WHITE FLIGHT! or Why You Too Need To Stop Eating The Pale Carbs.

Alright, so I'm just gonna go ahead and piss you all off, while agreeing with a bunch of people I don't like agreeing with - like Gwyneth, Oprah and just about every self-help guru on TV.

The white carbs are bad. White bread, white crackers, white potatoes, white rice. Anything made with white flour.

WTF, FOOD RACIST?!? WHY?! GIMME BACK MY PRETZELS!!

Sure. I'll give you back your pretzels. While I'm at it, I'll give you a bag of sugar and advise you to start hosing through it with a spoon. Because unfortunately, your body reads the pretzels and the bag of sugar as basically the same thing.

Both things spike your blood sugar, causing your pancreas to secrete insulin. The insulin levels surge to remove the sugar from your blood and get it into your cells. And as long as this particular operation goes well, you can eat your pretzels and keep your figure.

However, in case you missed the Onion headline - AMERICA FILLS UP ON BREAD.  A great deal of what we eat during our red, white and blue day are refined carbs. A bowl of cereal for breakfast; a bagel with cream cheese for lunch and pasta for dinner. None of these are sugary treats, but they might as well be - they're still kicking the shit out of our pancreas, demanding more insulin at every meal. I'll let a generic web nutritionist explain the rest:

 "...if insulin spikes too often from a diet rich in the high-carb foods that trigger insulin secretion, your cells respond by decreasing the reactivity and number of insulin receptors on their surfaces. Eventually, this prevents glucose from getting into your cells, leading to high blood sugar and depriving your cells of the energy they need to function. This is why many women with insulin resistance experience carbohydrate cravings, fatigue and weight-gain — their cells are literally starving for energy, even when plenty of glucose is available in the blood. Down the road, your body’s capacity to generate insulin appropriately becomes depleted, and the result is type 2 diabetes."

There's lots of speculation to how much this wears down the body, especially as we age. But there's no argument that diabetes and obesity are on the rise from exactly these foods - even though it seems more logical to blame sodas, candy and fried food.

What to eat instead? Stay tuned...

YOU ATE WHAT? And why you should keep a food diary.

Food is a very emotional subject for everyone. Criticizing someone's eating habits is like insulting someone's mother. We are all very attached to what we eat and why. And we all have lots of justifications for eating the way we do. And let me say, I am not attacking your eating habits. But I am telling you to keep a food diary.

This might seem like an innocuous request, but after telling a few people that they might want to write down what they consume on a daily basis, here were a list of the immediate responses:

I'M TOO BUSY TO EAT WELL!!
I'M MORALLY OPPOSED TO LOOKING LIKE A FUSSY EATER!!
I DON'T HAVE FOOD ALLERGIES!!

Any nutritionist will tell you that this is one of the hardest things to get their patients to do - to get them to honestly make a list of the things they eat from the time they wake to the time they sleep.  Usually because the list contradicts whatever your internal story is, or it exacerbates whatever guilt or shame you have attached to your eating habits.

Keeping a food diary is not about trying to get skinny, and it isn't even necessarily about trying to get you to eat healthy. The goal is for you to make connections between what you put in your body and how you feel, thereby creating your own personal mind-body narrative. This kind of getting-to-know-you exercise can be a real mindblower - not because you find out things that you didn't know at all, but that it makes more explicit things that you have been suspecting for years.

BUT WHAT IF I FIND OUT I CAN'T EAT ICE CREAM/FRIED PORK RINDS/WALL PLASTER WITH OUT GETTING A MIGRAINE/RASH/BRAIN DAMAGE?

Well, what if? That choice is yours to make. But, at least now you know what the choice is, and because you are a Fabulous Grown Up, you can decide what you want to do.