Do you regularly have a meal off from your healthy eating plan or put more apply, do you factor a cheat meal or even a cheat day as part of your eating routine. Well, there's some brand new research to suggest that a cheat maybe actually doing your diet more harm than good. And today Leanne and I take a
closer look wid Hi. I'm Susie Burrow normally and Wood and each week we bring you The Nutrition Couch, the bye weekly podcast that keeps you up to date on everything you need to know in the world nutrition as.
Well as cheating.
Today we are going to take a deep dive into alcohol consumption and really be honest about how much is too much? And our listener question comes from our Instagram and it's asking about sugar free lollies and are they really a good choice? So, Leanne, this popped up on my news feed recently and I instantly thought to myself, this is a great topic for us, and it's even more pertinent because we've just come off the back of Mother's Day and my clients have certainly been cheating and
not just a little. I've been sort of getting food diaries coming over the weekend and being like, whoa that was certainly not a meal off. It was certainly a
weekend of eating. So I think, first of all, we'll talk a little bit about history of cheating in a diet context, because, notoriously, or from my memory of it, it came originally from bodybuilding practices, where bodybuilders are so very very strict for a period when they're going through their strip phase, and then they will sometimes factor in as part of their strip when they're getting ready for competition, to cheat where they'll allow themselves to have a heavier
meal and will allow for eating out or perhaps something they're craving. And that was something that traditionally that kind of regime sport would routinely talk about a cheat meal. Now, certainly people will then extrapolate that. And the issue I've always had with clients in general is that a cheat is not just enjoying something in moderation, so saying a beautiful pastor because they're out, or a couple of glasses of wine. It's psychologically gives license to binge and overeat.
And indeed I saw that with some of my ladies over the weekend. It wasn't that they ate a few extra things. They gave themselves permission to eat large quantities of poor quality food and the guys that they were off their diet. Now we know psychologically and that that lends itself to the diet cycle where the belief sits psychologically that your diet has to be perfect and then you're either off or you're on, and it can really
fuel that diet culture. And you and I have both always been very clear that we do not support that, and what we're trying to do with our clients is to create balance. And sure there might be a meal or to each week that's more indulgent or heavier in calories, but simply it's about them buffering it and having some lighter days because inevitably and in life, there will be times that we eat high calorie food and there'll be
times that we eat lighter. But certainly for clients who have had a long history of dieting, to work and get rid of that whole belief structure that you've got to be perfect to achieve results and have to be on or off something can take a lot of a lot of work over time. But this was interesting research
that got widespread coverage. It actually came from the University of New South Wales, in Sydney to It was a rat study, but it was specifically looking at the difference when the rats were on their typical healthy rat diet versus a diet that was filled with heavily processed food.
And what the research has found was that when the rats were on a high saturated fat, high sugar diet, which is typical of what we'd call an ultra processed diet where you're having foods that are purchased away from the home, so fried food, takeaway food for ultra process foods of foods that don't resemble the original food type, so snack food, chips, biscuits, chocolates, that indulgent kind of food. The longer that the rats were on those diets, basically,
the worst they performed in spatial memory tests. And so researchers found their relationship interesting because not only did they confirm that it significantly altered the rats gut microbiome, which is the link between a diet high and not processed food and immune function, but it actually affected them cognitively, and the longer they were on the diets, the worse the cognitive performance got. So what this is telling us,
Leanne is that that whole cycle it. Admittedly it's a rat study, but we can can take some home messages from it. Ultimately, that whole idea of being on or off a diet can be physiologically damaging, but also what it appears is psychologically damaging.
It actually impacts the brain.
And so what we want to learn from this is that that whole idea of being on or off something, or basically binging on poor quality food under the guise of having a meal off, is not a good idea. And I see it all the time with my clients. They don't go and have a situational appropriate meal that is heavy. You know, they're not at an Italian restaurant ordering pasta and a couple of glasses of wine or
having a gelata with the kids. They're going out of their way to make sure they eat really poor quality stuff. So they give themselves permission to have For example, they go to a fish and chip shop and they have fish and chips plus calamari, plus soft drink plus wine. Now that is a binge, it's not a meal off. And that's what you want to sort of draw down
to and say, am I overeating psychology? Because getting myself permission or did I actually really crave high fat fish and chips and soft drink, And probably when you deep dive into it, you actually didn't feel that much like fried food, and it didn't actually make you feel very good. But in your head that you feel you should be allowed to have it, and you're resentful you can't, so you overeat it. So it's a very complicated psychological relationship
we have with some of those things. But the best way I can put it is, if your cheat translates into giving yourself permission to eat crap, it's not doing you any favors. And certainly this research has confirmed that.
And it's a really interesting, I guess school of thought cheap days and cheap meals Because I myself have had my own struggles with food and my relationship with food. I've always been open about that, and that was one of the reasons I started my coaching service, was to help clients, you know, help them with that healthy relationship with food. But I very much was someone who did
have cheap days. I would be super clean Monday to Friday or even on til you know, Friday night, and then kind of Friday night and Saturday was like a bit of a vender a bit of a free for all. Then I'd always be like, I'll get back on track on Sunday, and then Sunday was kind of like this slippery slope, or once I had a little naughty thing, it kind of continued that it was all started again on Monday. So I've always been against the cheat days
because I know that mentality. It's not great for you. It undoes all your hard work during the week, and you honestly feel awful after eating all of that food. And it's never like you're having your free for all on your vegetables or your vegetable soup. It's always like, as you said, the high fat, high ultra process food that actually doesn't make us feel good. So it really just comes down to that moderation and balance, doesn't it.
And I have so many clients who like they do it and then we have a chat about it and it's like, did you actually feel great afterwards? And they're like no. So I think we just build it up in our head to make it sound like, oh, it would be so amazing if I could go out and have the pizza in the pasta and the one and the dessert, and the guy like bread and go for gelato afterwards, like a bit of a free for all.
We build this up on our head like it's going to be this amazing thing, but if we really stop and think about it and ate mindfully, we honestly feel awful afterwards. And that for me, until I really acknowledged how that made me feel, that was the biggest turning
point for me. That's what made me stop because I was like, I feel like, in my head, I build it up to this thing where it's gonna be like, this is gonna be so amazing, But if I was being truly, truly honest with myself, it didn't actually make me feel great afterwards.
Yeah, for me, it comes down to really taking time to consider what you actually feel like eating as opposed to what you think you're allowed to eat. So if you love macas, if that's your ultimate soul food and once a week, once a fortnight, that is your reward for being reasonably strict with your diet exercise, go for it. But I guarantee you that's not your favorite food. You're eating it on autoque because you think that you're allowed
to because you're off. So it's very much for me getting rid of that off or on mentality and getting back to what you feel like and what's going to give you the most pleasure and a strategy you're a technique I would encourage you to work on, and it will take time, particularly if you've been a dieter on
and off for twenty plus years. Is if you're a sweet tooth and love chocolate, I want you to go to the chocolate section of the supermarket and really take time to think about what chocolate do you actually really want?
Do you want fruit and nut? Is it top deck? Is it crunchy?
And really try and decipher the differences in pleasure that you get, rather than just going, oh, I can eat any chocolate and just stuffing it all in. And certainly that happens over Easter when people just eat on autoque. And the other trick I would suggest is if you do sort of like to take your foot off the pedal on the weekends, it's not Friday night till Monday morning is off.
It's one or two meals.
So rather because I find my clients will sort of start Saturday morning and they'll be at sport and they'll eat a bacon and all, and then they'll be like, oh, stuff it, I've gone off track. And then they'll have lunch out and then they'll eat dips and like it just goes the whole day, and inevitably they don't feel good in their stomach because they've eaten a lot more
high fat food. They're feeling tired, awful. So rather than do that on AUTOQ again, map out the weekend and say, right, I do enjoy a bacon and egg roll with a kid's sport, but that's not overly.
Good for me.
So what I'm going to then do is have a salad for lunch or something a soup for lunch, and then we are going out for dinner. So just really isolate the occasions in which you're having something that you enjoy, but make sure you are eating it because you enjoy it, because in more cases than not, you're going to feel better when you're eating stuff you've made yourself, because let's be honestly, and how often do you go.
And it's awful?
Like we were at Bunnings the other week and the kids naturally like to get a bunning sausage. And I had done exactly what I had just described my clients do. I hadn't eaten and I was like, oh, well, you know what, I am hungry, I'll get a sausage sandwich. It was awful. It was so gross. It was an awful sausage. It was just the poorest quality. The bread wasn't fresh, and you know what, I didn't need it.
And that's the other thing. If it's not great, don't eat it because so many calories slip in mindlessly without the enjoyment. Now, if it had been a great, beautiful sausage with great you know, onions on it, but it wasn't, so don't be as scared to say, you know what,
I'm not eating that because it's not great quality. And when you refocus on to what you enjoy in the taste and the quality, straight away, the focus will be off eating on AUTOQ and it will be much more in touch with your body and what you're feeling like eating. And yeah, just limiting those occasions rather than writing off the whole weekend.
Couldn't agree more with just about moderation and balance, which leads very nicely into our next section, Susie, which is a little bit controversial, I must say, about moderation and balance in regards to alcohol. So alcohol is an issue. I've always said a strange drink far too much. We drink far too much, and it's a big issue. And it's almost like this ingrained part of the Aussie culture. Like even in my family, it's like every time we
get together, there's beers and drinks. I'm like, guys, it's ten am or we're at a park. You brought your beers with you, like we're get We went on Mother's Day and Dad bring esque beers within to the park and I.
Was like, Dad, like, what's an embrace.
It's just ingrained in our Aussie culture that there's drinking every time we turn around, every time there's a celebration. So there's been some new guidelines in Canada, which I really think is about ten steps in the right direction where Canada the health authorities in Canada actually come out to recommend just one to two standard drinks per week, not per day Suzi per week and this is regarded
as low risk. So the guidelines, there's a new report being released this week and if you want, you can just google you know, and you'll find the whole report. But it really also recommends the mandatory labeling on all
alcoholic beverages with some new health warning. So I think by law in Australia all alcoholic drinks have their pregnancy risk warning, but I think they're talking about further health warnings as well, because we know it's you know, we really don't want to recommend drinking ever in pregnancy, but it's more than just in pregnancy for alcohol, there's some long term health effects even if you're not that too
much alcohol can be significantly negative for your health. So the last time Canada updated its guidelines was over ten years ago. It was in twenty eleven, and their guidelines back then said to limit alcohol to ten standard drinks for women and fifteen standard drinks for men. That's like more than two a day for men, Like there's just so much. And honestly that is modeled on basically the Australian guidelines, which are very similar, which is far too much.
Now with these new guidelines in Canada, they had a two year project via the Canadian Center on Substance Abution and Addiction and they reviewed over six thousand peer reviewed studies and they used over twenty three scientists to do this, which I think is wonderful. So they actually looked at a lot of these studies and looked at the harm
of alcohol consumption. So they kind of came up with this continuum of risk where on a weekly alcohol basis, your alcohol consumption got more and more risky the more and more drinks you had. So what this report found was that there was less harm if you were sticking to about two standard drinks or less in a week, But the time you got up to three to six standard drinks for the week, your risk of developing several
types of cancers actually increased. Now if you're at seven or more standard drinks for the week, your risk is higher for cancers, but also your risk is increasingly higher for things like heart disease and stroke long term as well. Now, for those at home wondering, okay, what is the standard drink. Essentially, it's about a three fifty milli liter bottle of beer,
which is about five percent alcohol. It's about a standard glass of wine, which is about twelve percent alcohol, about one hundred and forty meals of wine and about forty meals of spirit. So just over a shot of spirit at about forty percent alcohol that is considered by definition to be a standard drink. When you're pouring yourself a glass of wine, or you're grabbing beer up to beer out of eski, you're probably drinking things that are more
than a standard drink. David had one the other day lunch. His friend offered him and it was one point eight standard drinks in one can of beer. And he's friend off with him a second one, and I said, hey, you're driving, remember can you check? And he looked at it and he was like, oh, my goodness, like it's so strong. So a lot of the times we're drinking drinks which are far more than just a standard drinker.
If someone's pouring us at a you know, at home, a big glass of wine, we're probably having the equivalent of close to two standard drinks. So I think these new guidelines are absolutely a step in the right direction.
I think we absolutely have a problem with alcohol. And I haven't even touched on kind of the mum drinking cultures either, Susie, because I know that you and I have had discussions around that and just being completely normal for you know, mums to have a couple of drinks after the kids are in school, or meeting up for some lunch wines, or winding down on a Thursday and a Friday after school and we're all having drinks while you know, the kids are playing afternoon tea sport or
whatever it might be. We have a large drinking problem in Australia and I think it's about time we kind of had a frank discussion about it on the potty.
What do you think true?
I saw those new guidelines and I was like, wow, that is significantly less than has ever been recommended. And I've just been doing some work on an article immune function and the data there when it comes to impairing immune system with alcohol, it is more than fourteen drinks per week, which, like you said, is still a lot, or five to six in one setting. So it's actually far worse to binge drinkers so many people do, than
it is to have one or two each day. Now I would certainly encourage at least a couple of alcohol free days, But what I noticed with drinkers is their
quick drinkers and their portions are huge. So it's not one hundred mil paw which is a standard service, a two hundred mil poor and they'll polish off a glass within twenty thirty minutes, So an easy step if you are a drinker is to just slow down your drinking, measure it and make sure it is only one hundred mel and make a glass last at least forty sixty minutes, and sip slowly, because in my experienced drinkers are quick drinkers.
If you need motivation, it's so heavily aging in your skin as you get older, so we know it's closely associated with a number of types of cancer, including breast cancer. Alcohol consumption. But when I see some people who drink a lot, their skin is aged terribly and you'll not sat in their forties and fifties. If they're big drinkers. They'll also get a real puffy, kind of rosy look. You and I will often comment if we see celebs
and we'll go there drinking. And I saw a friend of mine last week actually who I am in Brisbane, and I was like, oh, I can tell that he'd been drinking. I could just tell looking at him how much he'd aged since I've seen him a year ago.
So you know, I think that if there's a motivation that's required for women listening, it will make you age more quickly than anything, so that might be motivation to cut back certainly the lower alcohol slash zero alcohol options can be used really effectively, particularly if you find you like it after a long day, swapping over to a
zero alcohol might be something to cut back. But yeah, basically for health and wellness and microbiome, immune function aging, you know, as we go on, basically the less you have, the better, and so managing that in a social context is important, all right.
And well, just to.
Finish off, we've actually had a listener question come in through our Instagram and when we have a second we do go through the so keep them coming. When we do, try and cover topics that people raise. And this is actually something Leanne we actually have never spoken about before, so I picked it off because it was a question around I think the specific was the Double D sugar free lollies, but I think it's applicable to any sugar
free lollies is are they actually good for you? So I know there's the Double D's, there's also the Goels. I know, there's the sugar free butterscotch you can get at Aldi, and then also the Funday lollies that have been released in the last couple of years, which are specifically developed for kids as a lower sugar alternative. Now
where do I sit with them. I think if you have a couple of sugar free lollies a day and it stops you from snacking or keeps you awake if you need to keep awake, I don't have a problem with it, But I certainly wouldn't be encouraging people to go and buy them and grab them. And I certainly don't encourage kids to consume lollies at all, even low sugar ones, because I think the idea of a lolly for me as a party food should be consumed sparingly, and I would not be encouraging people to go and
buy them if they don't already. That's sort of my position on them. Are they better to have no sugar? Technically yes, but I wouldn't be encouraging people to add them to the diet thinking they're good for you.
Now they're still heavily processed foods.
Like in the case of they've got sweetness in them, they're significantly sweeter than sugar. In the case of the Funday, they're sort of formulated with different starches that could affect gut health. So I think, like anything in moderation, but I certainly don't encourage clients to start with them or
buy them myself or recommend them. If someone said to me I like them, I would say, we'll just watch how many, because what I noticed with people who consume sugar free lollies is they consume them non stop because they're constantly looking for that hit. And that's when you can have the issues with your gut wherein alcohol, sugars and the fibers can go straight through you and you
can get upset stomachs. So I think if you, yeah, have them in your bag for emergencies when you just need a little hips, but it wouldn't be something that I would add to your diet thinking that they're a good choice.
Yeah, I totally agree. And I've always been of the belief that you should eat a small amount of whatever you truly love. So if you truly love lollies, have one, two, three, that's it. I feel like with a lot of my clients, Susie, when we're replacing things like lollies, chocolates, brownies, ice cream, whatever it is, with like a lower calorie, lower sugar alternative, they tend to eat far more so, rather than just having say two or three normal pieces of lolly or candy.
What they do is they have like ten, twelve, twenty pieces of sugar free candy, So it's kind of defeating the purpose at the end of the day. Yes, it's got low sugar, but they're not low calorie. You've got to remember that. Like those little fun Day natural sweets that I just looked up the nutritionals of the little bags of them or one hundred calories, Like, they're not
calorie free, do you know what I mean? Like if you're having one or two bags of them a day, it's still going to add up at the end of the day, and there's a significant amount of fiber in there as well. Someone like a sensitive gup like myself, they add chagar root. I could not tolerate that, Like my gup with chigar root is just appalling. So I think for some people they would cause a little bit
of I guess GI distress. And like you said, are they better I mean technically, but I think if you're going to overeat them, or you just chowing down on bag after bagging them day after day, you're not really doing yourself any benefits nutritionally. I think I personally am always of the belief. Have a little bit of what you love and leave it at that, but you've got to aim to eat in moderation. Same deal with you know, the sugar free ice creams. If you gonna eat a
whole pint of ice cream, you're just overeating. I don't care if it's low calorie. I don't care if it's low sugar. Nobody needs to eat an entire pint of ice cream. Like I think you should learn some skills around mindful eating, because I think that's going to serve you far better long term than just learning to replace everything with low calorie, low sugar foods or more of these kind of diet or healthier options. I don't know.
I'm sort of fifty to fifty on them. I feel like people tend to overeat them because they give themselves permission to eat more because they are considered a better option. So I'm not the biggest fan, but I guess, like you said, if you love them, have a couple, But I definitely wouldn't be having bag after bad day after day. No.
And I think a couple of the girls I know have used them like to toilet train small kids, so rather than use real lollies.
They've used those, so there was a purpose.
If I'm giving my kids a treat, I'll never give them lollies, sugar free or other. If I'm giving them a treat, I'll probably give them a chocolate to be honest, because I feel like it's sort of better, you know, for them in terms of satisfaction. It's not that instant sweet response where you just keep eating. But yeah, I'm just not a lolly fan in general. I think, how do you know? We all love them, but you just eat a packet of jelly beans. There's so much sugar.
So I think, you know, lollies are party food and should remain that way.
All rightly, am what?
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