With the right food, and the right teaching we’ll make you a swimmer
Nutrition consultant Chris Fenn went on her first Shaw Method swimming holiday this year. It got her thinking about exercise and how the messages on healthy eating are all wrong …
Why would I want to do that? I thought, when I was invited on a swimming course. After all, I learned how to swim when I was six, and somehow it didn’t appeal now. The adults I know who swim talk about thrashing up and down a pool, trying to burn as many calories as possible.
“It’s the way to lose weight” they mutter as they grab a towel and focus on the task ahead, “a simple matter of calories in versus calories out.” I try to explain that this well known equation may apply to a car, but does not apply to human beings. However, they have gone, disappeared into the changing room. I am left looking at a swinging door, and wondering why people keep going on a diet to lose weight, when they know it doesn’t work. Isn’t a fool often described as someone who keeps doing the same thing, but expects a different result?
There is plenty of research to show that if you feed one group mostly fatty food, and another group mostly carbohydrates, it is the fatty food group which loses weight – even though both groups have eaten the same number of calories. This is good news to anyone who enjoys eggs and bacon or plenty of butter on their (good quality) bread or vegetables, but bad news for food manufacturers who make vast profits from sales of sugary frosted cereals, instant porridge or low fat margarine.
The Government has been telling us to eat less fat (to save our waistlines from expanding and arteries from clogging) for the past 30 years. The result of following this advice is clear to see. It hasn’t worked; we have got fatter. This then begs the questions – “What if the low fat message is wrong?” By eating less fat, we automatically eat proportionally more of something else – usually carbohydrate.
However, this carbohydrate no longer comes in the form of potatoes, oatmeal, carrots, beans, lentils and barley, but as highly refined sugars and processed starches. These are added to obvious foods such as fizzy drinks, ice-cream, breakfast cereals and biscuits, and also to pasta sauces, soup, baked beans, fruit yogurts and as a thickener in low fat margarine!
If you try to steer clear of meat, milk, butter, eggs, Brazil nuts, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, olive oil and mackerel because of the fat they contain, maybe it is time to try something different? I did. Although I know a lot about nutrition, I don’t know much about swimming. So I went on that course, and have been learning the Shaw Method of swimming. It is very different to the old vision I had, of people ploughing up and down a pool. However, the new technique and attention to body alignment feels right, and makes sense – in the same way that low fat eating doesn’t.
Dr Chris Fenn’s new book Forget the Fear of Food: how to lose weight without going on a diet will be published in the new year.
We are endorsed
10:18 am on December 8th, 2011
Hi there – sounds from this article like we should be slicing the butter in one inch slabs and frying our bacon in dripping every morning? Most of my family died prematurely from coronary heart disease after years of eating way too much saturated fat so perhaps the government advice is not so wrong after all?
4:40 pm on December 8th, 2011
Hello – and thankyou for your comments. The exact causes of coronary artery disease and most cancers are not known. As I am sure you are aware, there are many risk factors associated with these conditions. Having a family history of heart disease is the major risk factor, but unfortunately something we cannot do much about. So, we turn to other risk factors and diet is one area which has a major impact on health, and one we can change. Eating a fatty diet is often considered as something bad. Ask most people what springs to mind when they think of saturated and cholesterol – and clogged arteries and heart attack are common images. However, there are many misunderstandings about the role of saturated and cholesterol – which are vital molecules and have many roles in the body, including membrane structure and nerve function. It is in the interest of the food manufacturers and pharmaceutical industry to keep us thinking that low fat foods and cholesterol lowering drugs are needed for health. As a nutritionist, I prefer to challenge this conventional “wisdom” and promote good quality real foods. Bring on the butter or olive oil!
5:28 pm on December 8th, 2011
Ah well, let’s bring on the daily dose of lamb chops deep fried in ghee (clarified butter) ? Surely for those of us with a family history of heart disease we need to be more aware of risk factors. My own father was a medical doctor who studied diet for many years. He watched his father and all his brothers die in their 40’s and 50’s. He tried to get them to change their diet but they were addicted to fat. He himself went on to live into his 90’s ! OK, anecdotal, but I prefer not to repeat the ghee experiment on myself or my family.
2:52 pm on December 12th, 2011
There is, and has been, plenty of evidence to show the saturated fat and high cholesterol are the villains that they are deemed to be. As I explained, these are essential molecules for the body. The problem is when they end up in the wrong places – such as clogging the arteries. However, it is not cholesterol that is to blame for this – rather the inflammation that occurs in the artery wall to damage the lining. The initial inflammation is thought to be caused by, amongst other things, a poor diet which includes processed sugars, additives and trans fats. There are some good books which explain this in more detail – The Cholesterol Con written by Dr (a GP before he studied the reasons behind prescribing statins to control blood cholesterol), Malcolm Kendrick. Also Barry Groves – http://barrygroves.blogspot.com/2011/12/cholesterol-paradox-in-survival-after.html
Hope this helps to widen your knowledge, and to see the bigger picture.
10:21 am on December 22nd, 2011
As an enthusiastic pupil of the Shaw method, I am delighted to see Dr Fenn’s addition to the resources of the school. I am reassured and encouraged that she endorses Malcolm Kendrick’s work. Tehmina I know it is alarming and disconcerting when long held views are apparently disrupted in this way. I too was sceptical and alarmed when challenged in this way, but the more you read the serious studies, the more sense it makes.
10:46 am on December 22nd, 2011
I am with Chris Fenn on this. I speak as a superfit 47 year old who has completed 8 sprint triathlons in the last 2 years and routinely beats fit young men in their early 20’s during them.
I would recommend, highly, two books. The first is “Clean” by a specialist cardiologist, Alejandro Junger and the second is “The New Evolution Diet” by Professor Arthur De Vany. There are differences between the two but fear of animal and other fats is not one of them. The common thread is instead the role of bad foods that trigger an inflammatory response in all healthy humans. This is NOT the same as having a food allergy as commonly understood.
2:42 pm on December 23rd, 2011
Martin your comments on inflammatory response are sound. However I looked up Junger’s book and Uh Oh, is selling Detox treatment. It has been known for some time and confirmed by this latest book, the Detox Delusion by Prof Bender:
In it, he says the term “detox” has gone from describing a chemical reaction involved in the production of urine to a “meaningless marketing term” and takes apart the claims made on behalf of detox diets.
He says that they are at best unfounded, more likey demonstrably false, and at worst dangerous.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/dietandfitness/8950124/Scientist-rubbishes-detox-diet-claims.html
7:59 pm on January 7th, 2012
Hi Avril, I too am keen to see the ’serious studies’ on the subject of animal fats but have seen none so far on this blog. Please do post them. I look forward to seeing Chris Fenn’s views being expressed in a clearer and more transparent way in her regular articles on this site.
2:13 pm on January 8th, 2012
I too value the use of fats in a well controlled healthy diet, but Chris’ article is a touch provocative in tone… making sweeping statements about government advice… saying it is wrong as it “hasn’t worked” is misleading without due qualification… would you say “government advice” to stop smoking is also wrong as it “hasn’t worked”? In her introduction, she implies that exercise (“calories out”) has no value to losing weight and wellness, this too is misleading on its own. One of the key ingredients of AoS is that Steven bases the stokes on the Alexander Technique… which gives the strokes some understandable principles you can appreciate and understand before you go on a lesson. I too look forward to future articles from Chris to give more details of the nutritional principles she follows, and links to research that support this to help dispel the considerable confusion with diets and foods. So, as with AoS, the principles can be appreciated as well as enjoying the practice!
12:37 pm on January 10th, 2012
Hello Francis, it would be nice to support the Government in their healthy eating advice (which has not changed much since the 1980’s). In this way, the food processing industry, the government and independant Nutritionists, like me, would all be saying the same thing. This would reduce the confusing that many people experience when they try to find consistent information about how to eat well and take their own responsibility for their health. However the “low fat/low calorie/must reduce cholesterol” message continues, and the majority of the general public have followed this advice. If the health of the nation, and obesity levels, had reduced since the 1980’s I would be able to say that the Gov healthy eating advice had worked. Unfortunately, the Nation’s health has not been improved. What has improved is the profit that food manufactuers and pharmaceutical companies (who sell statins) have made. Hence the need for a different approach and a re-evaluation of the studies on which much of the low fat/low cholesterol advice is based. The Gov also continues to avoid the issue of trans fats. These are damaging molecules created during the processing of fats – which are added to many foods to create an addictive texture and long shelf life. Rather than taking a tough stance, the UK Government asked the food manufacturers to kindly remove trans fats from their products by 31st December 2011. Since this request was self regulating, it is no surprise that trans fats continue to be part of processed foods. If you choose real foods, which contain natural fats, you are feeding your body nutrients which it knows how to deal with.
12:00 pm on January 12th, 2012
I am confused, as my relationship with AoS has been for swimming and jogging and activities aligned to the Alexander Technique, so, venturing into nutritional advice is new for AoS… but so far Chris seems to be using her privileged AoS platform for “food politics” and unqualified sensational statements, for which AoS is not the best website for such debates, nor is its core purpose. I welcome some clear nutritional advice that is useful as a swimmer (which was the title of the article after all!) which we could read and learn from, with specific links to qualify this advice if it is known to be controversial.
1:43 pm on January 12th, 2012
Hi Francis, Thanks for your message. Just so you are aware this is the Shaw Method magazine, not the Art of Swimming website. We welcome articles from contributors we think will be interesting to our readers, and if they stir up comment and debate, all the better.