Merry Christmas Everyone!!
With holiday feasts just about to hit the table and half-hearted New Year's Resolutions just around the corner, I'm currently trying to map out a theoretical diet/fitness plan for 2020.
As singles, do others here feel the pressure as well to try to "keep yourself up" in the hopes that you someday might find someone? (And if you're married, do you feel the need or pressure to try your best to look good for your spouse?)
While trying to write out some goals and eating strategies to help keep me on track, I couldn't help but think of how much diet and nutrition seems to have changed over the years.
I grew up in the era of Richard Simmon's "Sweatin' to the Oldies" and Susan Powter's sermon-like command to "Stop the (Dieting) Insanity!"
Her infamous infomercials preached to hopeful, eager believers, "It's not food that makes you fat -- it's the fat that's making you fat!!!"
And with that, most of American society seemed to go on a merciless quest in order to try to zap as much fat as possible from their diets, being told instead to load up on pasta, rice, and fat-free cereal, with even bags of jellybeans bragging that they were "A Fat-Free Food!"
Pringles soon boasted a "fat-free" version of their beloved crisps -- but never mind that this new, "healthy" rendition of their product would result in having to lock yourself in the bathroom for half the afternoon (please, don't ask me how I know.)
Put down that donut, and here, have a fat free cookie instead!!! (What they didn't tell us, of course, is that they replaced all the fat with more sugar.)
And so, one of the toughest pieces of advice I'm trying to absorb from current dieting advice is that "Fat is good, and in fact, most of what your body should be running on!" (GOOD fats, that is), and now carbs (the very things we were told to base our diets on while I was growing up) are the new enemy that should be avoided at all cost.
So now instead of 4 1/2 cups of air-popped popcorn for about 140 calories (NO BUTTER!! What are you thinking, it has fat!), I am now supposed to have a good-fat-friendly avocado instead (and probably only half the avocado, because I've seen calorie counts vary from 250 to 330 for a whole avocado.) Yummy, yummy.
Talk about doing a 180...
And so, this had me thinking:
* What foods have you been told to avoid in your lifetime, and how have you seen that advice change over time?
* How have your food habits changed along with life events? (Going to college, living at home vs. getting your own place, learning how to cook, etc.)
I'm also hoping to see how various nutrition advice might differ from country to country or culture to culture. For example, in college, I had a friend from Malaysia who believed eating egg yolks was poisonous after surgery.
And finally...
* What are your own diet/fitness plans for the new year?
Looking forward to an interesting read.
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