Stop eating low fat yoghurts!

Products that are marketed as a healthy alternative to a sweet treat are deceptively misleading.   The products packaging looks full of life, the colours and graphics are fresh and simple and yet the ingredient lists are full of chemicals and the processing that makes the product ‘healthy’ are alarming.  The aim of this blog is to ask you to take a breath, consider for a moment what and why you are purchasing it.  Will your ‘healthy snack’ give you more energy, satiate your hunger and nourish your body or will it simply fill a sugar craving? 

A simple habit interruption strategy will go a long way to changing your eating habits and more importantly your health.

The simple truth… Marketing is deceptive, we all fall for it. 

As Robert Cialdini in his masterful book ‘Influence” explains.  Your life is so busy you make mental short cuts, your brain quickly registers that you have made that purchase before, you remember at some stage it was a good move and therefore you short cut out any new information and go straight to your previous shopping pattern. The question is has anything changed for you?  Has the product changed your life for the better, or are you simply following an old outdated mode of behaviour that has not yielded any results?

When you see something that looks healthy – you make a quick decision and a short cut – buy it!  That is the purpose of marketing. It is there to make your life easier and avoid taxing your brain with more decision making which is a strain on your will power and your resources. When we have heard something before we think okay got that ‘I know I know I understand that because I have heard that before.’ 

The aim of this blog is to ask you to stop a moment, I appreciate you have heard it before and you know that marketing is deceptive but are you actioning this knowledge?  Are you changing the way that you see food, food that you have previously considered healthy because you made a short cut sometime in the past?  Acknowledge that your life is simply to busy to register why you think that food is good for you and think again about the past decisions you have made.  

Low-fat yoghurts are making you fat – here is WHY

Convincing clients that eating cheese is okay, is to be honest, a bit of a struggle.  And weaning serial dieters off low-fat yoghurts is also a bit tricky. 

The previously held conviction that low-fat means a healthy heart has been discounted, in fact, nutritionists know now that this hypothesis was never proved and yet the market for low-fat products is still huge.

It will take the food manufacturers years to catch up with modern science. This food hangover will take a while to filter down into the consumer market.  Why would a food manufacturer change a great selling product?  There have been changes in marketing messages like  ‘high protein’ and ‘reduced carb’ but the low-fat message still lingers. The Muller lite brand of low-fat yoghurts is in vogue with certain diet groups. The brand has moved over to Greek ‘style’ yoghurt that is low in sugar as well as fat.   Don’t be fooled instead of sugar there are still sugar concoctions in the yoghurts, it is still sugar. 

And the word ‘style’ means that it isn’t a Greek yoghurt with the natural probiotics and higher in protein content it is simply a manufactured product that is appealing to the latest trend. Greek yoghurt, the big point of difference is that the health benefits are derived from real Greek yoghurt, not Greek ‘style’ yoghurt. Does the commercial connection with a diet group strike you as interesting?

There are generations of women who have been brainwashed into thinking that cheese along with other fats will make you fat.  An entire ‘low fat industry’ has evolved sticking to this simple notion that fats make you fat. As a population, our carbohydrate grain and fruit intake have skyrocketed on the understanding that we will have a ‘healthy heart’ and yet the population is getting larger.

Let’s be clear ‘low fat’ means four things

1. High sugar
2. Remove an essential macronutrient – fat
3. “Processing” to remove sugar or fat out of a product
4. Addition of food additives

1. high sugar in low-fat products

It is easy to convince you that sugar is making you fat, because who could argue that sweets and ice cream are bad for you.  Even museli with fruit is a bowl of glucose for breakfast.  Read more about watching your macros not your calories

2. Fat is essential

The low-fat product removes a naturally occurring fat that your body requires to function at a cellular level. Every cell needs fat to maintain its shape and function.

Don’t miss why you need coconut oil

The low-fat debate started in 1955 with Professor Keys and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower because he had suffered a few heart attacks and heart disease had been on the rise among middle-aged American men for years. As researchers worked to find a cause, a charismatic American physiologist Ancel Keys put forward a hypothesis: saturated fat was the culprit from foods like butter, red meat, eggs, and cheese. It sounded completely logical: Eating fat makes you fat.

“Keys’s theory took hold among nutrition experts as the dominant paradigm,

despite weak evidence and conflicting research that pointed to sugar, not fat, as the culprit.”

Nina Teicholz in her fat-exonerating book “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet.”

As saturated fat from foods like cheese and butter were put on the enemy list, they were replaced with products containing new “heart-healthy” fats, such as margarine made from chemically processed vegetable oils known as hydrogenated oils. These oils, which contain trans fats, are now facing widespread boycotts as we learn more about the dangers they pose. In 2015, the FDA determined that trans fats are “not generally recognised as safe”. There is now a three-year time limit for their removal from all processed foods including low-fat yoghurts

Don’t miss:  Fats don’t make you fat

3  Additives are toxins

“There are no short cuts to your health” A product that is rendered ‘low fat’ has been processed.   The process that removes the fat delivers a previously natural product that is not only a portion of food that your body cannot absorb but also a ‘toxin.’ 

When your body is overloaded with a quick onslaught of sugar your live releases bile and helps absorb sugar. Fat soluble toxins are eliminated by processing them in the liver where they are converted into water-soluble toxins by producing bile (which is stored in the gall bladder) this digests fats and aids elimination.

If your digestive system is already overloaded, or your lymphatic system is congested then the toxins cannot be processed effectively. When your liver is under strain then the bile it produces is thicker and less effective and the fat-soluble toxins are sent back into the blood and are stored in as body fat.

Don’t miss my blog on Low calorie means high toxicity

If it is too much or this has been going on a long time the liver pushes the sugar back into fat storage. By removing these free-roaming toxins from the body and locking them up in fat, the organs and tissues are protected from damage. However, these toxins cause inflammation and health issues in the body and brain.   Your body does this to protect you from the toxicity issues arising from these harmful chemicals. If the levels of toxins become too high your liver will become overburdened and you would become ill.  

The longer-term issues are when the toxin exposure continues and your bodies detoxification systems never get a chance to catch up.  The consequence is that your body fat levels increase and your health declines.

Toxins build up over time…

Over time these stored toxic compounds lead to metabolic damage and parts of your cells are harmed.  For instance, mitochondria function is disrupted. Mitochondria is the part of a cell where your energy and cell respiration occurs.  Mitochondria act like a cell digestive system which takes in nutrients, breaks them down, and creates energy-rich molecules for the cell. Simply put mitochondria are the energy systems of your body which give you vitality.

With increased fat storage you have the added issue of affecting the chemical messengers of your body – which are your hormones like Leptin which is the hunger hormone when this hormone is working optimally it switches off your hunger signals. However, it can be damaged and not work favourably as a result of toxin overload, meaning you will feel hungry all the time. 

Conclusion

I fully appreciate how hard it is to take on new nutritional information.  The first time a paediatrician told me that giving my kids fruit juice was bad for their health and was creating an obesity epidemic, I laughed “how ridiculous.” It took a long while for that information to sink in and a lot of research before I came to the full realisation that she was indeed correct.  Fruit juice is a leading contributor to obesity in children and adults.

Hey, I am no angel I have fluctuated with weight and battled through confusing nutritional information throughout my life… that is until now. In my 50s I can gratefully say that I am in the best shape and health I have ever been and I eat salmon and eggs for breakfast, not muesli or low-fat yoghurt. In my 20s and 30s, I yo-yo ed like any other ‘normal’ stressed out office worker.  

“After the birth of my first son I joined a diet group and I lost a lot of weight because I was starving myself and living off ‘free soup’. I avoided cheese and ate a lot of low-fat yoghurts.”

Running a house, my first son and a stressful job I was the typical skinny tired  b@#$(h – let’s just say I was very very grumpy 😉 But after decades of research and following amazing researchers like Nina Teicholz and Gary Taubes, and testing nutritional habits on me and my clients I know how to make my body work for me.  I now have fun, carefree eating, happy in my big bum and my strong legs and happy to hit 90 years of age full of vitality.  And it ain’t through eating low-fat yoghurts, dieting and telling myself I am a failure.

“Your confidence grows when you know what to eat for yourself when you are in control of your body,

when you understand it and listen to it,  long term success follows.”     Adele from Get Gorgeous 

Take ACTION: 

If you are now moving towards fats are okay I have one simple change I would like you to make to your diet – swap your semi-skimmed and skimmed milk back to full-fat milk?  If you can go one step further buy organic milk, but that is a personal choice. How do you feel about that, drinking full-fat milk?  Does that make you feel uncomfortable? why? are you worried about the hormones the cows are pumped full of – or the fact that full-fat milk is fattening?  Do you feel the same about a low-calorie yoghurt that has been highly synthesised with chemicals and additives added to it and it still comes from cows?

Drink full-fat milk, not semi-skimmed.  There are vitamins and minerals that only soluble in your body in the presence of fat. Drinking semi-skimmed milk means that the lack of fat ensures that you are not able to absorb the minerals and vitamins. Full fat milk means your body can absorb the minerals and vitamins supplied in the milk.

What’s next?

Knowing yourself is an interesting and thoughtful journey, which will offer you so much more than simply your weight loss. You are fascinating, you are intriguing. I want you to be the energetic, fun girl you have always meant to be. Headspace that is filled with negativity does not help you or your loved ones. I want you to shine and be gloriously happy. I want you to look and feel and fantastic every day! If you would like to understand your body more, get to grips with the nutritional balance that will work for you feel free to book in your consultation time with me.

You and I will discuss where you are currently and where you would love to be in 3 or 6 months time. I look forward to chatting with you, you know how I love to chat 😉      

Get Gorgeous is a journey together – yours and mine.

PS. Don’t forget the internationally bestselling book – your insight into great health and vitality Gorgeous! how to look and feel fantastic every day.  Click here to find out about your Gorgeous book

“Gorgeous! is the perfect read for anyone looking to revolutionise not only their relationship with food and movement but also their relationship with themselves. With Adele’s reassurance and expert guidance, any woman will feel inspired and empowered to begin their journey to prioritising themselves and their health – everybody is perfect and everybody is gorgeous!”

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