Soyin Milka

Hiya,

After reading the threads on diets, I thought I'd add a few questions of mine inspired by family folklore about dieting. I'm hoping some of the scholarly guru on dieting could tell me if the lifestyle my mother bred into me and my brothers really had an effect on our health and body mass or if it's just hogwash. Bah, I'm also interested by any uninformed opinion and wild guesses

The cold showers.
Don't squeal, but everyone takes cold showers in my family, even the men. I've been told it was for my own benefit, that it was increasing metabolism and keeping the skin young. Is this even remotely true or was my mother just trying to save money by reducing consumption of hot water?

Breakfast and lots of snacks.
Lunch or dinner are barely part of my family's vocabulary. We have breakfast tho, the kind of bountiful breakfast that would make your average trucker feel full. But that was it. On 98% of days, there were no more meals, only snacks. Lots of snacks, basically every time we felt like having something to eat. Good stuff though, fruits, veggies, nuts, bread and such. My mother was adamant that this was for the best, that eating a lot of small snacks was better than having a few big meals, with the exception of a big breakfast to start the day well. Was she telling the truth?

Mild physical activities versus intense physical activities.
Okay this one boggles my mind. My mother is convinced doing heavy physical exercice on an irregular basis is bad for the body and makes you gain weight. According to her, sudden intense exercice puts the body in a state of shock as if it was starving, unless you have all the energy available to do it which is unlikely if you are also on a diet. She claims it's much better to do regular exercice every day, like walking or vacuuming the floors, than working out at a gym or roller-blading. Is there some truth to her claim or was she only trying to save some money again AND keeping my clumsy, accident prone brothers away from potential danger? (I am NOT accident prone myself, it's a Y chromosome thing in my family!)

Chewing.
Everyone in my family is a slow eater. It takes us forever to go through a meal. I know in some families, the adults get the very young kids to eat by making them "have a bite for mommy" before stuffing the spoon in their mouth, then it's for daddy and so on. Well, we had something like this too... Except, instead of bites, we had chews, for parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends of the family, that strange neighbor and a few selected dead relatives. A chew on each bite for everyone of these fine individuals. Then and only then were we allowed to gulp the stuff down. Everything feels like very wet oatmeal after that many chews and, according to my mother, is much more digestable. This in turn would make the energy contained in the food available for use in our blood sooner, while we need it during the day rather than the following night while we sleep, at which time all that energy would have been turned into fat instead. You probably know the drill by now, but I'll ask again anyway. Was my mother telling the truth or simply trying to save money on food by making it last longer?

No refined stuff
All I ever wanted was a box of Froot Loops. Or a sandwhich made of two slices of white bread and some of those orange colored cheese slices... Everything we ate at our house was fresh and as unrefined as possible. I tasted sex before I tasted powdered white sugar, and the white sugar felt way more sinful. I would think calories are calories, but not according to you know who by now. Fresh and unrefined food is probably better for your health. I guess it has more fibers and vitamins in it. That makes sense and... You gotta have your regularity. But are refined foods really worse than unrefined foods if you are concerned about your silouhette?

Water and soup
Aside from vanilla flavored soy milk, I mostly drink water. We had this rule at our house saying that we had to have a glass of water with each snack. We had other stuff we could drink, that all kids adore, like tea or hot water with a zest of lemon. I know soda contains more calories than water, but I also know it contains less calories than my tea (I sweeten it with honey, lots of it). So I don't think it's purely a case of calories versus no calories, at least not with my family (My brothers drink glasses of maple syrup on occasion) But I wonder... Does drinking a lot of liquid (not only water) help with digestion and keeping weight down? Wouldn't that make soup the best way to have a meal?

I think I'll stop here for now and wait for your reactions to these "dieting ideas and beliefs" before submitting the more audacious ones my mother came up with. I hope you will forgive me my less than scholarly approach to this topic. I now stand ready to face the truth about these diet tips. Please enlighten me (Bad pun I know).

Soy Beans

God Fearing Atheist

You're the anti-me, Soyin. I..

-take hot...extremely...hot showers

-eat a tiny breakfast and a huge dinner

-engage in as little physical activity as humanly possible

-chew fast

-eat nothing but processed and/or deep fried foods

-rarely drink water (only at work) and detest soups of any sort.

Thankfully, my metabolism is off the charts, so, I figure at least I wont get fat before my heart explodes and I find myself dead, face-first in a cheeseburger.

Its not a bad way to go, if you ask me.

-GFA

God Fearing Atheist

Double-post. Sorry.

Elvithriel

God Fearing Atheist, better not shake Soyin's hand then. You would both explode in a big flash of light.

Sorry, physics joke.

Jennie

I'm not an expert either but I'll chime in anyway.

The hot showers thing, well, it probably strips off less of the skin oils and might help preserve it that way; otherwise I'm skeptical.

Regarding snacking: when I had gestational diabetes that's how they told me to eat, except breakfast was a snack too. It helped to keep my blood sugar level from soaring. Whether it's important for non-diabetics I don't know.

The physical activity thing I don't know about at all.

Chewing. Hmm. Eating slowly does let your tummy have time to tell the brain it's full. That takes about twenty minutes I think. So this trick could work.

The fiber in unprocessed food helps people feel fuller with fewer calories, so it works. It is also good for you in many other ways, vitamins, cleaning out the colon etc.

The water is very good, as are soups. People feel fuller on less calorie dense foods, and if you are eating unrefined stuff the water would help plump out the fiber and make you feel fuller too.

I'd say your Mom was batting pretty good with her advice. And saving money too, a prudent lady!

Godot

cold showers
a roudabout argument is that a colder environment necessitates an increase in BMR for the organism to survive. Don't know how much faith I'd put in it though.
breakfast and lots of snacks
it's important to note that the snacks chosen were quality ones. A large part of the idea with smaller meals rather than larger ones deals with the glycaemic index, and managing blood glucose levels.
Mild physical activities versus intense physical activities.
this one only holds true if the TOTAL amount of activity would be greater in mild versus intense (barely). There is a ridiculously large amount of evidence advocating the benefits of rigorous physical activity.
chewing
your digestive tract is extremely efficient as obtaining the nutrients contained within the foods you consume, regardless of whether or not you chew it a million times or not. Of course, the more you chew it, the less hard your system has to work.
Also, the longer you take to consume foods, the sooner the satiety message will reach your brain, and the sooner you will feel full. you'll be less likely to overeat in this situation.
no refined stuff
refined products tend to have lower levels of micronutrients relative to the unrefined foods. Some foods actually improve through the refining process (such as tomatoes).
There is also some relationship (however tenuous) between refined foods and the prevalence of lifestyle diseases.
water and soup
Fluids also play a role in maintaining satiety, but are not a dietary means to an end themselves. Being properly hydrated can assist digestion as well. The other side of the coin is that fluids are absorbed at a faster rate than solids, and are passed through you at an increased rate.