You Are What You Eat

Aoife Hearne offers some timely tips on what to eat, when to eat and how to eat. Donal O’Donoghue gets the low-down

is year, dietitian Aoife Hearne introduces her stand-alone vegetarian plan and talks about the importance of portion control and how good habits make all the di erence to healthy eating.

Mid-morning and Aoife Hearne, on the road to her clinic, is hands-free and chirpy. “Everyone is still alive and well fed and in my book that’s success,” says the OT expert of home life in Waterford city. A professional dietitian, Aoife has been part of the OT team since 2014, just over five years in which her life has changed utterly. She and hubby, Alan, have had three children (Alva, Dylan and Zoe), she has published a cookbook ( The Plan) and thanks to Operation Transformation she has become a household name. This year she hopes to start building their new family house, closer to her husband’s farm with a lot more living space, indoors and out. But before all that though comes the juggernaut that is OT 2020.

The food plan

My goal with the food plan this year is to get seven a day as well as 25gms of fibre per day which is the European Food Safety Authority recommended allowance. Putting that into practice can be difficult for people but we should aim for it as much as possible. But they all help to reduce the risk of developing lifestyle diseases. Ideally I want to have more seasonal vegetables in the plan which might get very repetitive and boring but I’m very mindful of using them rather vegetables that are flown in from elsewhere in the world. For example why not use rapeseed oil instead of olive oil? Rapeseed oil comes from Ireland, olive oil doesn’t, so that is an easy switch option right there.

The vegetarian option

This year, for the first time, we have a stand-alone vegetarian food plan. It’s a response to what we were seeing right across the planet with people more attuned to climate change and switching to a vegetarian diet. And apart from the vegetarian plan, the standard plan has an extra plant-based meal in the schedule. So there is a little less reliance on red meat. But the key message is that you don’t have to give up meat. Choose local produce, like local beef, which has a lower carbon footprint. It is complicated though because Irish people have such strong connections to agriculture and many of us are not that far removed from a farm. That’s why I believe it’s important to understand that it’s not about not eating meat but thinking about where our food comes from and as much as we can, try to eat local.

Portion control

People can get used to large volumes of food that is high in fat. So the trick is to get more fruit and vegetables into our food as well as fibre which will help with that feeling full factor. The stomach doesn’t count calories, it counts volume and so getting food into our stomachs creates that full feeling. Our stomach is also muscle so if we are packing a lot of food into it, it will also expand. So when you start eating a little less you will feel a bit hungry but if you persevere the stomach will adjust to the smaller amounts. The problem is some people are eating past their full food signal for so long that they don’t even know what full feels like. People should feel a little hungry coming up to meals.

Eating regularly is important so that you are not letting yourself get too hungry. Include carbohydrates that are high in fibre like the potato, wholemeal bread and porridge. Combine that with a protein component like meat, fish, eggs or tofu. That combination of high fibre, carbohydrate and protein will fill you. Make sure that you are drinking enough water and staying hydrated which is a big component of that full feeling.

Good food habits

Of course it’s not only about the food you eat, it’s also about your habits and behaviours around food. Do we do a grocery shop each week? Do we plan our meals? Those are key factors and should not be underestimated. Eating regularly is important because it helps us eat less at big meals and to feel satisfied with our meals. My big message is that you don’t have to go on a diet to lose weight. The thing is to be more attuned to our internal cues: if you are hungry you respond to that but similarly when you are feeling full you should stop eating. So snacks are good if you are feeling hungry at that moment. If you have your three meals and two snacks each day then you are unlikely to be hungry at night time. So, get more connected with your internal cues and eat accordingly.

Wake up with breakfast

I believe that eating something within an hour of getting up is important. When people eat earlier in the day they are less likely to be hungry later on. When people don’t eat breakfast they are likely to want something at around ten o’clock, and could be tempted by a scone because they didn’t have breakfast. So that first meal could be just a healthy snack.

Evening eating

A small snack in the evening is not the end of the world. Generally it takes about two hours to digest a small snack so that’s where that rule about two hours before bed-time applies. Most people are hungry in the evening. They are bored or lonely or fed-up and then they eat to combat those feelings.

Energy bars and drinks

Safefood did a report on energy bars recently which was quite informative. For me they are simply a processed food. When it comes to eating I want people to avoid processed and eat real food. Many of them have the same calories as a chocolate bar. Yes they have a different composition and have a little more protein but relying on them is not a good nutritional plan. When I work with athletes we do occasionally use energy bars to fill that energy gap when they are burning up calories but most people don’t burn up that energy. It’s the same with caffeinated drinks and energy drinks, and it might be that people who don’t eat or sleep properly rely on these products to give them a boost. This is all about going back to basics and those foods and drinks that are not sugar-loaded or caffeinated.

A good night’s sleep

A lot of research into sleep hygiene emphasises how important it is to be technology-free for maybe an hour before going to bed. One thing is not to keep your mobile phone in your room. We do know that the blue light emitted from phones reduces our melatonin and that is the hormone that helps us get into a deep sleep. So technology before bedtime needs to be limited and restricted, which is probably a bigger problem for younger people who are more active on social media. And if we get less than seven hours sleep our hormones change and that can drive us to eat high fat and high sugar foods. So sleep is crucial for anyone interested in maintaining a healthy weight.

Misinformation about nutrition

There are days I don’t want to be a dietitian any more. The voice of the non-qualified is getting so much attention and it really frustrates me because I can see people getting exploited, by incorrect information about food and diet. There should be more regulation, especially with cancer claims and what can be said on such matters. There are days I get so frustrated I just want to change career but I believe it’s really important to keep giving out the message that you don’t have to buy certain foods or products to be well. Just try to focus on real food.

As a professional dietitian we are targeted for not giving out the same message that certain businesses interests are putting out there. But our information is evidencebased and rigorously researched. If you put your head above the parapet you are at risk but if you don’t continue to give evidence-based information, other influences will take over. So it’s really important that registered professionals are the ones giving the health and nutrition information. I worked with the Tipperary hurlers for ten years and my message to them was always: don’t accept as gospel, information from the person who is selling you the product.