Eating Organic Can Make You Gain Weight | The Reality of Organic Labels
See the video: Eating Organic Can Make You Gain Weight
Transcript:
Eating organic can in my experience make you gain weight.
And I say that based on years of observing
so many people coming to me who need to lose weight
and really have no idea as to why they put
that weight on in the first place.
One of the factors, unfortunately seems to be eating organic.
Stay tuned and I’ll explain why.
So, does eating organic make you more likely to gain weight?
The answer is a resounding yes!
Now, first of all, thanks so much for tuning in,
do be sure to like and subscribe
because we have a lot more content coming out.
And this channel is really designed for me
to take my 31 years of personal training experience,
helping people with their fitness goals,
and taking the gift, all that data, seeing what works,
what doesn’t work, and sharing it
with as many people as possible.
This type of information can be life changing
and like all gifts, gifts are meant to be shared.
It’s my hope that my sharing, my life mission to share
my fitness information as much as possible
can help you on your path as well.
So, I’m going to start by saying that
when I first started training people
back where I come from in Trinidad
back in the early 1990s,
the word organic didn’t really exist for foods.
And I come from a place too, where there was not
that much advertising about food.
At that point, anyone coming to me
who was overweight or needed to lose weight
knew exactly what they were eating
to cause them to gain weight in the first place.
I came to America in the mid nineties
and started seeing towards the late nineties,
early two thousands as the organic movement
became more and more prevalent
and more and more products that were labeled organic.
I saw a trend.
How Eating Organic Made It Harder To Know What Foods Make You Gain Weight
I saw a shift. A big shift.
Whereas before people, even here in the US
kind of had an idea why was it
that they were gaining weight.
All of a sudden,
people had no idea why they were gaining weight.
Now, when someone comes in to work with me,
the first thing I do is go over with them
what their current diet is, so I can have an idea
of where they are, and what got them where they are.
But what I saw was alarming.
And what I heard was even more alarming.
And what I heard
more and more, were people saying,
“I’m gaining weight and I don’t understand
why I’m gaining weight because I eat organic.”
Eating organic, from the late nineties to now
has become perhaps one of the biggest challenges for me
to help people eat better.
Because there’s this real sense that if you eat a food,
even though it’s highly processed,
but it has the organic label on it,
that somehow or the other,
that label gives it a pass.
Now we can go into intricacies
of whether organic foods are better than other foods,
but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.
Because there may be some benefits to eating organic
and I myself, do I eat organic?
Absolutely, I do.
I’m not going to sit here and say that I don’t.
But it’s important first for me
to say something about what I’ve seen.
And here’s what I’ve seen.
Eating Organic Foods Does Not Confer Any Added Benefit in Terms Of Weight Loss
I’ve seen groups of individuals
who eat a hundred percent organic,
train the same way.
And if they are 100% on their diets,
they get fantastic results.
They realize their fitness goals.
On the other hand,
I’ve seen people who didn’t eat organic products at all
a hundred percent non-organic.
But they ate a hundred percent on their diet.
Trained the same way, increased muscle mass, lost weight,
and the differences between the group eating organic
and not eating organic.
As far as putting in for equal genders,
putting in for equal fitness levels, same ages,
and age groups [differences] were non-existent.
All that made a difference between those two groups
was whether or not they followed their diet or not.
Eating naturally occurring foods, non-processed foods
was much more important than whether
the foods were organic or not
as far as their weight loss over time.
That’s really important.
What’s more important, that group that ate organic,
if I extend that group out,
they were the ones who were actually least likely
to follow their diets because they were the ones
who were more likely to cheat with foods that were organic
and foods that were,
I would say bad enough
to make a big difference in their weight loss.
I could even tell you straight out that the
people who eat organic tend to have the sense that
what they eat is okay,
and are less aware of the impact that the foods
that they’re taking in,
can potentially have on weight gain and their weight loss.
Why We Want To Believe That Organic Foods Give Us A Pass
Now, it’s really important that you bear in mind
that this is not at all something that makes sense,
because again, we’re human
and too often, we try to think about ourselves like robots,
and we are not robots.
We are beings that work on emotion.
I’ve had competitive bodybuilders
before competitions
on more than one occasion, with different people.
Some of them were certified nutritionists.
Some of them were personal trainers
and they would cheat on their diets
with foods that were organic, but somehow the other,
the idea that, because it’s organic it’s okay.
So, they would have chocolate,
chocolate was usually the most prevalent one,
and they would say to themselves
that it’s okay to have chocolate,
because if it’s organic,
somehow it cancels out the calories and the sugars.
It doesn’t.
And they had problems
and when I would see that they were eating those things,
and I would see that they weren’t making the progress
that they should have been making,
I could also see the confusion of someone who
one may argue should know better,
but it’s not about knowing better.
It’s hard with all this misinformation out there,
and you’re trying so hard to eat better.
You’re trying so hard to change your ways
and stay away from those hyper palatable foods
that give you such a rush.
And so your brain starts looking for ways out,
for things that, allow you to get that rush,
to get that mouth feel,
and your decisions are compromised
because the advertising is so strong
and you want to believe,
you want to believe that eating organic
is somehow going to make it such that
you can have all these great foods
that you really and truly love
and that you’ve always eaten,
and still lose weight and look fantastic.
I understand it completely. It’s part of being human.
But the problem is that the advertisers
and the producers who make these foods
they’re only focused on trying to create a product
that they can charge you more for
and they don’t care about the idea that
it actually influenced people to eat more.
The Food Industry Uses The Organic Label To Encourage You To Eat More
The whole idea behind the food economy,
is the food industry’s job
is to make you eat as much as possible of their products.
And there are so many different products out there.
And everyone’s trying to make you eat as much as possible.
It can be a minefield trying to navigate it.
It’s really, really hard today.
If I was growing up right now in America,
with all the misinformation out there,
I’m not sure that I would have found the path
to healthy eating that I found
because there would have been so much out there to
have led me in the wrong direction.
It’s a lot, it’s really, really a lot.
And it’s not just in the United States, it’s everywhere.
I have worked with clients around the world.
And whether it was Europe, whether it was Asia,
whether it was Africa, whether it was the West Indies.
Today, everyone is so influenced by marketing and the halo,
the healthy halo around organic foods
that people would eat organic ice cream and tell me,
“Hey, I eat organic ice cream so I don’t
understand why I gained weight, because it’s organic.”
The sugar king that was made
to make the sugar was organic.
The milk that was used was organic.
Why am I gaining weight?
It’s hard.
It’s really, really hard to hear someone
who is really trying so hard, being manipulated so much.
And that’s what this video is about.
To make sure that you’re not manipulated,
you really have some perspective
as far as what organic foods can and cannot do.
All organic foods talk about is how the food was made.
If it’s an animal product, it talks about how it was raised,
what it was fed, which should be as natural as possible.
If it’s a plant-based food,
it’s only talking about how it was raised,
sorry, how it was grown, we don’t raise plants,
how it was grown, what fertilizers [were Used.]
And again, one can argue
whether natural fertilizers even exist.
But that’s not really the point here.
What fertilizers were used and the quality of soil,
all of those things have nothing to do with
whether or not that food will make you gain weight or not.
And it’s important that you are aware of it.
It’s a label. A label designed to make you pay more
and a label designed to make you feel good about eating it.
But don’t think for a fact that it’s going to somehow
or the other magically not contribute to the number
of calories you’re taking in,
or if it’s high in sugars, low in fiber,
that it’s not going to push insulin levels
and put you in a bad place.
If you have eaten organic foods in the past
and felt like it’ll give you a pass,
don’t feel bad about yourself.
Be kind to yourself, really important, be kind!
But be vigilant, be aware. And I hope
that what I’ve presented here helps you on your path.
Thanks again for tuning in and Excelsior!
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I trained for about a year during the lockdowns with just a pair of dumbbells and a barbell and was able to make tremendous progress, and to this day I universally recommend and provide dumbbells to my online training clients and they have made some great gains as well.
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