Moderation

Moderation is a junk term. It is too ill-defined to provide any actual structure for changing behavior. It’s most often used in relation to eating patterns, as people like to say, “I eat everything in moderation.” When pressed for details, those are hard to come by.

I can personally eat a package of bacon in a single sitting. For many, that would be excessive, while two pieces of bacon feels adequate. How many, then, is considered moderation? Four? Six? Eight? Ten? What defines a moderate amount of bacon?

What is a moderate amount of chips to eat? Similar to the bacon, I can eat a whole bag of salt-and-vinegar chips. But what if I only do that once per year? You, on the other hand, always have salt-and-vinegar chips in the house and eat them regularly—let’s say two to three nights per week—and over the course of the year you consume twelve bags. My one bag certainly sounds like better “moderation” than yours when we stretch out the time window.

If I walk by a coworker’s desk six times per day and there is always candy in the dish, how many pieces can I eat and how often before I’m no longer eating in moderation? You get my point. We could play the “what if” moderation game indefinitely. It’s meaningless, and it doesn’t work to improve your nutrition habits.

I eat a very carnivore-heavy diet—mostly red meat, some eggs, and dairy such as sour cream, cream cheese, cottage cheese, or cheddar cheese. That sounds extreme to a lot of people and certainly not in keeping with “moderation.” When I tell that to patients in the ER, some of them look at me like I have two heads.

I see patients riddled with chronic disease and in very poor health. Some are willing to engage in conversation, and I offer my two cents. I tell them what has worked for me and what I have seen and read about working for other people. I admit that what I do doesn’t work for everyone and that some people do better with more variety. However, as soon as I open the door to “more options,” it feels like the wheels usually fall off. When I’m thinking of more options, I’m thinking of food that God made that doesn’t need a label. They are thinking of everything else at the grocery store—i.e., processed food; i.e., everything they are already eating. It has been hammered into our heads that we need a “well-rounded” diet, which means nothing at all. At the end of the conversation, patients often close our discussion with, “Well, so… everything in moderation.”

They have no insight that eating in moderation is what got them so sick in the first place.