What your plate SHOULD look like

By: Marisa Peer

I totally disagree with the food pyramid; it is so wrong and needs to be turned on its head. I can only imagine it was invented by cereal producers. There are NO human dietary requirements for grains and yet they are at the top of the food pyramid. Who put them there? Certainly not mother nature. Food manufacturers invented the food pyramid because of the huge profit margin in grains.

Man was not designed to eat cereals; after all, they are grasses. Cows chew for up to 20 hours a day, they make 100 to 150 litres of saliva a day to produce the enzymes to break down grass and they have four stomachs to digest grains. Humans don’t have any of these and cereals are now viewed, rightly, as one of the most indigestible food for humans to eat. They also contain lectins, which irritate the gut and stomach. Everything we were meant to eat was put on the planet by mother nature for us—these were the foods we could find, trap or hunt. Our basic diet was and should still be based on lean protein, vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds and the oils they contain.

When people say to me ‘You need carbs for energy’ I always reply ‘What do you think the Zulu and the Massai lived on for thousands of years?’ They could not carb-load as no one ate grains until mills and ovens were invented because cereals are indigestible and can even be toxic in their raw state. Early humans got all their energy form vegetables and proteins. They could only eat food raw or speared over an open fire or cooked in the embers. A shocking 70-80% of the food we eat today was not eaten by our ancestors and, unsurprisingly, our bodies are still not adapted to these foods.

When you eat protein or natural oils the body will use these readily, as they are a building food. The body can’t store the amino acids in proteins so they are used up quite quickly. When you eat carbohydrates they are stored as fat unless you burn them off with a lot of exercise. When you eat carbs or any starchy food they turn to sugar very fast (grains are 70-80% starch) and when your blood sugar goes up you make insulin and the job of insulin is fat storage. It’s really hard to lose weight once you have eaten carbs and it’s really hard to gain weight without eating carbs. That is why body builders cut out carbs before a competition (so they burn fat) and it’s why endurance athletes carb load before competing as they will have the stored carbs to use for energy, whereas the protein would be used too quickly. If you eat the multiple (6-10 servings of carbs a day) recommended by the food pyramid you are making your body store fat, you simply can’t burn fat as you are constantly making insulin.

The problem with the old food pyramid is:

• It asks us to base our diet on grains and cereals, or what I call cattle feed. Grains have only been used by man as food for 10,000 years; for 2 million years we functioned very well without them. Over the last 50 years as carbs have been refined and processed and become the basis of our diet we have got fatter and sicker. They have also been modified to contain way too much gluten, starch and sugar.  Grains contain mycotoxins, which are linked to the growing increase in diabetes
• It does not give men enough protein or fat to maintain muscle, also since almost all vitamins apart from vitamin C are fat soluble without fat they cannot be absorbed
• It does not distinguish between good carbs like sweet potatoes and bad carbs like processed breakfast cereals and white bread.
• It does not highlight the difference between oily fish, which is essential for physical and mental health, or eggs which are one of nature’s wonderfoods, and meats like salami and sausages which are highly processed and very unhealthy.
• It puts fruit above vegetables and asks us to have equal daily servings of each. Vegetables are far more important than fruits they have more vitamins and more antioxidants and we should have up to ten daily servings of vegetables and only three of fruit. Fruit is still a sugar and too much of it pushes up insulin levels. Fruit juice is not a good food at all, no tribesman started the day with the juice of 5-10 apples or oranges and fruit was seasonal and had to be shared out.
• It lumps all fats and oils together rather than showing us which are good and which are not. The oils from fish, avocadoes, olives, nuts and seeds are healthy and known as essential oils. Essential because the body cannot make them and absolutely needs them for good physical and mental health. (Depression can be caused by a lack of essential oils.) The oil from hydrogenated fats contained in margarine is what I call Frankenstein food. No one should eat trans fats ever as the body can’t get rid of them. The oil in cheese and cream should be eaten in moderation. We need to know the difference between Monounsaturated fats, Polyunsaturated fats, Saturated fats and Trans Fats. I do it this way: for Mono think Nuts and Seeds, for Poly think fish, for Saturated think of Cheese and Cream, for Trans think Frankenstein.

The food pyramid should read:

• Carbs including bread cereals rice pasta 1-2 daily servings
• Milk cheese yoghurt 1-2 daily servings
• Essential Fats and oils (avocadoes, oily fish, olives and olive oil, nut and seed oil) 1-3 daily servings
• Meat, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts, beans 3-5 daily servings
• Vegetables 5 to 10 daily servings
• Fruits 2-4 daily servings

To eat a fat burning diet  breakfast of a 3 egg omelette with spinach, peppers and mushrooms  or natural plain yogurt with a serving of raw nuts and seeds instead of dried fruit and honey. Snack mid-morning on an apple or pear or berries and some nuts and seeds or olives. Lunch should be oily fish at least 3 times a week with brown rice and vegetables or salad. Other lunch ideas should be chicken, turkey, lentils, chick peas, soya beans and veggies. Afternoon snack could be crudities with hummus, peanut butter  or avocado and a second piece of fruit. Dinner should be protein -fish, steak, eggs or poultry with vegetables and salad. We don’t need carbs at night and they take too long to digest. A yogurt with seeds and nuts is a perfect desert.

As a diet and weight loss specialist, I counsel clients all over the world on how to eat a healthy and satisfying diet for optimal health. I do this by suggesting they eat only unprocessed, naturally fat-burning foods made from quality ingredients that aren’t full of additives, sugar, and synthetic junk.

One of the most common things I advise people to avoid is dairy. In my work I often suggest alternatives like coconut milk, soya milk, or almond milk to avoid the high levels of hormones found in conventional dairy.  However, there is one single case where dairy can be a healthy and nutritious addition to one’s diet and it’s the ideal breakfast when accompanied by protein like nuts and seeds.

TOTAL Greek Yoghurt is high in protein, all-natural, untampered with, and a wonderful source of calcium which is ideal for bone health. It is really the only dairy I advise my clients to include in their diet because it is fermented, which means it is pre-digested and has healthy bacterias that are wonderful for the health of your gut. TOTAL Greek yoghurt is also the only proper Greek yoghurt and not full of sweeteners; all other types of yoghurt are nothing more than confectionary.

It is becoming increasingly more difficult to find good, quality food when you’re out and about, so individual pots of yoghurt are a wonderful option to throw in your purse and bag before you run out the door. It is far more stylish and in good taste to be seen with a healthy and protein-filled pot of yogurt with fruit and nuts than it is to buy processed crisps, packaged bars, or sweets from the shop. Ultimately, looking after yourself on the outside is only half of having good taste and being stylish; you must look after yourself on the inside as well-starting with your diet.

Don't let cravings control you

If you want to stop overeating the best way to do this is to first identify what type of overeater you are then take steps to break that for good.

There are six types of overeater and they are:

• Addictive eaters
• Emotional eaters
• Habitual eaters
• Ignorant eaters
• Destructive eaters
• Angry eaters

Do you think about food all day and then, when you are eating, cram food into your mouth and eat really fast so you don’t even taste it and want more food? Do you repeat this pattern over and over? Do you crave sugar? If you have sugary snacks in the house do you eat them and are unable to save them for later or another day? Do you eat sensibly all day and only break your diet in the evenings? Are there some foods that once you start eating them you can’t stop? i.e. jumbo bags of crisps or family size bars of chocolate? Do you eat something like a bar of chocolate so fast that when it’s finished you realise you didn’t enjoy it, savour it or really even taste it? If so, you are an addictive eater.

Do you overeat in secret? Do you use food to block your emotions and feelings, i.e. eating when you are lonely, unhappy or bored? Do you prefer to eat alone and do you eat differently when eating with others? Would you find it hard to be without chocolate, sweets and biscuits? Do you at times crave food full of salt, fat or sugar? Do you eat when under pressure? Do you particularly crave carbohydrates when you are unhappy? Do you believe that certain foods comfort you and make you feel better? If so, you are an emotional eater.

Are your children or partner overweight? Do you no longer recognise when you are full and when you are hungry? Do you put on weight predominantly around your stomach? Do you eat whenever food is in front of you regardless of whether or not you are hungry? Do you finish everything and always clear your plate? Do you find it particularly hard to throw food away or ‘waste’ it? Were you always made to finish meals as a child? Do you find yourself using every occasion to eat i.e. watching television, in a car or on a train journey, at the cinema, etc.? Do you eat quickly and finish before others? If so, you are a habitual eater.

Do you think that all salad is healthy including coleslaw and the dressing? Do you think cheese is good for you and pizza is a complete meal because it has some peppers and tomatoes on it? Do you believe that bread, potatoes, cereal and milk are good foods? Do you think all foods labelled low fat, reduced sugar and diet must be good for you? Do you count potatoes as vegetables? Do you think fruit bars, fruit drinks and canned fruit are as good as fresh fruit? If so, you are an ignorant eater.

Do you sabotage your diet every time you come close to your ideal weight? Do you feel anxious and uncomfortable when you are slimmer? Do you still buy clothes in bigger sizes and keep your fat clothes? Do you shed the same 10 pounds (or thereabouts) every year then gain it back? Do you feel more comfortable when your body is covered up and uneasy when it is on show, i.e. do you prefer winter because you can wear layers and hate summer because you are supposed to wear less? Do you celebrate your weight loss success by resuming eating the foods you had denied yourself? If so ,you are a destructive eater.

Do you prefer crunchy food like crisps, nachos, apples, popcorn, French bread or very chewy food like toffee and beef jerky? Do you feel better after chewing and biting food? Do you eat something after an argument or if you feel tense or wound up because it changes your state? Do you feel agitated if you have to wait too long for your food to be served to you in a restaurant or on an airline? If so, you are an angry eater.

• Addictive eaters crave sugary food, caffeine, junk food, colas and refined carbohydrates because they are addicted to the chemical composition of these foods. They always find these foods stimulate them to want more and have great difficulty resisting them or eating just a little of this type of food.
• Emotional eaters find loneliness, boredom and sadness are temporarily abated when they fill their stomachs with refined carbohydrates. They fill them up quickly and they feel satisfied and sedated, even tranquillised, for a while. Comfort can briefly be found in soft sweet foods like ice cream or cake that reminds us of childhood. Depressed people often want caffeine and sugary foods. Emotional eaters try to get rid of a bad feeling fast and try to feel good even faster by using comfort foods and bulk eating.
• Habitual eaters have often been made to eat everything on their plate. As children they were often not allowed to leave food and have conditioned themselves to continue this habit. They will eat at every occasion and eat everything in front of them without being aware of whether they are hungry or not.
• Ignorant eaters have been completely brainwashed by food manufacturers to believe that what they are eating is healthy or harmless. They eat a lot of convenience and ready meals and believe they are as good as home-cooked food. They may exist primarily on diet foods and diet drinks but still have a weight problem. 
• Destructive eaters usually have a deep-rooted need to hide their sexuality and feel vulnerable when they look attractive or desirable. People who have never had enough like volume and frequency of meals as they always feel they may not get enough. They often feel panicky in a situation where food is shared, i.e. a group Chinese meal, in case they get less. They feel uncomfortable when they cannot dish out their own portions and a host does it for them in case they don’t get enough to satisfy them.
• Angry eaters like crunchy food like crisps and apples and tough food like meat and thick bread that they can chomp and chew on. Hard mastication is effective when we are feeling tense and wound up. Stressed people often want salty foods. They will always eat after a fight or disagreement to make themselves feel better.

If you fall into more than one category that is okay and not unusual. People of a normal weight will answer yes to some of the questions – the difference is it does not run their lives. It might help you to know that over 70 per cent of overeaters are emotional eaters and addictive eaters. Another 20 per cent are habitual and ignorant eaters. Only around 10 per cent fall into the destructive and the angry category. Up to 43 per cent of people use food to alter their moods every single day.

Identify Your Eating Habits and Take Action

Addictive eaters can be very successfully cured once they have identified the foods that are triggers for them. They can break their addiction by choosing to replace specific foods with something similar but healthy and not chemically addictive. Many of us have addictive traits, it’s hard to eat one chocolate, one peanut or one crisp and many of us find once we start we can’t stop. Instead of berating yourself for having an addictive trait you can absolutely use this to your benefit. It is easy to get addicted to good habits such as going to the gym, exercising, eating fruit, even drinking water. I have many celebrity clients who have what I call ‘positive addictions’– they can’t miss yoga or a gym session or they go everywhere with a water bottle as they feel ‘addicted’ to it. I have worked with many ex-addicts who became addicted to extreme sports instead of drink and drugs. You don’t need to behave in an extreme way but you can learn very quickly to replace every negative habit or addiction with a new positive one.

Emotional, angry and destructive eaters will find a lasting cure as they deal with their feelings and take charge of their thoughts, beliefs and language. Emotional eaters need to feel nourished by things other than food. Destructive eaters must feel safe as well as slender. Angry eaters need to express their emotions instead of swallowing them. Overeating is a learned response that you are unlearning through this programme.

Ignorant and habitual eaters are easier to cure because human behaviour often falls into patterns – we are creatures of habit. However we can choose good habits. Habits are easier to break if you replace them with something new. To break a habit you need to:

1. Be convinced you can do it
2. Make a decision to start now
3. Initiate it
4. Persist
5. Allow yourself to feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement

Don’t forget that your habits, beliefs, actions and thoughts are yours to change.

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There are several things that will cause you to lose weight fast.

One of the most effective is DO NOT EAT LATE AT NIGHT. We forget that in our biology we are still cave people and cave people went to bed when it was dark and got up when it when it was light.

That means in the winter they were in bed at 4pm and in the summer they were still in bed by 9pm. As there was no electricity when it was dark they slept and now we have electricity we actually sleep less and eat more. Now we have electricity we can stay up until 1am, we might have dinner and then we have another snack later.

Your body really digests food very very badly in the evening and what it doesn’t digest it will always store as fat.

If you’re eating more food than you burn off you’re absolutely storing that as fat.

So try to have dinner as early as you can 6pm-7pm and of course that’s not feasible every night but even if you can do that three nights a week you are going to encourage your body to burn off fat.

So try say Monday-Wednesday have dinner really early at 6, 6.30pm and then don’t think at 11pm “I’m hungry now what can I eat?”

There’s no point eating before you go to bed – you’re not going to burn that food off, you’re going to store it as fat. Drink some hot tea or some fluids but eat dinner as early as you can three times a week as that will encourage you to keep weight off.

Secondly when you’re eating AT NIGHT DO NOT EAT CARBS. It takes the body a long, long time to break down carbs. They are a food that the body stores for energy. The body doesn’t take carbs and use them, it stores them for later. That’s why if you have a carbohydrate-heavy breakfast and you’re a manual worker you’ll burn them off.

It’s why runners pasta-load because that pasta is stored for later. If you’re eating carbohydrates late at night, there is no later, they simply get stored as fat.

If you have a dinner of protein and vegetables (and you can have a lot – you can have several pieces of chicken and a lot of green vegetables cooked in oil) you will burn it off.

So having dinner earlier and eating protein and vegetables will start to strip excess fat stores from your body.

Exercise is good too but you don’t have to go to the gym and do an hour and a half of aerobics. SKIPPING FOR TEN MINUTES in your house or rebounding (trampolining) is all good but the most effective thing is early dinner three times a week, preferably three nights in a row.

After lunch just have protein and vegetables. Have enough protein; steak, two portions of fish, two pieces of chicken, lots of green vegetables (as they’re less starch) just a little bit of exercise and if you do that you’ll absolutely lose weight fast and keep the weight off.

Marisa Peer tells you the facts about Diet Pills:

The Ultimate Breakfast for Cyclists – save money with my home-made version of Kapai Puku

I would recommend this product as it is in line with current medical research showing that modern breakfast cereals are  no more than biscuits and confectionery pretending to be healthy – when the truth is they are no such thing!

Humans are not meant to eat grains. They are neither healthy nor good for us. However, we have now been eating them for so long that we have become accustomed to eating a sweet cold and instant breakfast, and resistant to eating real food like eggs, fish or vegetables that are ideal breakfast food (but which do take time to prepare).

This is where Kapai-puku comes in. Finally, a breakfast cereal that is healthy, mostly based on protein, quick to prepare , totally portable and instant.

I would recommend  this product as it ticks all the boxes and is easy to adapt. Different ingredients can be added, and it can be eaten hot or cold.

I would take it with warm soya , rice or almond milk, add cinnamon and nutmeg in the winter, or stir it into soya yoghurt in the summer.

It’s also great to add it to stewed fruit or eat it with berries or olives as a snack.

Actually it’s really easy to have a healthy diet plan. The way to do it is to only eat the food that nature provided for you.

If you eat the food that nature put on the planet for you, your body will use it, recognise it, burn it off, and you will never have a problem with weight. You won’t have to count calories, you’ll never have to weigh food.

What you have to do is what I call the “Four R’s”.

Whenever you’re shopping in a supermarket, ordering in a restaurant, or about to make dinner or eat dinner, you ask yourself these same things.

• Does this food Roam or grow on the planet?
• Can I Recognise this food?
• Can I eat it Raw?
• Does it Rot?

So if you were to take eggs or fish or fruit or berries, or anything like that, the first question is, “Does it roam or grow?” Yes! Fish and eggs are the product of something that roams around the planet. Fruit and nuts and seeds grow on trees.

Can you recognise what’s in them? Absolutely. Do they rot? Most definitely. Can you eat them raw? Of course. You might not want to, but you could actually eat raw eggs and fish.

If you were to look at a donut or a muffin…

• That doesn’t roam or grow on the planet.
• You actually can’t eat the ingredients of a muffin or a donut raw.
• Those things never rot (you can actually keep them for fifteen years! I have pictures on my website of fifteen-year-old cakes and biscuits).
• And you could never ever list the ingredients. In fact, the ingredients in manufactured food sound like a science manual.

So, if you ask yourself those “Four R’s” you’ll always be on the right track, and you’ll find it very very easy to eat.

In order to make your body a fat-burning machine and in order to have healthy diet, you also need to look at fat-burning properties.

Protein contains something called “Peptide YY” that keeps your body in fat-burning mode.

If you went home and ate half a chicken and half a cabbage cooked in oil, it’s a lot of food, but your body will use it all, it will burn it off, even without any activity.

When you eat protein, you’re always burning fat, which is why bodybuilders only eat protein before a competition.

When you eat starch and sugar, the minute you eat that your blood sugar levels go up, and your body says, “Store that for later.”

So if you have cereal or toast for breakfast, your body will store that for later. Maybe a biscuit mid-morning, your body goes, “Store that for later.” A sandwich for lunch, that’s starch, it’s sugar, “Store it for later.” Another biscuit in the afternoon. Pasta or rice for dinner. And maybe a cracker before you go to bed.

That’s seven times you’ve said to your body, “Store that for later.” And unfortunately later never ever comes. You never ever get to burn that off.

The only way you can eat starch is if you’re doing a lot of exercise, in which case you will burn it off.

So:

• Ask yourself the “Four R’s”
• Eat real food
• Always ask yourself, “Is my body going to use this or store this? Is this fat-burning or fat-storing? Where is the protein?”

Recognise Starch as Sugar

All starch is nothing more than cake or biscuits. And when you eat that food, even though it’s low-calorie food, because it doesn’t break down, your body makes internal fat to wrap it in, it’s what’s called “skinny fat.”

You can have a lot of internal fat on a low-calorie diet, because you’re eating food that your body doesn’t recognise, doesn’t break down, and can’t use.

So healthy diet plans that work are real food that your great-grandparents ate, and if you do that you’ll be fine.