When it’s time to tell the meat to beat it…

Meat in general, and red meat and processed meat in particular, have been associated with so many health risks, that it’s very reasonable to want to reduce, if not outright eliminate, our meat consumption.

First, in case anyone’s wondering “what health risks?”

The aforementioned culprits tend to turn out to be a villain in the story of every second health-related thing we write about here. To name just a few:

• Processed Meat Consumption and the Risk of Cancer: A Critical Evaluation of the Constraints of Current Evidence from Epidemiological Studies
• Red Meat Consumption (Heme Iron Intake) and Risk for Diabetes and Comorbidities?
• Health Risks Associated with Meat Consumption: A Review of Epidemiological Studies
• Associations of Processed Meat, Unprocessed Red Meat, Poultry, or Fish Intake With Incident Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality
• Meat consumption: Which are the current global risks? A review of recent (2010-2020) evidences

Seasoned subscribers will know that we rarely go more than a few days without recommending the very science-based Mediterranean Diet which studies find beneficial for almost everything we write about. The Mediterranean Diet isn’t vegetarian per se—by default it consists of mostly plants but does include some fish and a very small amount of meat from land animals. But even that can be improved upon:

• A Pesco-Mediterranean Diet With Intermittent Fasting
• Mediterranean, vegetarian and vegan diets as practical outtakes of EAS and ACC/AHA recommendations for lowering lipid profile
• A Mediterranean Low-Fat Vegan Diet to Improve Body Weight and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors: A Randomized, Cross-over Trial

So that’s the “why”; now for the “how”…

It’s said that with a big enough “why” you can always find a “how”, but let’s make things easy!

Meatless Mondays

One of the biggest barriers to many people skipping the meat is “what will we even eat?”

The idea of “Meatless Mondays” means that this question need only be answered once a week, and in doing that a few Mondays in a row, you’ll soon find you’re gradually building your repertoire of meatless meals, and finding it’s not so difficult after all.

Then you might want to expand to “meat only on the weekends”, for example.

Flexitarian

This can be met with derision, “Yes and I’m teetotal, apart from wine”, but there is a practical aspect here:

The idea is “I will choose vegetarian options, unless it’s really inconvenient for me to do so”, which wipes out any difficulty involved.

After doing this for a while, you might find that as you get more used to vegetarian stuff, it’s almost never inconvenient to eat vegetarian.

Then you might want to expand it to “I will choose vegan options, unless it’s really inconvenient for me to do so”

Like-for-like substitutions

Pretty much anything that can come from an animal, one can get a plant-based version of it nowadays. The healthiness (and cost!) of these substitutions can vary, but let’s face it, meat is neither the healthiest nor the cheapest thing out there these days either.

If you have the money and don’t fancy leaping to lentils and beans, this can be a very quick and easy zero-effort change-over. Then once you’re up and running, maybe you can—at your leisure—see what all the fuss is about when it comes to tasty recipes with lentils and beans!

That’s all we have time for today, but…

We’re thinking of doing a piece making your favorite recipes plant-based (how to pick the right substitutions so the meal still tastes and “feels” the same), so let us know if you’d like that? Feel free to mention your favorite foods/meals too, as that’ll help us know what there’s a market for!

You can do that by hitting reply to any of our emails, or using the handy feedback widget at the bottom!

Curious to know more while you wait?

Check out: The Vegan Diet: A Complete Guide for Beginners ← this is a well-sourced article from Healthline, who—just like us—like to tackle important health stuff in an easy-to-read, well-sourced format

How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)

We’ve talked before about how to recover more quickly after a workout, especially if you overdid it. There are a lot of tips in that article, so by all means check it out if you didn’t catch it at the time!

That was very specific to recovering from exercise, though. Today we’re looking at something a little different, a little more holistic.

You’re busier than you think

Maybe your life is an obvious blur of busy-ness. Maybe it’s not. But either way, you’re almost certainly busier than you think. Especially on a cellular level.

Your resting metabolic rate (RMR), or how many calories you burn while at rest (i.e., calories used just to keep you alive) will depend on various factors including age, sex, weight, body composition, and other things.

That said, it’ll probably be between 1000 and 2000 calories per day. You can get a rough idea of what it might be for you, using this calculator:

How Many Calories Do You Burn a Day at Rest (Doing Nothing)?

So if ever you wonder why you feel so exhausted, despite having done nothing, it could be that your body was busy:

• Metabolizing, generally (did you have a big meal?)
• Fighting an illness (bacterial or viral infection, for example)
• Fighting an imaginary illness and creating a real one in the process (stress, inflammation, etc)
• Recovering/rebuilding from something you did yesterday or even before that
• Thinking (your brain is your largest organ by mass, and consumes the most calories by far)

Your brain does not get a free pass on being part of your body! Just like if a certain muscle group were working out constantly for 16 hours you’d be feeling pretty tired, the same goes for the organ that is your brain, if it’s been working out constantly.

Your body is a composite organism—take advantage of that

Dolphins can shut down half of their brain at once, to let each hemisphere of the brain sleep independently in shifts. We (except in the case of split brain patients, where the corpus callosum has been severed) can’t do that, but we can let different parts of the organism that is our body work in shifts.

This is the real meaning of “a change is as a good as a rest”:

If you’ve been doing cognitive work (at your desk perhaps, maybe managing a spreadsheet, say), then taking a break to do crosswords will not, actually, give you break. Because you’re still sitting manipulating letters and numbers. As far as your brain (still having to do work!) is concerned, it’s basically the same. Nor will checking out social media; you’re still sitting examining a screen.

Instead, time to get physically active. Literally just doing the washing up would be a better break! Some yoga or Pilates would be perfect.

In contrast, if you’ve been doing a vigorous bit of gardening, then for example taking a break to lift weights isn’t going to be a break, because again you just switched to a similar task.

Better to pick up that book you’ve been meaning to read, or the crosswords we mentioned earlier. Or just lounge in your nicely-gardened garden.

The important thing is: to not require the same resources from the body (including the brain, it’s still part of the body) that you have been.

For more specific tips than we have room for here today, check out:

How to Take Better Breaks at Work, According to Research

Give your metabolism a break too

Not completely—you don’t need to be put into cryostasis or anything.

But, give your metabolism a rest, in relative terms. Intermittent fasting is great for precisely this; it lets your body rest and reset.

See: Intermittent Fasting: we sort the science from the hype!

So does the practice of meditation, by the way. You don’t have to get fancy with it, either:

Check out: No Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

Enjoy, and rest well!