The diet to end all diets
This article was in the Toronto Star on Tuesday, April 11, 2006:
The diet to end all diets
Apr. 11, 2006. 01:00 AM
ALWYNNE GWILT
Everywhere you look, extreme diets reign. Vegetarians want you to avoid meat. Cats want you to only eat meat. No-carb diets? No problem: They're everywhere. Milk producers constantly ask if you understand their product: "Got milk?" "Well, it's fluid from a cow, right? What's not to get?"
As a result of such pressures, I.D. took extreme dieting to the extreme: For two days each, Alwynne Gwilt only ate from one of the four food groups. How does your body react to such limited diets?
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I'd never survive Survivor: Meat
Day 1: The challenge begins and I'm full of tenacity: I will make it through my meat-eating days. But I'm in a rush and by mid-afternoon I still haven't eaten anything. Realizing that doesn't count as meat, I pop over to a diner for some greasy spoon bacon and eggs and head to the St. Lawrence Market to stock up.
Day 2: I wake up with the taste of bread in my mouth after dreaming about hot-dog buns. It's 8:30 a.m. I already feel ill. My kitchen still smells like the meat-a-thon cooking fest I had the night before: Kabobs galore.
Walking out into the sunshine, I'm jealous of the woman munching on a bagel. My empty stomach craves anything citrus. Wondering why these cravings have shown up, I call Harvey Anderson, of the University of Toronto's department of nutritional sciences.
"What you're suffering from is sensory specific satiety," explains Anderson, who studies appetite control. "If I just asked you to eat apples, you'd be craving everything else, too. You quickly get bored."
Some scientists say this is our body's defence mechanism so we eat a variety of foods, says Anderson. "I'm a meat eater, I love it. But I'm not sure I could survive a week just eating meat products," he says.
The good news for me is Anderson says proteins are more filling than carbohydrates or fat, so I will stay full. But, he adds, I will start to suffer from ketosis, where my body will start to burn its own fat supplies because there are no carbohydrates for it to generate energy.
I'm starving by lunchtime and the idea of the catfish I've brought to school is not appetizing. But I must eat. Woozily I wander out of my class to the hot-dog stand, throwing the bun to the pigeons.
I go back to the market to chat with Stanley Janecek of Whitehouse Meats. It specializes in all things exotic from ostrich to elk, buffalo, wild boar and kangaroo. And he tells me that looking for variety in the flesh-eating world is a tough gig. Meat is pretty much meat.
"For people that are expecting these meats to be so far removed from their traditional meat, they are disappointed. It's just another mammal," he explains.
I head home and cook up a delightful array of ostrich, musk-ox, buffalo and venison, and wash it down with a good glass of red wine.
By 7 p.m. I'm done with meat. I'm full as a tick and realize that, hey, it's midnight in London, right? By that count, it's Saturday. Bring on the veggies!
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Yes, potatoes are vegetables
Day 3: What will I do without protein? But then I realize, hey, don't vegans survive?
I decide to ask vegans how they do it. "Humans are the only mammals that have breast milk after infancy, and we drink it from another species," says Kera Pesall, who's been a vegan for two years. "I don't know if it's a very healthy thing for humans to be consuming."
People, she says, can have a healthy diet based on plants. The problem is many decide to go vegetarian or vegan without proper nutritional knowledge.
"There are such things as junk-food vegetarians. You do have to know your nutrition. You can't just cut things out to try and replace them," says Pesall. "Unfortunately that happens quite often with youth. But you really need to replace that meat with nutrient-rich foods like vegetables, grains, or beans."
Not taking advantage of Toronto's vegetarian restaurants I go it on my own, creating a scrumptious dinner of stir-fried vegetables with red-wine poached pears for dessert. I add in a few glasses of homemade sangria. So far, this is my favourite portion of my extreme diets.
Day 4: I'm craving sustenance. So, I suppose you can imagine the excitement that courses through my vitamin-high veins when I Google the Canada Food Guide and see a steaming baked potato under the veggie category. It is thrilling to remember that yes, potatoes are vegetables. I add the surly spud to my dinner along with some highly delicious mashed celeriac, corn on the cob and brussels sprouts. I feel like the queen of the regal roughage, immune to all things scurvy-related.
By the end of all of the eating I feel entirely satisfied, belly full and heart happy, with only a couple of hours to go until dairy time.
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Got Too much milk
Day 5: Stomach ache! The fibre-binge has turned against me. My stomach gurgles loudly — all that roughage has created a hangover-like effect on my belly. As I stumble to get ready, I actually look forward to a calming glass of milk.
I also grab two of my favourite yogurts and, sloshing down the rainy streets, I'm no longer jealous of other people munching on foods forbidden to me. My tastebuds aren't as bored.
For the rest of the day I live off of cheese — both cottage and French — and indulge in ice cream just because I can. But, even with the protein surge, I'm drowsy and starving. And I've already eaten half a block of gouda.
That evening at the intense Buffalo Sabres vs. Leafs game at the ACC, I can only think of one thing: Buffalo wings. I decide to quell my hunger with more ice cream.
In the end, the day is bearable, but I don't feel as healthy as I did after all of my vegetables. I pack it in with a glass of warm milk and fall asleep counting cows.
Day 6: I wake up feeling ill again. It seems too much of a tasty treat is never a good thing — especially when it's a litre of ice cream. I've never doubted that some dairy is good, I just don't feel the need to eat it that often. With yesterday's gorging I don't feel the need to eat it ever again.
But that would be a mistake, according to a nutritionist.
"There's quite a lot of research out there that when people have more milk products in their diets they have less chance of being overweight," says Isabelle Neiderer, a dietician for the Dairy Farmers of Canada. "When you follow a weight-reduction diet, there are clinical trials that have shown if you include milk products in your diet you lose more fat, faster."
It's too bad, she says, that people cut milk products out when they diet because they also cut 15 essential nutrients.
"It's okay to have some dairy fat in your diet but it's all in moderation."
Ahh, moderation. I should have thought of that before drinking a 34-ounce killer vanilla milkshake. Finally, something to soak up the liquid!
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Better bread than dead
Day 7: My day of grains begins at midnight when I scarf down a paratha — an Indian bread — to quell the raging sea of dairy in my stomach.
I skip breakfast and start lunch off with a healthy 12-grain bagel. I think how much I miss bagels — I stopped eating them a year ago — but how many could I eat a day?
Brent Buckman says four bagels do it for him. The former Toronto resident was kicked off of season five of The Apprentice by the Trump-man and is now promoting high bagel consumption as a diet plan.
"A lot of people ask me, `Don't you get sick of bagels?' and I say, `No way, I love bagels,'" Buckman says from his home in Florida.
He's lost 110 pounds by eating just four bagels a day and a piece of eight-ounce meat for dinner. Once a week he indulges in junk food, meaning chicken fingers and fries, pizza, chips and ice-cream sundaes.
"I'm not a big fan of fruits and vegetables," the 30-year-old Buckman says.
He's done the diet three times, gaining the weight back twice. "It's not good to keep yo-yoing and that's why I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen to me again."
In order to keep the weight off this time, he says he will eat only bagels during the week and eat the foods he really enjoys on the weekend.
The diet will work for anyone because everyone loves bagels, he says. "The key is this: I think bagels taste good, and I think bagels fill you up."
And even though he hasn't talked to a physician about his diet since he was 17, he says he's still full of energy and has no problems fibre-wise.
After talking to Buckman, I'm not entirely convinced. But for the rest of this day, I do eat grain products.
And, I do feel hungry. I follow up the bagel with a croissant, cereal, bran muffin and whole-wheat bread.
Day 8: I feel like it's Christmas morning. It's the final day of my diet. I take two pieces of toast to class and by the time I get back home, I feel weak.
As I finish up the extreme food diet, I realize I've learned a lot about myself and my body. And although I wouldn't recommend anyone to try this, it was a good experiment. Diets that are harshly restrictive don't get you anywhere.
Bottom line: I felt terrible most of the time. Your body needs a variety of nutrients to keep it running.
And that's why, now that my diet is done, dinner tonight will be sushi and chicken wings. I just need to find a restaurant that serves both.
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There are a few things in there that piss me off. I realize that this is a fluff article, but the sentence, "I will start to suffer from ketosis, where my body will start to burn its own fat supplies because there are no carbohydrates for it to generate energy." really makes me mad! What is so wrong with your body using its own stored fat for fuel?? We all know that this is what has enabled us to shed our unwanted pounds. I am so upset about this comment that I am considering writing a letter to the editor!
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