science is not inconclusive.  (Here are just two studies from my files: Cognitive development in childhood study and Neurodevelopmental study.)

Never forget the causes of infestations are monocropping and pesticide use.  The current faulty paradigm not only ties the hands of growers but perpetuates a system reliant on toxicity.

Happy eating, Katy