Sustaining the Banting Way of Eating

A Wholesome Approach to Banting

Prof. Tim Noakes' Banting lifestyle... controversial, out-of-the-box yet effective for many. How do you make it work?

For the last few months I have been following the Banting diet and joined online groups which aim to support fellow Banters. It's obvious there are many perceived challenges to adopting the Banting lifestyle, ranging from obtaining unfamiliar and expensive ingredients to breaking unhealthy eating patterns. Most of the comments and questions I have encountered online and in conversation are around the technical aspects of the high fat, medium protein and low carb way of eating. However I'm not going to go into the creating meal plans, finding the right products, how the Banting diet works or how to break through weight-loss plateaus here though. There is adequate information in Prof. Noakes' book "The Real Meal Revolution" and online resources for that. 

Instead, the focus here is on support for a potentially massive change in one's dietary lifestyle and what you can do to undertake a wholesome approach to change.

The Impact of Change

Let's face it, change can be overwhelming. It is a disruption to our routine, bops us from our comfort zone, it challenges our knowledge of the world and our psychological reference system. That's quite a lot to handle, especially when eating differently has an impact on our sense of being physically, emotionally and even influences our effectiveness in thinking! It comes as no surprise then that we naturally tend to cling (sometimes desperately) to what we know. Hell, it's gotten us this far, it must work! 

But it is precisely that combination of thinking, feeling and behaviour which slowly has us ending up unhappy or in danger of health problems. On the slippery slope of a lifestyle of unhealthy eating, many people are unaware of problematic behaviour until it is too late. The hard truth is, we rarely eat to sustain our bodies alone. It doesn't take much to see the marketing strategy of fast food outlets and chain restaurants is often aimed at satisfying desire more than health. That, combined with a widespread societal culture of instant gratification, the stress of meeting work deadlines and the demands of modern living, contributes to some grave health statistics. According to the World Health Organisation, in 2008 31.3% of South Africa's total population were deemed obese, with double the amount of women being affected compared to men.

Considering that close to 1 in 3 people struggle to manage their health and weight in South Africa, this is a very real problem.

Am I Secretly Resisting the Change I Say I Want?

Resisting change is normal and it can be a strength. Without a built-in resistance to any change, we may have no direction. But like many things, context it important. If we resist something that is actually good for us just because we are unfamiliar with it, we may need to review our thinking on that particular matter. 

Asking these questions may be useful in such cases

• Am I putting a lot of energy into seeing how much of my old/undesired behaviour I can fit into the new lifestyle?

If you're asking a lot of questions like "Is it OK to still eat this?" and "Am I still allowed that?" as opposed to questions about the 'rules' of the new eating lifestyle, you may indeed secretly be trying to support the old one. Ask questions about what the new lifestyle is about rather than ones about the old. Bringing about a paradigm shift happens by inquiring into the as-yet-unknown, instead of the known.

• Am I considering giving up due expecting this change to be easy?

When we change old behaviour, especially if it was satisfying a psychological need, there is likely to be a physical reaction to that change, perhaps even when just thinking about it. This is normal. Sometimes this reaction can be so strong that is scares us from pursuing or continuing with a new lifestyle. The course we take when we realise this is happening is probably the crux of this article.

Making it Happen

Whether you are in the planning phase of changing to the Banting way of eating, or have already started, keeping in mind your needs on the continuum of challenge and support is a useful way of inviting positive and even enjoyable change.

Knowing yourself, or using stories from your life as examples,inquire into the support and challenge you experienced as helpful to change. What was going on, who was there, what were they doing, how did you respond, what did you believe about yourself, others and the world that made this process so powerful? Applying these positive and energised influences to present situations can be a great help in achieving goals. If you notice that you need more support than challenge, put into action supportive things that got you places in the past. The same works for people who respond more powerfully to challenge. 

As a coach, I sometimes see how my clients try to follow the advice of friends or chat forums and find that it doesn't work for them. We all have different needs when it comes to wanting to behave differently. Asking support from friends who can support you even if you do things differently from them is valuable. Sometimes we can benefit from someone who is trained to see things objectively, to act as a sounding board, mirror, confidant and who can stretch our minds just the bit we need to overcome difficulties.

If you're looking to find the perfect balance of support and challenge for a lifestyle change, contact me here for Skype or face to face coaching.

Conflict: Getting Mad, Getting Even and a Healthy Option…. Part 2

Conflict: Getting Mad, Getting Even and a Healthy Option…. Part 2

Let’s briefly review what I discussed in the last article on conflict. 

We all have beliefs about ourselves, others and how the world is. Some of those beliefs we have accepted from our parents during our upbringing and some are through lived experience. As we live, we reinforce and/or update our beliefs. In doing this, we sometimes do not have all the information at hand to make a realistic or relevant observation and thus are born contaminated beliefs. For instance a 4 year old girl may believe, ”All strangers are bad because the neighbour shouted at me”, though she may miss that she was in danger of being bitten by the dog. These messages are received, interpreted and stored by the subconscious mind. Like the submerged part of a glacier, our subconscious impacts our perception and interaction with the world without our direct awareness.

Our primary caregivers (parents most likely) have grown up similarly so they may pass on useful (relevant and realistic) beliefs to us, like the belief that the Earth is round, or “I can use thinking to solve problems”, or “It is OK to feel sad/happy/angry”. They may also pass on not-useful beliefs to us (irrelevant or unrealistic), for instance that the Sun revolves around the Earth, or “Drinking alcohol is useful when dealing with stress because that’s what mommy does” or that slavery is just. Our own lived experience and our inherited beliefs serve as our reference for interacting with the world. When we encounter someone who has different beliefs, we may experience conflict. Often their beliefs threaten our worldview, our existence as such, and we may feel we need to persecute these people. 

In the first article I left you with the invitation to observe your own beliefs and you may have noticed some already. The invitation was to observe your beliefs and ensuing dynamics with others without attributing judgement or meaning to these and it may have taken some letting go to allow these realisations of self!

The eventual outcome of this practice is an aware experience of life based upon realistic beliefs which are relevant to the situation in each moment. This process of observation and gradual change is ongoing. So where does one turn when one notices beliefs which may be unrealistic or irrelevant? How do we change something which may be so fundamental to our perceived being that we may in fact be partially blind to its ineptness? You might imagine this as trying to pick yourself up by the shoelaces! Perhaps then the shoelaces are not the place to start. 

By noting the unhelpful, irrelevant or not-useful beliefs, we have made the unconscious conscious. We afford ourselves more choice, authentic power and enjoyed experience by unloading the massive iceberg of the subconscious contaminated beliefs. We may work with a professional who can draw curious attention to these contaminations in a safe and trusting space, we are empowered to take control of our lives and free ourselves of suffering. Meditation is another means of this practice.

There are many ways of going about this process and each has its own merits. Professionals using an appreciative approach inspire one’s creativity to imagine/create desired reality and then pay focused attention to one’s being and beliefs in this new reality. 

It is like stepping into new shoes more suitable for the terrain!

A simple exercise you can do yourself is to recall two conflict experiences, one which was well resolved and another which could have gone better. Taking one scenario at a time, focus on the emotions, physical experience and thoughts all going on in the encounter. What were you expecting the outcome to be in each? What past experience justifies this expectation? What physical phenomena and pattern of thoughts can serve as markers you are about to go down a ‘one way street’ to unresolved conflict? What beliefs and expectations were helpful in resolving conflict?

Fundamentally what you are doing is noting recurring patterns of thinking, feeling and behaviour. Which ones are helpful and which ones not? The trick is to notice each and reproduce the helpful ones. It may take some time, but employing the helpful patterns in awareness when one encounters conflict is a start to truly taking control of your life.

You are also welcome to visit www.lifecoachcapetown.com or on

Google+ for more info on how coaching can help you.

Conflict: Getting Mad, Getting Even and a Healthy Option…. Part I

Whether it is dealing with a moody family member, personal trauma or countering a danger to one’s country, we are faced as individuals and communities with many daily risks to our safety, patience, frame of reference and emotional harmony. 

Current global unrest serves to demonstrate continued thinking, feeling and behaviour when dealing with conflict, that if one is threatened one must retaliate. Often our paradigm is one of looking into the past to justify this behaviour, a question of “who started it?”, “who threw the first punch?”, “who didn’t accept an apology?” Often people use illogical beliefs about others which are handed down culturally or from our parents and preceding generations in attempting to cope. Some irrational beliefs about conflict and those who pose a ‘threat’ to us may be so entrenched in our subconscious that we fail to recognise them. This is due to having either accepted these beliefs as truths, from our parents, or having employed contaminated logic when making sense of a lived experience. The psychological lens through which we see the world may thus contaminate our behaviour, which then reinforces the stereotypes we have of others, in a cycle of negative feedback. 

It may firstly be useful to ask “why should I change my worldview or approach to conflict?”, as often we are so sure of our position and ‘comfortable’ in our paradigm that we aren’t aware that our beliefs are not serving us. There are a number of reasons for changing unhelpful conflict behaviour, ranging from improving our experience of life to our impact on humanity as a collective. It is easy to get philosophical on this, and in the interests of pragmatism let us maintain our focus on the real world experience of conflict and our responses to it. Conflict causes stress and prolonged, unresolved conflict causes chronic stress, which we obviously want to avoid. Resolving conflict efficiently and healthily impacts us directly and also feeds back into society in that we model positive and useful behaviour to those we engage with, who are thus invited to employ the same thinking and behaviour, and so on. One might imagine this process being passed from person to person in a positive feedback loop. 

So how do we objectively see those parts of ourselves, which in reality do not serve us? You might imagine this akin to looking in the mirror and seeing yourself differently! A useful start is recognising when we find ourselves facing the same problem repeatedly without change, that we are using out-dated and/or non-relevant thinking. We are then likely using thinking and beliefs which were once useful to us but are now redundant, or which were never useful to us in our lives but were passed to us from our forebears. Our beliefs are not necessarily learned or employed in awareness. Their presence can be noted when we react to stressful situations and use words like “typical”, “always” and “never” in the heat of the moment. It is impossible to cover all flavours of contaminated or irrelevant belief, but if we observe a recurring pattern in our relationships and interactions with others during conflict, it can be a strong clue that we are not thinking or acting from a place of useful awareness. 

A common pattern is reacting critically or angrily when experiencing a threat or making a judgement of someone. Unless the other party responds from a place of awareness and objective thinking, we may enter a negative feedback loop with them, a cycle of punishing and being punished. 

So how do we escape harmful patterns? 

As with many unhelpful behaviours, recognising their existence is a great start. Recognition however is not judgment as this is in itself punitive, merely another form of unhelpful thinking within the same paradigm. Recognition in this sense then is being aware of the dynamic between oneself and the other without judging or assigning meaning and value to it. This non-judged observation of the dynamic is useful in that we are unlikely to employ the same beliefs (in defending our behaviour or criticising the other’s) which we are aiming at shifting. 

In order to invite you to take ample time to observe your dynamic/beliefs/thinking, without judgment, I will address the next step in an upcoming article. You are also welcome to visit www.lifecoachcapetown.com for more info on how coaching can help you.