Blogger Responsibility and Restricted Diets, "Cheat" vs. "Treat" and "Placebo and Nocebo"

There's been some cogent talk about blogger responsibility recently. See Mara and Tina for some carefully articulated thoughts. We're sharing our lives, opinions and experiences with anyone who cares to look and listen: it's an obligation to us to be conscious of what it is that we're sharing. This fact, together with Gena's wise comment on my 'tetra-diet' post, to the effect that such restrictive diets are rarely actually necessary and can trigger all kinds of unwanted 'head stuff,' makes me realize that I owe you an explanation. Why is someone like me, who has been told by several health professionals that I should 'never go on any kind of diet again,' eating yams, carrots and nettles (and occasional coconut kefir) three meals a day and snacks?

Self-Experimentation with Misapplied Science
I do have some good reasons. Or at least, not bad reasons. Like, I'd been feeling good on starch and wanted to take it to the max. Or, I'm just finishing up the yeast cleanse and wanted to do something that felt like 'spring-cleaning.' Or, I'm looking forward to going back to eating a high fruit diet when I'm done with the yeast cleanse in just a few days and felt that this would be an appropriate 'transition.' Plus, you know me: I love to self-experiment.

However, in all responsibility and candor, I need to admit that there are some not-so-good reasons why I've been doing this, and specifically, some misapplication of scientific research. I've been reading Stephan Guyenet's series on how Food Reward impacts obesity. You can get a good summary of the concept in David Kessler's The End of Overeating also. The suggestion is that highly processed, highly flavored and salted, highly sweet and fatty 'industrial' foods designed to keep people coming back for more, override the hormonal satiation signals of leptin with a dopamine deluge and an upward-spiraling search for the high of 'food reward.' This processed modern food is so 'rewarding' that rats will endure electric shocks to get to it when they have an abundance of bland food readily available.

The antidote? Eat unprocessed, bland foods, come off the dopamine rollercoaster, and suddenly your body resensitizes to all that leptin signaling "I'm full!" and your weight set-point drops effortlessly.
And then there's the 20 Potatoes a Day guy, not obese to begin with, who ate mostly potatoes for two months and corroborated the concept that a very monotonous diet can bring about a spontaneous down-regulation of weight set-point without the negative effects of reduced thyroid function, hunger and frustration.

Since I eat almost no processed food at all, ever (and the only 'processed' food I ever do eat is healthfood store stuff); since I don't even like most industrially processed/artificially flavored foods but favor antioxidant rich and otherwise healthful spices; since, moreover, I'm not obese, my decision that such a regime would be just the right thing for me seems somewhat misguided, no?

My past experience with putting myself on restricted diets is also cause for concern: there is part of me that actually enjoys the restriction, and can find it hard to break. That's why the stipulation of a 'cheat day' and that this monotonous diet was for a limited time only are both saving graces. I am determined that I'll stick to the limited time period because I'm looking forward to fruit!

But I want to spend the rest of this post on the 'cheat/treat' day concept and how it ties in with
placebo/nocebo.

The one flaw in the 'cheat day' concept lies in the languaging. If you're calling it a 'cheat day,' it immediately invokes the idea that it's something 'wrong.' If you worry about nutrition at all, it's easy to talk yourself out of any 'cheating' because it's too much fat/too much sugar/too early in the day, or any other excuse...and then you end up having your cheat day from your yam diet being a yam smoothie!

Very early on, Phil suggested to me that I should call it a 'treat day,' not a 'cheat day,' and I think he's so right. A 'treat' is an exception that feeds your spirit, without importing any of the mind-chatter around what you 'should' or shouldn't eat. A treat is also a celebration of your body--and mind's--inherent flexibility, curiosity and willingness to experience things outside of the normal pattern.

How we talk about and think about what goes in our body plays a huge part in how our body then deals with it. (Of course, I'm not talking about things you're genuinely allergic to.) It's helpful to me to remember that something I consider a 'treat' would probably be seen as health food by many people. Something that I think of as super-decadent and a little risque' might be a 'lite alternative' to many people.

This attitude element, together with the "cheat" vs. "treat"also ties into the whole "placebo"/"nocebo" effect. I love those words: of course I do, I'm a Latinist... "Placebo" means "I will please or do good;" "nocebo" means "I will harm."It's pretty well known now that placebos work: if a person believes that they are receiving something beneficial and healing, the substance they receive will have that effect on them.

What hasn't been given enough attention, especially in the diet/nutrition world, is that the "nocebo" effect also works. If you firmly believe that a certain food is going to be bad for you, it's unlikely that you'll feel good after eating it! If you eat the same food with enjoyment, gratitude, pleasure (and somehow turn off that nutrition policeman in your head), you'll likely feel just fine (again: this isn't about cases of genuine allergic response).

If you've been around strict raw-foodists who believe that all cooked food is poison and say that they ate a teensy morsel of cooked food and were _sooo sick_, you've most likely seen the nocebo effect in action. There are some who claim to feel the difference between low-temperature-dried fruit and nuts and 'cooked' dried fruit and nuts but that kind of hyper-alert is probably the nocebo effect in action too. I know: I've been there. My further concern with choosing a very restricted diet, especially for a longer period of time, and especially with negative languaging like 'cheats,' is that it's inviting the nocebo effect to rule your experience of many otherwise innocuous foods, as they spend a lot of time out of circulation in your body, with ample room for your mind to find reasons why they're 'not good.'

I'll talk about this more in another post, but I sincerely believe that one's regular way of eating should make one's system stronger, not weaker. This means being better able to handle occasional excursions and irregularities, rather than being in danger of death if there's no organic fruit available. In addition to the social empathy element, which I'll also save for the next post on this subject, that concept of strength from one's regimen stays with me nowadays and keeps me from becoming too blinkered and from the tendency to demonize whole families of foods that many people eat quite happily.

Thanks for helping me stay honest and responsible!
Have you experienced the nocebo effect with your eating? Do you enjoy 'treats' or do you 'cheat?'
much love