Americans spend over $30 billion each year on weight control products, programs, gym memberships and gizmos. And yet, 25 percent of Americans are overweight, with about half the women on weight-loss diets. The industries that make Americans fat, slim them down, and then fatten them up again – from the supersized fast-food corporations to the “systems” that are really just packaged food purveyors – get rich by advising people to eat irresponsibly. They’re abetted by government agencies like the FDA and the USDA, which still promote their meat and carbohydrate heavy food pyramid while chiding everyone for getting so fat.
The diet industry rakes in the enormous profits that it does for one simple, yet ingenious, reason – the diets they promote don’t work. Whether it’s meal replacement shakes, prepackaged microwave meals, appetite suppressing pills or the elimination of one major nutrient category (usually fat or carbohydrates), they all have one thing in common. That is, that while they’re designed to take off weight in the short term, they aren’t a lifestyle that you can adapt for the rest of your life. Sooner or later (usually as soon as about half the weight you wanted to lose has melted away) you go back to eating real food instead of shakes, pills, bars or boxed dinners, and the weight all comes back. Then you pronounce that diet a failure and jump on a different one!
T
his merry-go-round makes the diet industry very happy, and they’re thrilled when a new fad comes along that they can exploit. When it was diet shakes, a hundred companies made diet shakes. When the boxed-meal diets became popular, five more “programs” opened franchises.
The same company that was making low-fat meal replacement bars five years ago also turned out low-carb bars when the Atkins diet was all the rage – and switched back to making low-fat bars as soon as the fad started to fade. If the next big fad turns out to be an all-fish diet, you can bet those same companies will be manufacturing Cod Munchies and Halibut Delight Cookies.The secret to successful weight control – the secret that the diet industry doesn’t want you to figure out – is eating a moderate amount of a variety of nutrient-rich foods. Because if you’re eating whole foods, there’s nothing for them to sell you! And the ideal weight control diet is a vegetarian diet. Vegetarians are, overall, thinner than meat-eaters, despite eating everything that the diet programs forbid.
Rethinking the concept of dieting
Going by conventional wisdom, it doesn’t make sense that vegetarians can be slender when they eat potatoes, pasta, bread, beans and rice. Which is the first clue that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Popular fad diets insist that starchy foods will pack on the pounds, and insist that you limit carbohydrates to a small green salad and maybe one piece of fruit each day. But vegetarianism is a naturally slenderizing diet, and one that makes sense when you understand just how it fuels the body.
If you want to lose weight permanently and stay off fad diets forever, the first step is to jettison everything that the diet gurus have told you. Starvation diets – and really, that what all fad diets are – don’t keep weight off in the long term.
A realistic diet is one that contains whole, healthful foods and doesn’t involve buying special products and supplements. You don’t need to count calories or “points” or talk to a diet counselor every week. You just need to change the way you eat, replacing bad old habits with good new ones.
Face it – if you’re fat, it’s because of the way you eat. And the only way to change that is to revamp your diet and have some patience. It took a long time to gain all that weight, and it’s going to take a long time to get it off. If you want to lose weight and keep it off for the rest of your life, you have to find a way of eating that you can live with even after you’re at your ideal weight. There are no quick fixes – not if you want permanent results.
It’s a lifestyle, not a diet
Throughout this book, we’ve referred to the vegetarian diet, with “diet” being used in its original context – diet being your overall system of nourishing yourself. As a vegetarian, you’re changing your diet but you’re not on a diet, a significant difference. But they both come down to one thing – calories. A healthy diet, however, doesn’t involve counting calories and withholding food so the body starves. No, a healthy diet allows the body ample calories so that it every one of its functions hums along like a well-oiled machine, burning fuel as it goes along. Calories are units of energy, like the gallons of gas you use to fuel your car. You consume calories when you eat, and your body burns the energy to fuel all the things that your body needs to do. Whether you’re running around the block or sitting on the couch watching television, your body is burning energy to keep your heart pumping, your lungs and kidneys functioning, your brain working and your muscles contracting.
The pace at which your body burns calories when at rest is called “basal metabolism.” That’s when you burn most of your calories, actually – when you’re sleeping or just sitting around. You burn them at a faster rate when you’re exercising and digesting food, but you basal metabolism determines how many calories you need to function, with the excess being stored as fat.
As you’re no doubt aware, some people have faster metabolisms, while others have sluggish metabolisms. Men usually have higher metabolisms than women,—they burn more calories than women because they have more muscle mass. People who exercise regularly can raise their metabolism, so they burn more calories even when they’re at rest.
Whatever the speed of the metabolism, though, it’s fuel is calories. Foods that have a lot of calories are loaded with fuel from protein, carbohydrates and fat. If you eat the same amount of calories that you need to fuel your body, you can maintain your ideal weight. Take in more calories than you burn, and you store the excess calories as fat. Weight loss occurs when you consume less calories than your body needs to burn for energy. Needing fuel, the body turns to the stored fat, breaking it down into usable energy. You can make this happen on purpose by either exercising – burning a lot of calories – or eating less.
As you’ll remember from previous chapters, our bodies are amazing evolutionary machines, designed to survive when there’s no food available. When you drastically cut back on the calories you eat, your body thinks that you’re in danger of starving and slows down your metabolism so that you aren’t burning as much energy. This is why most people on calorie-restrictive diets lose quickly at first and then slow down to a crawl – or plateau, at which point they aren’t losing at all even when they’re hardly eating anything at all.
Many people believe that exercise is the answer to boosting metabolism, but it’s only part of the equation. If you’re eating a very low calorie diet and exercising a lot, your body is still going to believe that it’s starving so the weight loss will be very, very slow.
That’s not to say that exercise isn’t important – maintaining strong muscles helps you stay active and keeps you burning fat, no matter how slowly. But to keep your metabolism functioning well so that your body doesn’t go into starvation mode you still need to eat a moderate amount of calories, and finding the right balance can be frustrating to dieters to want to see big results quickly.
Not all calories are alike
Despite all the advances in nutritional science, most people still believe that losing weight is merely a matter of eating less food. Even a lot of doctors believe it and they, of all people, ought to know better! But in truth, many overweight people eat less than thin people – they just eat the wrong things.
Of the three main categories of nutrients – protein, carbohydrates and fat – it’s the fat that contains the most calories. Protein and carbohydrate contains four calories per gram; a gram of fat, on the other hand, contains nine calories. So while fat is an important nutrient for many reasons, keeping your hormones regulated, your skin and hair healthy, and giving you a feeling of satiety when you eat, it also provides over twice as many calories as protein and carbs. And what foods are the highest in fat? Animal foods.
Plant foods, though, are rich in complex carbohydrates, so you can eat more food while ingesting less calories, making you feel fuller and more satisfied. Naturally, you can gain weight while eating carbohydrate-rich foods – remember that excess calories, no matter what their source, are stored as body fat. But studies have shown that, while people eating low-fat, high-carb diets eat more than people on higher fat diets, they’re eating less calories! In a study at Cornell University, people who ate a diet restricting their fat intake to 20 to 25 percent of their calories ate more food than the subjects eating a diet of 35 to 40 percent fat, but never ate as many calories as the high-fat group.
But there’s more to the story than just calories. While doctors and nutritionalists have always advised that dieting is strictly a lower-your-calories endeavor, current research is revealing that it’s far more complicate than that. The way the body uses the calories from protein, carbs and fat varies depending on the calories’ source. The human body is designed to store energy from fat and proteins while it burns carbs for immediate energy. We’re just not meant to store carbohydrates – for every 100 calories that you eat, 23 of them are burned just converting the carbs to usable energy! The fat we eat is a double-whammy – not only are there more calories per gram of fat, only three of every 100 calories are burned during conversion, meaning that it’s later to burn as energy and stored as excess body fat more easily.
The nature of carbohydrates, that they’re the first type of energy that our body turn to, makes it actually difficult to store carbs as fat. In a 1991 clinical study, only 2 percent of the calories eaten by subjects were converted into fat. So while calories are important, it’s the fat calories that are best cut back on.
Now, it’s also possible to lose weight on a high protein, low fat diet, but there are reasons why it’s a bad idea to do so. For one thing, it isn’t easy – the whole foods highest in protein are animal foods, so they’re also high is fat. Perhaps you’ve tried one of these diets in the past and discovered that eating scrambled egg whites, skinless chicken breasts and dry, broiled fish gets very boring, very quickly. But another reason to steer clear of high protein diets is the difficulty, discussed in an earlier chapter, that you body has processing protein. Too much protein overtaxes your kidneys, and it builds calcium deposits in your bones and urinary tract. So the best overall weight-loss plan is one that gives you energy from healthy, complex carbohydrates from plant sources.
Natural, plant-based weight control
By switching to vegetarianism, you’ve probably already noticed a boost in your health, and may have already lots a few pounds without even trying. The standard vegetarian diet is naturally high in complex carbohydrates and lower in fat – a vegan diet, with all the nutrients coming from plant foods, is the lowest in fat of all.
But it’s still possible to eat too much fat. Nuts, seeds, avocados and olives are all high in fat, and soy – including tofu, that staple of the vegetarian diet – are about half fat. And as we’ve already mentioned, just being vegetarian doesn’t guarantee that you’re eating a healthy diet if you’re constantly munching on fries, chips and cookies. So while you’ve got a good head-start on weight control by becoming vegetarian, you still need to give your diet some thought.
We’ll discuss meal planning – and give you some great recipes! – in the next two chapters, but for now, let’s take a look at the basics of your vegetarian choices with an eye towards weight control:
Vegetables are, of course, the mainstay of your daily diet. Use fresh whenever possible, frozen if you have to, and stay away from canned vegetables (canned products usually contain a lot of sodium and, well, they just don’t taste very good). Steam them and squeeze some lemon juice on them, or eat with non-fat dressing. If you insist on sauteeing them in fat, use olive oil.
Fruit can be fresh, frozen or, if necessary, canned (beware of sugary syrups, though). Fruit juice has more calories than whole fruit, and you’re missing out on the fiber, so eat whole fruit whenever possible.
Grains should be processed as little as possible – go with whole grain products for better texture, more fiber and more nutrients. For breakfast, hot cereals are usually higher in fiber and lower in fat than cold cereals, and keep an eye on how much fat is in favorites like muffins, pancakes, snack crackers and biscuits.
Legumes are excellent sources of high protein, low fat nutrition. Beans are loaded with nutrition, although if you use canned beans watch out for added salt. Soy products like veggie burgers and tofu hot dogs are healthier options than their meat-based counterparts, but they can still add a hefty amount of fat to your diet if your rely on them too much. Read labels, and make processed foods a small part of your diet.
Nuts and seeds are good sources of important nutrients, but contain up to 70 percent fat. Limit the amount of these that you eat while trying to lose weight to one serving each day. You can increase the amount when you’re at the point of maintaining your weight – but still watch those portions!
Dairy products, remember, are derived from milk – a substance high in both fat and sugar so that it’ll fatten up baby cows. If you’re ovo lacto, drink 1 percent or skim milk. If you use soy milk, keep in mind that it has about the same amount of fat as cow’s milk, and usually has sugar added to it. Rice milk is tasty, and lower in calories than soy milk – although non-fat soy milk is available. Cheese, even soy cheese, is very high in fat and should only be used in very small amounts when trying to lose weight.
Fats must be used sparingly, if at all, when cooking on a weight loss diet. Whenever possible, use olive oil, but eliminate them by steaming, broiling or baking foods instead of frying or sauteeing. If you’re eating a well-balanced diet, you’re getting all the fat you need to keep your body healthy, so don’t add more!
Skinny vegetarianism
Carbohydrates have gotten a bad rap in recent years, but the biggest sin isn’t how many carbs we eat – it’s the manner in which we eat them. We dunk perfectly good potatoes in hot oil, or soak them in butter, or cover them with cream sauce. We spread an inch of butter on our whole wheat rolls, and cover our broccoli with cheese sauce. No wonder we’re fat!
Transitioning to a plant-based diet is about thoughtful, healthful eating. That holds true for the way you prepare the food that you eat, too. Many people think they don’t like vegetables when, in fact, they rarely taste the vegetables they eat because they’re drowning in a puddle of butter sauce. Give your food the same respect that you give your body, and enjoy it without disguising it under a high-fat coating.
Choose healthy substitutions when snacking. Instead of reaching for greasy potato chips or an order of fries, grab a handful of fat-free pretzels or popcorn. Dip celery and carrots into hummus, salsa or black bean dip instead of guacamole.
Lower the fat in your baked goods. Almost any cookie, cake or muffin recipe can be made with less fat, and there are recipes for low-fat baked goods using applesauce, tofu or mashed bananas as a fat substitute. Whole wheat pastry flour has less glutin than all-purpose flour, and will make a more tender product when cutting down on fat.
Learn to love the spud. As the basis for a meal, it’s hard to beat a baked potato – with less than a gram of fat, just 95 calories and loaded with vitamins, it’s an almost perfect natural food. But once you’ve piled on butter, sour cream and cheese, it’s a nutritional nightmare. But there are lots of things you can use to top your potato. Vegetarian chili, vegetable curry, baked beans and steamed vegetables are all great potato toppers, low in fat and loaded with vitamins and minerals.
Add flavor, not fat. Think about the flavors in the foods you’re cooking and consider ways to enhance them without added fat. Saute vegetables in dry wine, use fresh herbs and garlic, and freshen up vegetables with lemon juice.
Avoid the dairy trap. Lacto ovo vegetarians often make the mistake of leaning too hard on eggs, cheese, milk, yogurt and other dairy products when they first start out, and these foods are all rich in fat. Go easy on the cheese and drink skim milk, and limit eggs to just two or three meals per week.
Snacks – the bad and the good
Not everything that’s vegetarian is low in fat. Eat the following in moderation when trying to lose weight:
Almond butter
Avocados
Coconut
Falafel
French fries
Hummus
Olives
Packaged vegetarian meals
Peanut butter
Potato chips
Tahini
There are, however, lots of snacks that for into your vegetarian eating plan and are great for weight loss diets, too. When you want something between meals, reach for one of these:
Air-popped popcorn
Bagels
Bean soup
Fresh fruit
Fresh vegetables
High-fiber cereal
Nonfat crackers
Pita bread or chips
Potatoes – baked, broiled or grilled
Pretzels
Rice cakes
Whole grain rolls and muffins
Healthy doesn’t always mean skinny
Your body type is dictated by your genes – some people are naturally small and slender, others are destined to be thicker of build. If you’re a woman, this may mean that you’re a little heavier in the thighs or that your general build is athletic, even if you’d prefer to be lithe. The truth is, there’s little you can do about that. And you may have a genetic tendency to be overweight, passed on from your parents and grandparents.
Eating well and exercising will get you into better shape no matter what your body type, but you may never be truly thin without starving yourself. If you’re fixated on a specific number on the scale but you can’t reach it no matter how much you work out and how little you eat, it may be time to accept that you’re where you’re supposed to be.
That’s not to say that, if you have either a moderate amount to lose or a lot, you should give up and accept your overweight state. If you come from a family of overweight people, genetics is only a small part of the picture – do you have the same eating habits as your parents? Were they sedentary, spending all their free time on the couch, eating fatty snack foods?
By developing healthy eating habits now, and exercising, you can break the cycle and become the best you that you can be. There are no guarantees where weight loss is concerned – but a low-fat vegetarian diet can get you to where you’ll be healthier and happier, whatever your weight.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment