Causes of Obesity in the US
There have been many people espousing different ideas around the obesity problem within the US. One I’ve recently come across is Dr. V, otherwise known as Duc C Vuong. He has a YouTube channel and attempts to impart the reason for obesity. I have other thoughts. Let’s explore.
Medical Doctor Credentials
One of the problems I have with MDs espousing their opinions, particularly on platforms like YouTube is that far too many viewers believe this advice wholeheartedly simply because this person has a degree. They don’t rationally think for themselves and use their own critical thinking skills to understand which parts of his extolling are valid and which parts are fallacy. Opinions are always opinions no matter from whom they originate.
When it comes to obesity, there are many thought rationales. One just needs to peruse the virtual book shelves at Amazon to see how many weight loss books there are, each with differing opinions on the topic. Let me dissect his special brand of thought and then talk about what I believe to be the actual reason for obesity.
In all of this, let’s keep in mind one tenet: KISS or Keep It Simple Stupid. It’s a phrase that means don’t go looking for complex answers when there’s a much simpler explanation staring you in the face.
Dr. V’s explanations are too long winded, complex and give too much credit to psychological pressures. Psychological pressures do play a part in the role of obesity, but not so substantially that you can’t get around it.
Psychology and Weight Loss
Dr. V explains that “Circle of Influence” is a big factor in obesity. What does he mean by “Circle of Influence”. These friendships are all psychological. The circle encompasses whom you choose to befriend and hang around with socially. These people can influence your social interactions and, more specifically, your eating behaviors.
This is true, but to a point. Unfortunately, Dr. V tends to give way too much credit to this aspect of peer pressure than is due. You don’t just bumble your way through life being towed along by your friends. Everyone wants to be known as a unique individual with individual likes and tastes. Yes, we are influenced by what our friends like, dislike and sometimes eat. However, we do also have our own tastes, including taste in food. Just because a friend likes sushi doesn’t mean I must also like it.
If peer pressure were the complete answer to obesity, then cutting off your friends should cause weight loss. Does it? No. Your eating habits are your own and you are responsible for how you eat. You may be influenced in some small way by what your friends are eating or the peer pressure they apply to you, but even when you are alone you’re still going to eat at your favorite restaurants in the same quantities. Is that psychological pressure? No, that’s personal habit.
In other words, blaming your obesity on your “circle of influence” is like blaming your friends for all of your problems. You can’t do this. Everyone must take responsibility for their own actions, including what they put in their mouths. No one forces you to shove food in your mouth. You do that all on your own. You can make smart choices or you can make not-so-smart choices.
Restaurant Influence on Obesity
With that said, there is one level of influence that does matter and is much larger than “circle of influence”… and it definitely matters a great deal. This influence is a restaurant menu. When you sit down to eat at a restaurant, we tend to assume the plates are mostly “set in stone”. What I mean by that is that the entrée comes to you as-is. A big part of this issue is that you have to buy the entrée sight-unseen. This means that you won’t really know how much food that plate holds is until the plate arrives from the kitchen.
This also means that it’s difficult to know how much food you will be consuming until you see the plate. Additionally, the pressure to send perfectly good plates of food back to the kitchen is also almost never considered. Most people won’t do this because they realize it will probably be thrown away and no one wants to see that happen to perfectly good food. Anyway, who would send a plate back to the kitchen because the portion size is “too big”? No one.
This is a ultimately a psychological pressure that goes back to our parents. Parents chide us for not eating all of the food on our plates. We continue to live with this stigma into adulthood. It stays with us every time we sit down to eat a meal. Restaurants prey on that. They give us excessively large plates of food knowing that patrons will typically eat every bite. This leads to obesity.
On the flip side, though, restaurants also do this because of cost to enjoyment ratio. Restaurants want to get maximum bank out of every plate served. Offering up larger portion sizes equates to a happier customer and larger per plate fees. Restaurants have no desire to decrease portion sizes to be inline with the recommended daily intake. Instead, they wish to line their banks with lots of greenbacks. To do that, they have to provide a good “bang for the buck”, so to speak. That’s exactly what restaurants do, but at the cost of serving way too much food and contributing to obesity.
This means that restaurant goers need to wise up to this ploy. When you eat at a restaurant, it’s important to understand that the restaurant is planning to serve you way too much food. Way, way too much food. This is something everyone needs to understand. It doesn’t matter if it’s McDonald’s, Chili’s or Olive Garden. All restaurants do it (except one type which I’ll talk about in a moment). McDonald’s (and other fast food) does it through its “meal deals”. Chili’s and Olive Garden play this game through oversized sized plates and sometimes all-you-can-eat breadsticks or salad.
In recent years, some states have forced restaurants to fork over the estimated calorie content of its meals, sides and drinks. This has helped some, but some restaurants have realized the need to pull this information off of the main menu and instead offer a separate calorie menu that you must ask to see. They don’t leave this calorie version on the table. Though some restaurants do have it on the menu (particularly restaurants that have a “health conscious” bent and some fast food places), many choose not to do this and instead begrudgingly offer up a separate menu… a menu that, unfortunately, can be exceedingly difficult to read with extremely small text. Worse, in these separate menu restaurants, if you ask for one, you may be greeted with “Sorry, I can’t find one”… leaving you high and dry to know how much food you’re actually eating.
Five Star Restaurants
The exception to the above for portion sizes can be five star rated restaurants. Instead of serving you excessive sized meals, these expensive 5-star rated restaurant chefs tend to serve significantly smaller portion sizes. This sizing occurs for a number reasons. The first reason is cost. Most five star restaurants purchase their foods fresh almost every day. The second reason for the smaller portion is to keep the quality high. Higher quality comes from trimming and tossing away undesirable portions leaving only the “prettiest” plate. What you consume at a five star restaurant is almost assuredly the highest quality ingredients possible (and the best looking). These ingredients are usually hand selected by the chef. Though, sometimes they are delivered from higher quality grocers. The third reason is variety and rarity. You can only find the more exotic type meats on these 5-star menu, such as pheasant, quail and even Japanese Wagyu.
With all of that said above and when you order a meal at a five star restaurant, you’ll receive a smaller portion size more which is appropriate with the calorie levels you might find on the government’s daily intake requirements. This isn’t always true, however. Many five star restaurants utilize heavy cream, wine and other high calorie, high fat ingredients to flavor the meal. This can add hidden calories. As for presentation, you can usually find your five star meal stacked as layers in the center of an excessively large plate or bowl. Potatoes on bottom, then veggies and then protein on top with some kind of fresh garnish. It’s neatly stacked on the plate to make it presentable and pretty. Some chefs plate their meals with other layouts around the plate, but stacking is a common chef presentation. It looks good and it keeps the rest of the plate neat and tidy.
That’s not to say that all five star restaurant portions are small, but many are. The unfortunate problem with these restaurants is that you’re likely to pay at least $100 per plate or more for your meal. While in some cases these expensive meals may offer a more healthy food choice, it is way too pricey to eat every day for most people. It’s also not a feasible meal choice option, especially considering most of the best restaurants sport long wait lists. Even at these restaurnts, you must be careful because hidden calories can still impart more calories than you might expect.
Bars and Drinks
Here’s a second area where there is zero nutritional oversight by the government. Alcoholic beverage creators are not under ANY obligation to add nutrition labeling. In this day and age where the “Nutrition Facts” label is extremely important in understanding what we are eating, it is incredibly disheartening to find that wine, beer and spirit manufacturers STILL aren’t required to place a “Nutrition Facts” panel onto their products.
How is it that the alcohol industry has remained so unregulated for nutrition when it is one of the biggest sources of unlabeled calories? Let’s explore to better understand these unlabeled calories.
Red Wine
A standard bottle of Red Wine contains 750ml or a little over 25oz. You can get five standard glasses of wine from a 750ml bottle of wine. We’re talking a standard sized pour here, which is approximately 5 ounces. A 5 ounce glass of red wine has between 120 and 130 calories per glass. If you consume 2 glasses, you’ve consumed 240-260 extra calories on top of anything else you’ve consumed.
White Wine
White wines fare a little better at around 115 calories per 5 ounces.
Beer
A 12 ounce beer can contains 154 calories. A pint glass of draft ale (the standard size served in bars) is 16oz (473ml) and contains 196 calories. Drinking two, three or four of these adds up fast.
Liquor
A shot of alcohol, about 1.5oz (44ml), ranges between 96 and 115 calories depending on the specific hard spirit. This category doesn’t include specialty liqueurs like Bailey’s Irish Creme, any flavor of Schnapps, Kalúha, Midori or any other sweetened alcoholic liqueurs. That’s next.
Liqueur
A shot of Bailey’s Irish Creme (44ml) contains around 147 calories approaching the number of calories in a 12oz (355ml) can of beer. A shot of Midori, however, contains only 80 calories (less than a shot of many liquors). The range for liqueur is somewhere between 80 and well over 147 calories per shot! These sweet alcoholic beverages can really land on the waistline fast.
Whiskey (or Whisky depending on your part of the world)
One shot of whiskey (86 proof) contains around 105 calories. From livestrong.com:
If your whiskey or vodka is 40 percent alcohol, or labeled as 80 proof, you’ll get less than 100 calories from the 14 grams of alcohol in a 1.5-ounce shot. Having the same amount of 45 percent whiskey or vodka, which is known as 90 proof, will give you 110 calories from the nearly 16 grams of alcohol. A 50 percent whiskey or vodka liquor, or 100 proof, has closer to 125 calories from nearly 18 grams of alcohol, in that same 1.5-ounce shot.
As the proof increases, so too do the calories. If you’re unsure of the proof of what you’re drinking at a bar, ask the bartender to allow you read the bottle or ask them for the proof.
Alcohol’s Double Whammy
Unfortunately, alcoholic beverages are also a double-whammy food. If you consume fat along side your wine, that fat (and some of the alcohol) will be taken up much easier (and faster) into adipose tissue due to the presence of the alcohol itself. From vice.com:
First, less than five percent of the alcohol you drink is converted into fat. However, that doesn’t mean it has no effect on weight gain. Rather, alcohol reduces the amount of fat your body burns for energy. Just two drinks of vodka and diet lemonade has been shown to cut whole body lipid oxidation—a measure of how much fat your body is burning—by more than 70 percent.
This means that the consumption of alcohol while on a diet can not only lead to halting your fat loss progress, it can actually lead to a net gain in fat with regular binging. This goes with the consumption of any alcohol, not just wine.
Alcohol changes the metabolism due to the alcohol itself and how alcohol is metabolized within the body. You’ll want to carefully consider ingesting alcohol with your meals (or even in general) if you’re concerned about controlling your weight. Overindulgence with alcohol can halt weight loss and actually put on pounds.
Restaurants and Bars
These two institutions in every day life are primarily what’s leading to obesity within America. Eating out and heading to bars are definitely everyday conveniences. One nourishes us (sometimes too much) and the other lets us blot out our everyday pains with the warm and fuzzy of alcohol, making us happy (and loopy).
Both together are what’s leading America to obesity. It’s not brain surgery or rocket science to understand this American dilemma. No one wants to blame restaurants or bars for this, but that’s exactly what we must do. They are leading American’s down the primrose path to obesity.
Psychology of Obesity
Let’s swing back around to psychology and peer pressure. It’s easy to succumb to your friend’s pressures to knock back Jello shots or chug some beer. However, you can say, “No”. If these people are truly your friends, they’ll let it slide. If they won’t, then maybe it’s time to consider new friends.
You don’t have to listen to your friends. You don’t have to chug beer, do shots or do anything you don’t want to do. Eating at restaurants isn’t always necessary and even when you do you can still make smart choices. When at the drive-thru, you don’t need to buy meal deals. If you’re at Olive Garden, ask them not to bring bread or even their bottomless salad. When you order your meal, buy from a menu that lists calories. Choose portion sizes that make sense for what you need to eat to live… keeping firmly in mind the 2000-2200 calorie recommended daily intake.
Home Cooking
Better, create and eat your meals at home. Instead of having to navigate those not-so-great menu choices and attempt to request custom meals from restaurants, eat at home. You can then make choices that fit with your body’s needs. You don’t need to make meals the size of Olive Garden. You can half (or less) the portion size and make smaller meals. This saves on your home food costs and it also means you’re eating healthier, smaller meals.
On the flip side, if you’re consuming a whole chicken in one meal, that’s way too much food. A whole cooked chicken contains between 1190 and 1400 calories for an entire single chicken. If you add onto that bread, mac and cheese, green beans and mashed potatoes, you can easily exceed 2000 calories in a single meal! That doesn’t even take into account the calories in a desert or drinks.
That’s not to say that rotisserie chicken is an unhealthy food, but it IS when eaten to excess. The key to health and maintaining a healthy body weight is eating in moderation… or, more specifically, within the US Government’s daily intake guidelines of around 2000 calories per day.
Isn’t Chinese Food Healthier?
Unfortunately, no. Many Americanized Chinese foods are breaded and fried, making them even less healthy food choices than rotisserie chicken. Breading and frying adds unnecessary calories that you should avoid. However, it is fine to indulge occasionally with these kinds of foods as a treat. Just don’t make them your everyday staple meals.
With Chinese food cooked using mostly veggies and some protein, you’ll need to determine the health of this food for yourself. If it appears to be mostly veggies with limited fat and a reasonable serving of protein, it might be an okay choice. If you want to wok cook at home yourself, you can choose your own oils, veggies and proteins in whatever quantities you are comfortable.
However, even Chinese restaurants fall into the trap of overly large portion sizes when serving to the table. Many Chinese food places even have buffets. Let’s jump right into this one…
Buffets
Chinese restaurants aren’t the only places that choose to offer large food buffet bars. You can find these in many different styles of food. For your weight and your health, you’ll want to completely avoid buffet restaurants. Not only are they not a great deal, they will most definitely inflate your waistline and they can also make you sick.
Buffet restaurants encourage overeating in all of the wrong ways. For consumers to feel that they’ve gotten their money’s worth for a $22 per person fee, you’re going to have to eat what you feel is $22 worth of food. That’s the wrong motivation for eating. You eat to satisfy hunger, not to satisfy your wallet or your guilt for spending.
Buyers remorse is heavy at buffet restaurants. Avoid this guilt entirely. If you must eat out, eat at a restaurant that hands you a menu and makes your food fresh in a kitchen.
There are other more serious health reasons for avoiding buffets to which I discuss in this past Randocity article. Suffice it to say that during winter months, avoiding buffet restaurants is your smartest and healthiest choice. Far too many people touch the serving spoons used to dish up the foods. Unless you plan to wash your hands immediately after plating your food, you’re simply asking to contract the Flu or a Cold virus or even COVID-19.
Restaurant Cleanliness
Ignoring the sanitary issues with buffets mentioned above, it’s way too easy when eating out to contract seasonal viruses even by just sitting at a restaurant table and ordering from a menu. After all, many restaurants barely even clean tables between patrons. When they do wipe down a table, they use a towel that has likely not been sanitized between uses. Think about this for a moment. Worse, when they do choose to wipe down a table, it’s just enough to get the crumbs and sticky off of it. That cloth simply moves the viruses around that were already there (or on the towel). They rarely, if ever, wipe down the seating or other surfaces around the table. Menus fare even worse. Menus are almost never sanitized.
Worse, restaurants with bars have different cleaning routines when it comes to bar glasses. While restaurants do have commercial dishwashers in the kitchen, they take way too long to run a cycle. When bars become low on glassware, the bartenders use a three water bath wash on glasses (soapy water, bleach water, rinse water). The theory is that germs can’t live through this. However, this relies on proper ratios of soap to water and bleach to water. Many restaurants don’t adhere to proper ratios in their zeal to get glasses washed quickly.
This means that your glassware can be contaminated with colds or viruses from a previous use when washed by a bartender. Why is this a problem if you’re not ordering from a bar? Because restaurants which have a bar usually have waitstaff order all drinks from the bartender for speed. This means that even though you didn’t order anything from the bar, you are likely being served in glassware cleaned by the bartender rather than from glassware washed by the dishwasher in the kitchen. This is particularly true of a restaurant during peak hours. If you’ve ever gotten a glass with lipstick on it, this is why. Nasty, right?
While getting sick at a restaurant doesn’t necessarily contribute to obesity directly, it calls out why restaurants aren’t the healthiest places to eat… even above their overly large portion sizes.
Psychology Revisited
Choosing to make your own food at home is really the only choice to reduce obesity. Of course, you also have to make the smart choice. You need to also understand the US Government’s daily recommended guidelines. From the health.gov’s What it is and What it is not information about the Dietary Guidelines:
The main purpose of the Dietary Guidelines is to inform the development of Federal food, nutrition, and health policies and programs. The primary audiences are policymakers, as well as nutrition and health professionals, not the general public.
The difficulty with this “not the general public” statement is that while the USDA and other government institutions try to enforce these guidelines on businesses by setting up such mechanisms as the Nutrition Facts panel on most food products, it has failed to impress the value of these guidelines on actual American consumers. Policymakers don’t care if their constituents become obese. They’re not going to even make obesity a talking point. That leaves only nutrition and health professionals covered. These people are typically only consulted on an ‘as needed’ basis and usually for pay. That leaves the American people in a substantial vacuum for general nutrition advice. Indeed, without this information, there is no advice at all.
Yet, if you read the guidelines, they do offer solid, constructive advice, but they have chosen not to target the general public with this information? How insane is this? Because of this, restaurants, bars and even grocery providers can run amok providing little, if any actual food guidance. It is this policy that leads all other industries by the hand. Yet, this leading hand doesn’t actually lead. It just throws the information out there without anything or anyone on the other side listening.
You can’t teach people how to eat when this information isn’t targeted towards the correct audience.
Schools
This situation get worse before it gets better. Schools simply don’t teach children proper food and nutrition choices. Some schools have limited student access to poorer food choices such as candy bars, soda, chips and deserts. That’s more about preventing those food choices than explaining how these foods can be used in a proper diet. It’s easier to withhold the foods rather than explain proper food choices.
Worse, many public schools don’t even offer nutrition programs as part of the curriculum. Sure, they offer home economics, but these classes don’t impart nutrition. They impart the knowledge of how to operate a home, including cooking.
Schools, in fact, also play a large part in America’s obesity. This is partly because of the lack of curriculum, but also because of bad cafeteria food choices during lunch. School lunches can be some of the worst teachers of food choices. Instead of teaching children the proper way to consume food and teach a child the proper relationship with food, they teach children to eat their poorly conceived cafeteria food choices in 15 minutes or less, by feeding them poor quality nutrition. Pizza and Salisbury Steak aren’t great nutritional choices.
If schools aren’t there to teach a children a proper relationship with food, then who is? Clearly, the parents won’t do this at home because they naturally assume the school is doing this. Yet, schools don’t do this either. So, in effect, no one teaches children the value of nutrition and proper food choices.
Even when attending college, this situation doesn’t improve. I don’t know of many universities that require nutrition classes as part of a generalized degree program. Certain health degrees (kinesiology) may require such nutrition classes as part of that degree, but degrees outside of health programs almost never require this. This further contributes to obesity.
Compounded Information Creates Obesity
All of the above compounds to create a situation where people become obese without understanding why. We’re not taught by our parents or by any schools about how to handle our diets. We’re left to fend for ourselves. This firmly allows psychological peer pressure to take hold and influence bad food choices, but more than that, restaurants and bars are also to blame. People are led astray by restaurants because of their large portion sizes. Many of us begin to believe that the portion sizes served by restaurants are actually the correct food sizes. Instead, we are being taught improperly.
Still, we must all assume the consequences of our own decisions. Only we can feed ourselves. Only we can stop the insanity, as Susan Powter once said. While her delivery of this nutrition information was way over the top, her message was no less valid. We must choose to change ourselves. We must choose to change our relationship with food. We must choose to say, “No” when an 1800 calorie plate is dropped in front of us. We must read food packages with a critical eye. We must understand when manufacturers are trying to pull the wool over our eyes with their silly portion sizes on “Nutrition Facts”.
This doesn’t mean you can’t eat a candy bar, eat a piece of cake or drink a beer occasionally. But, these should be only occasional treats eaten no more often than once a week. Less, if possible.
Food Lifestyle Changes
More than this, we must learn how to change our relationship with food. We must eat to satisfy, not until stuffed. There is a difference. We’re not turkeys being prepped for Thanksgiving meals. We’re people who need nutrition to sustain our energy levels.
To that end, to lose the weight and gain a healthy waistline, this must start in the kitchen, not in the gym. You can’t lose weight by running on a treadmill if you eat more calories than you burn from running. Exercise improves the body’s circulatory system, but it cannot lose weight unless you have a calorie deficit in the body.
This only occurs when you have the proper intake of food. In fact, you can restrict your food intake and still lose weight without entering a gym. The body still burns calories by sitting in a chair typing on a computer. However, the body burns less calories than when running on a treadmill.
Here’s a chron.com article that illustrates how exercise can fail weight loss efforts:
In one hour a 160-pound person can burn 204 calories walking at 2 mph and 314 calories with walking at 3.5 mph. … A 160-pound person can burn 606 calories by running at a 5 mph pace or 861 calories by running at an 8 mph pace for one hour.
Let’s examine the above closely. While this information describes a 160 pound person example, this weight isn’t the norm in today’s world. Even thought this article chooses to ignore the obesity issue and further illustrates its point with an impossibly low weight for most people, this information is no less important to understand. An hour of jogging at 5 mph burns ONLY 606 calories. That’s approximately HALF of the amount of calories in Chili’s Molten Chocolate Cake desert which has a whopping 1160 calories. Even if you increase the exertion to an 8 mph pace, at the increased 861 calories burned, you still burn way less than Chili’s chocolate cake desert!
If you visit Chili’s and eat a meal including that cake desert, you’re still taking in more calories than you’ve burned in exercise. This example is exactly why you can’t rely on cardio exercises to make up for those extra calories you consumed at a restaurant. You would have to double or even triple the amount of gym effort to come close to burning enough calories to justify eating that desert. This is why so many people become disenchanted with gyms and why gym workouts don’t seem to work. It’s because people assume exercise burns way more calories per hour than it actually does. This is why the next section is more important… and it also shows you how you can skip this gym fallacy.
Weight Loss Begins in the Kitchen
Randocity has already written an extensive article on this very topic. I urge you to read this article if you’re interested in this one. What I will say here, in short, is that your relationship to food begins in the kitchen, not in the gym. You can’t lose weight at the gym unless you’ve gotten your food intake under control.
Even fitness centers themselves do not impress the importance of this when looking to sign up new members. They want to teach you the importance of supplements, pills and their equipment… basically, everything that they sell in their store. They want you to buy their junk, not to learn how to manage your weight. Even personal trainers are not versed in this. They will teach you how to do cardio, run you through quick condensed workouts and utilize other techniques, but they will not at all examine your food intake. In fact, none of them really want to talk about this when at the gym. You are firmly left to your own food devices.
Not once when I had a personal trainer did they ask me to supply them with what I was eating regularly. It’s more about making you buy new supplements and gear, but they offer nothing to ensure you’re meeting your weight goals through proper food choices.
The point here is that you can’t rely on fitness businesses that rely on taking your money. You must, instead, rely on yourself and your own accumulated knowledge. You must be curious to learn how the body works, how it burns food and how it gains weight. Once you understand these body functions can you make the proper association with food, understand food choices and buy and consume the proper amounts of food to lose weight and/or maintain your current weight.
Until you make the choice to invest time into understanding your health, you can’t make this choice. No one is going to do this for you. No, not even the government (see above). The government seeks to regulate business and income, not make sure its citizens are healthy. That’s crystal clear. You must help you to succeed. You must choose not to put that fried chicken in your mouth. You must choose to eat foods in the proper amounts. What you choose to eat daily is really up to you as long as you keep the caloric intake at the proper level. You don’t want to eat 2000 calories of nothing but Oreo cookies. This is where you need to be more smart about consuming foods in moderation.
Bariatric Surgery
No, you don’t need a lap band. You don’t need to have your intestines shortened. You don’t need your stomach stapled. You can lose weight by eating properly. The only thing that bariatric surgery does is FORCE you to eat less. The entire point to these procedures is to force you to reduce the amounts of food to be consumed and processed at a single meal. This is exactly the same as eating less. You don’t need a procedure to force you to eat less. You can do this on your own.
You just need to make up your mind towards this goal. In fact, making the choice without surgery means you can maintain it. Surgery means that you will eventually slip back to your old ways. These surgical techniques are temporary until you stretch out the stomach or intestines and which allows you to go back to eating large quantities again. Your body will work around the procedure eventually making it impossible to remain being forced to eat less forever.
If you make the concerted choice to stop eating as much and begin making healthier food choices on your own, you can keep the weight off on a permanent basis. Surgery is a temporary fix unless you also make the choice to also eat less even when that surgery’s temporary nature wears off (and it will). Many people don’t understand the temporary aspect of bariatric surgery.
Overall
In life, we have choices. That’s really all we have in life. The ability to make choices for ourselves. That’s the freedom we own. We can buy and wear the clothes we want. We can eat the foods we want. We can drive the car we like. These are some of the choices that we get in life.
Food choices only seem complicated because everyone makes it appear hard. It’s not hard at all once you have the goal number in your head. That goal number is 2000-2200 calories. Stick to that number and you can maintain your weight. Below this number and you can lose weight. It’s actually one of the simplest things to understand about the body.
Sure, you can blame your friends, you can blame restaurants and you can even blame the government for your weight. And yes, they do play a part in it. However, it is you and your food choices that matter. You can choose to lose the weight. You can choose to do the right thing for your body. It all starts in the kitchen… not in the gym. The gym makes you the body more fit, the kitchen helps you lose weight.
COVID-19 and Stay-At-Home
Now that we’re all stuck at home eating food we must make ourselves, this is the perfect opportunity to jump into making smart choices for yourself (and maybe even your family). It’s time to rethink your food choices and food lifestyle. If anything, this time teaches us that restaurant food isn’t truly necessary. We can eat at home from foods we make ourselves and we can consume the proper amount of food that can help us lose excess weight.
Now it’s up to you!
Good Luck!
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Weight Loss begins in the Kitchen
Many people are under the mistaken impression that you need a gym membership to lose weight. While it’s great that gyms may motivate you to improve your health, it may not help you lose weight. This article = ~19 minute read. Grab a coffee and let’s explore.
Preface
Before I begin this article, I just want to state that I’m not a fitness, medical or diet professional. I have experience with this subject due to my own reading and research on this topic. I’ve also had personal life experiences with weight loss and weight gain several times throughout my life. I’ve definitely come to find what it takes to manage weight properly (although, not always perfectly… we’re human, after all). This article is meant to be informative. It is not intended as professional advice in any form. If you need professional advice for your specific body situation, you should seek the help and advice of a medical or dietary professional who can properly assess your personal situation and weight loss goals.
The Kitchen Part I
Many people mistakenly believe that you need to run, or cycle or lift weights to lose weight. You don’t. Weight loss is not about how much weight you lift or how many miles you’ve cycled, it’s about a healthy relationship with food based on your current energy requirements. That starts in the kitchen.
The body wants to lose weight. It’s the way it was designed. Food replenishes (and gains) that weight if eaten to ‘excess’. The difficulty in knowing how much is considered ‘excess’. This is the key to successful weight loss. Exercise is for fitness. Food is for weight management. The kitchen is where the food is, not the gym.
Resting Metabolism
Most people are only active for short periods of time throughout the day. For example, that might be an hour at the gym or 30 minutes on the treadmill or bike… and so on. The rest of the 23.5 hours of the day, you might be sitting at a desk, sleeping or possibly walking only occasionally. Because the majority of that 24 hours is in a resting metabolic state, you need to eat to cover the resting metabolic requirements, not the small amount of active time requirements.
A good rule of thumb is the 2000 calorie a day diet as “recommended”. However, even this diet may provide more calories than your resting metabolism needs.
If you need to assess your resting metabolic rate (RMR), you should enlist a local diet professional to help you pin it down. There are tests where you sit and breathe for about 20 minutes. During that 20 minutes, the test assesses your oxygen levels and how many calories you burn. That can be extrapolated to an hour, then 24 hours. This gives you a very good baseline on exactly how many calories you need to eat to cover your daily requirements. If you add in exercise for 30 minutes, you can modify the calories of your RMR.
As an example of an RMR, I had mine tested at 24 Hour Fitness as part of a membership. My RMR came back at 1700 calories per day… 300 under the suggested 2000 calories per day. This means that were I to follow the 2000 calorie per day suggestion, I might continue to gain weight. This meant adjusting my diet to eat less than 1700 per day to create a calorie deficit (on days when I didn’t work out). I might be able to adjust my caloric intake upwards a little 100-200 calories if I spent time in the gym.
To put that in perspective, that would be adding an extra piece of bread or two, a piece of fruit or two or a small cookie or two. You can see that’s not a lot of extra food. Even then, I would want to eat these with a meal, not before or after the meal or as a snack.
The Exercise Con
Too many people mistakenly assume that, “If I add some ‘cardio’ to my day, I can eat what I want”. This is not true. In fact, you should continue eating normally even if you do add some measure of exercise into your day… particularly if you want to lose weight. Adding more food in an attempt to compensate for that small amount of exercise is likely to put on more pounds than take them off.
As a case in point, I once had a boss who biked into the office every day. From his house to the office was at least 20 minutes of cycling. In total, that would be 40 minutes of bicycling every weekday five days a week. In the 10 years that I worked for this company, he never dropped a single pound… and I never got the reason why until I realized that weight loss begins in the kitchen, not on a bike. In fact, the company bought us snacks including Popcicles (his favorite), nuts, coffee, cereal and milk. The kitchen was well stocked. This meant he always ate calories in excess if he were trying to drop the weight.
While exercise is great at getting and keeping the body’s systems fit, it might not help you lose weight unless you take steps to make weight loss a reality.
The Kitchen Part II
It’s true that weight loss begins in the kitchen, not in the gym. Weight loss is about what you eat, not how often you use a treadmill. The treadmill is great at cardio and raising your heart rate, but raising the heart rate is not about weight loss, it’s about fitness. There’s a distinct difference between fitness and weight loss. Yes, they go hand in hand, but they are separate distinct concepts requiring separate critical understanding.
To lose weight is all about arriving at a food lifestyle that helps aid you in your weight goals. For example, it’s about creating a food lifestyle goal such as eating only meals at meal times. Snacking is off the table, except only occasionally and only if you can’t make a meal.
Dietary Restrictions
I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss this aspect of a food lifestyle. Some medical conditions require eating only specific foods and sometimes at specific times of the day… particularly if you have diabetes. In the case of diabetes, you will need to keep your blood sugar in check. This means eating the right foods in the right amount to manage that.
Again, even this situation begins in the kitchen and it requires a food lifestyle change. Hopping on a treadmill won’t necessarily manage blood sugar levels (other than perhaps dipping blood sugar after exercise). In the case of diabetes, you should follow the advice of your medical professional in terms of frequency of eating.
Because diabetes can be difficult to manage at times, if you’re intent on weight loss, you should seek the counsel of not only your doctor, but ask your doctor to recommend a dietician who is knowledgeable about diabetes. This dietician can then work with your weight loss goals and still allow you to manage your diabetes properly. In the case of this (or any other weight loss article), you should disregard any Internet advice and follow the advice of a professional who is versed in diabetes, specifically your type.
Healthy Adults
With that said, this article is intended towards adults who do not have extenuating medical conditions that might make weight loss difficult. Even without diabetes or other medical conditions, we should all seek to moderate foods in our diet… including artificial products, refined sugars, white processed flours, processed cheese food and processed meats. We should seek natural, whole foods that are as close to nature as possible. I’ll talk more about this in the next section.
I’m the kind of person that if I have a food in the house, I’ll eat it. For me, that means not bringing home anything I don’t want to eat, such as candy. That means rarely bringing home diary free ice cream, potato chips, cheese dips, candy bars and so on. Because I’m somewhat lactose intolerant, I steer clear of milk, sour cream, cream cheese, extremely soft cheeses, yogurt or anything that contains a boatload of lactose. Milk has a secondary problem for me as well and that problem is casein. Casein is a milk protein that causes allergies in some individuals. For me, milk is a double-whammy of lactose and casein.
To avoid this, I choose alternatives such as non-diary creamer instead of milk when making foods that require milk. Non-dairy creamer is artificial, so I limit my use of this ingredient. But, when I need milk in certain recipes, non-diary creamer is my goto choice because it doesn’t trigger me with lactose and casein. When I make bread, for example, I use non-diary creamer instead of non-fat dry milk powder. For cereal, when I rarely eat it, I choose almond milk instead of non-dairy creamer. It just tastes better on cereal. However, I rarely eat cereal.. and even then, the only cereal I like is Crispix, primarily because it’s not like eating a bowl of straight-up sugar and it stays crispy in milk.
Whole Foods vs Processed Foods
Many people have claimed that processed foods may slow weight loss progress. I can disprove that. I occasionally eat processed foods (i.e., hot dogs, Velveeta cheese, Spam) and I’m still on the road to my weight loss goals. Eating these foods may slow down the weight loss process slightly, but it won’t outright stop the weight loss so long as you keep your caloric intake below your RMR.
What’s more important isn’t processed or whole foods, but calorie dense foods. For example, vegetables and fruits are far less calorie dense than, say, pound cake or brownies. This means you must eat more vegetables and fruits to eat an equivalent amount of calories in a piece of pound cake. For this reason, calorie dense foods should be considered a ‘once in a while’ treat. Another calorie dense food is beer, wine and spirits. Drinking a glass of wine adds a lot of calories to your diet. Think of a glass of wine the same as a sugary can of Coke. It’s basically empty calories. Alcoholic drinks consist mostly of water with, in the case of wine, alcohol and fruit sugars. You don’t get any nutritional benefits from Wine, but you might get limited health benefits from the alcohol due to its blood thinning capabilities.
Treats
You sometimes can’t get away from social situations with food and drink. This means that when you’re out and about at a restaurant or at a party, you might be required to indulge in foods and drinks which aren’t part of your lifestyle. You don’t really need to worry about this interfering with your weight loss goals as long as it’s a ‘once in a while’ situation. At a social situation, you can choose to abstain from eating these foods outright. However, abstinence may be seen by the host as displeasure with the food choices. In other words, you might be judged negatively for not eating the foods or drinking the drinks. If you know you’re going to have a problem in a specific social situation, it’s best to stay away rather than showing up and being a picky eater.
In these cases, you have two options. Attempt to avoid such social situations or choose to lightly indulge in the foods offered. Basically taste them and carry around the remaining food on a plate. You can even throw away the plate after a few minutes and grab something new. If you have a third option where the host provides you the choice of foods you can eat, then take advantage. However, few party hosts are that obliging, particularly if you’re taking a client out to dinner or to a company party. Be prepared to find something at the party to snack on. Or, alternatively, eat your meal immediately before the party and politely explain you’ve just eaten dinner.
You don’t need to eat a meal there, but you can pick whatever you find is the most healthy option. Sometimes they offer deserts with fresh fruits. Sometimes they offer hard cheeses. These are good options to help you retain your food lifestyle. Though, you can mark such social occasions as ‘treat day’. I’ll talk about ‘treat day’ a bit later.
Food Lifestyle
I know I’ve mentioned this term several times in this article and I think it’s about time that I define it properly. A food lifestyle is about changing your habit with food on an ongoing basis. The word ‘diet’ has a long held the connotation of being ‘temporary’. You diet, you lose weight, you go off the diet. You can’t do that and maintain a healthy weight.
To maintain a consistent healthy weight, you need to change your food choices on a permanent basis. This is the act of creating a continuous food lifestyle. A continuous food lifestyle is the goal if you want lasting weight loss, including weight maintenance.
You can’t go ‘on a diet’ and then later ‘go off the diet’. That’s a recipe for weight loss failure and is the key to Yo-Yo dieting. No. You want lasting change for the rest of your life. This means making food choices that you are willing to live with day in and out, week in and out and year in and out. You need to be able to live your food choices.
This also means a balanced approach to food. This means choosing to make home cooked meals over eating out. This means buying fresh whole foods to cook those meals.
If you’re used to eating out at McDonald’s weekly and eating out regularly throughout the week, making home cooked meals may initially be somewhat of a shock. It takes time to cook meals, but with the proper tools, you can cook meals at home in similar amounts of time as McDonald’s takes to prepare your meals.
For example, I can make a homemade hamburger and fries meal at home in as little as 15 minutes. It takes perhaps a little longer than it takes McDonald’s to serve a meal, but my meal means I can choose my ingredient choices. For example, I prefer actual Swiss cheese on my burgers. Few fast food restaurants offer that choice. If I want to use Avocado oil mayo on my burger, I’ve got that choice also. If I want Sriracha, it’s right there. For example, where will you find a burger made with Romaine lettuce and heirloom tomatoes? These combinations just don’t exist at fast food restaurants.
Making your meals at home means you can choose the ingredients that you like, that you will eat and that are hand-selected by you.
Homemade Meals versus From Scratch
Many people think that a home cooked meal signifies that it was made from scratch. In fact, that’s not necessary. For example, hamburger buns are a common thing we buy at the grocery store rather than making them ourselves. I’ve personally made hamburger buns myself and I prefer my home made versions, but it’s a time consuming process waiting for the bread to rise and then baking them.
You can easily make meals at home from packaged foods rather than making everything yourself. Obviously, you’re not going to go butcher a cow just to get a specific cut of meat. You’re going to visit a butcher counter and pick from those in the counter. That’s a time saving example.
Like the bread and steak examples, you can also make other foods from mixes or boxes. You don’t need to spend time doing everything from scratch. Yes, there is a satisfaction to making everything from scratch, but unless you have excessive amounts of time to kill performing these steps, making boxed or bagged mixes is perfectly acceptable time saving approaches to making home made meals.
You can even save yourself kitchen time by using a slow cooker or a pressure cooker. These are other cooking alternatives to getting the job done with the least amount of your time. You just need to find these time saving approaches. For example, using the microwave to grill hamburgers or steaks using specially designed microwave grills. These can be tremendous time savers.
Treat Day
As you approach a new food lifestyle, you’ll want to include a full treat day once a month. This day is the day where you can eat things not normally on your regularly scheduled food lifestyle. These might include eating out at your favorite restaurant, staying home and eating ice cream and/or popcorn in front of a movie. Perhaps you like drinking Coke or Pepsi or making an ice cream float out of these. Or, maybe it’s eating birthday cake.
These are treats you let yourself have once per month. You choose the day and then stick to it only on that day. These days are great days for social events, going to parties or hanging out with friends at a bar. This allows you to eat whatever you want and then fall right back onto your food lifestyle the following day. It’s a day where you don’t have to worry about what you’re eating. However, it’s always prudent to moderate your food intake no matter where you are. Being overindulgent in anything, particularly food, is never a good idea. You don’t want to wake up sick from eating too much food.
This day is actually important to your body. It’s a way to get your body out of its metabolism “comfort zone” and, for a day, make it change how it works. This breaks the monotony of eating similar foods day after day and aids your metabolism achieving your weight loss goals. Sometimes, the metabolism needs a little kick in the pants. That’s why treat day is important.
You don’t have to do a treat day every month if you don’t feel like it. Also, if you need to move your treat day to a different day, that’s also fine. However, having it on the same day makes it easier to manage and know when it is. I always preferred having treat day on a Friday as it was always like a tiny celebration.
You should also include a mini-treat snack once a week. This is a time when you can have a single treat, like a small sundae, a small cookie, a piece of chocolate, a small piece of cake or a dessert after your meal at a restaurant. You just want to tickle these taste bud receptors so you don’t get tired of your food lifestyle. These are to break the monotony of not having a sweet food at your meal. You don’t want to do these often, but you do want to do them occasionally to allow for a piece of chocolate or candy bar or glass of wine. We all need to indulge occasionally.
This system allows you to indulge in your favorite snack foods to prevent you from rejecting your chosen food lifestyle outright, forcing you back to a weight gain diet. You want to be able to treat yourself every now and then. The reason most “diets” fail is because they deprive you of the foods you love. A mini-treat prevents that deprivation problem.
What I have found is that even though I do have a treat available, I don’t always do it. Some days I just don’t want sweets or other treats. Occasionally, I do want them and that’s when I include a single treat during a day or I add it to my chosen treat day. If your monthly treat day is coming up in a few days, just hold on until then and have your snack then.
Note that fresh fruit and fresh veggies don’t count as ‘treats’. You can include these in your food lifestyle. Treats are defined as calorie dense processed foods such as wine, beer, spirits or decadent desserts such as a brownie with ice cream, cake or a candy bar. Yes, even a protein bar, a breakfast bar, a protein shake and even cereal should be considered ‘treats’. Basically, anything that is calorie and sugar dense should be considered a ‘treat’. The rule is, if it’s sugary and/or overly fatty, then it’s considered a treat.
Peanut Butter (or any nut butters)
Peanut butter is an odd food that seems like it should fall under being a ‘treat’. Depending on which version you buy, it might or might not.
The one thing I will say about peanut butter is to moderate no matter which version you buy. It’s a calorie dense food that’s reasonably fatty. If you buy commercially produced “smooth” peanut butters, these contain sugar. These peanut butters should be considered a treat.
If you buy All Natural (i.e., requires stirring), these are not considered as a treat. The difference between the commercial and all natural versions is additives. Commercial peanut butters insert additives to make it ‘smooth’ and to not separate. These additives, like sugar, make this version of peanut butter into a treat.
All natural peanut butters only have peanuts, peanut oil and possibly salt. These are the definition of whole foods. This type of peanut butter isn’t considered a treat, but peanut butter should always be used in moderation. For example, if you can buy freshly ground peanut butter from Whole Foods, this is actually the best type of peanut butter to get.
If you make a PB&J sandwich, this is definitely a treat no matter which peanut butter you choose. Jelly, jam and preserves are definitely considered a treat food because of the excessive amounts of sugar and because of its processed nature.
How many times removed from nature?
Eating natural foods is the goal of a food lifestyle. These are typically whole raw, steamed or cooked foods. You want to eat foods that are as close to nature as possible. For example, eating a raw Romaine lettuce leaf is as close as you can get to a natural food as it exists in nature. Once you process a food, such as turning a raw fruit into preserves, that’s considered to be removed from nature several times. Once to cook it down into a slurry, once to add in sugar and other additives and once to can it.
Bread is a food twice removed from nature. It begins as a whole grain which is pulverized and processed into a powder (once removed). Then that powder is mixed into water to make dough and then baked into bread (twice removed). Once something has been removed from nature more than once, it’s considered processed. Processed foods are not the goal of a healthy weight loss lifestyle. However, bread has a place where jam and preserves don’t.
Bread is a form of fiber and fiber aids in digestion and slows the conversion of sugar in the blood stream. Unfortunately, jams, preserves and jellies have removed all fiber from the fruit, which leaves pretty much jellied sugar. Because sugar is already readily abundant in nearly every food, there’s no need to add extra sugar in the form of jelly, jam or preserves. Yes, they taste good, but they should be considered a treat.
The point is that you need to count how many times a food has been removed from nature to determine if it works towards your weight loss goals. If it’s been removed from nature more than twice, you should rethink that food choice. This goes hand-in-hand with…
Fats, Carbs and Protein
The intake of calories comes from fat, carbohydrates and proteins.
Fat (aka lipid) is fatty acid of any type such as peanut oil, sunflower oil, palm oil, rapeseed oil, canola oil, vegetable oil, corn oil, avocado oil, olive oil and so on. It also includes fats in meats. This category also includes steroids and waxes.
Carbohydrates are any form of sugar including both simple sugars and complex sugars. Simple sugars (two molecule) include glucose, galactose (not generally found as a food ingredient) and fructose (aka levose or levulose). Complex sugars (more than two molecules) include lactose (milk sugar), sucrose (table sugar), sucralose (artificially manufactured), dextrose and maltose. These types of simple and complex sugars can be recognized by the ‘ose’ at the end of the name. Starches are also a form of even longer chained sugar molecules. All sugars and starches reduce to glucose, fructose or galactose in the blood stream. For sugars to be reduced in the body, chemical reactions break the two or more molecule chains into simple sugar molecules for absorption by the body. The body can’t absorb complex sugars, only simple sugars.
There are also sugar alcohols including but not limited to erythritol, maltitol, xylitol, sorbitol, mannitol and inositol. You can identify most sugar alcohols by the distinctive ‘ol’ at the end the name, with the exception of the peculiarly named sugar alcohol, isomalt. Sugar alcohols are curious things. While they can sweeten the food they are in (to a lesser degree than sucrose), they can also add some odd properties. One of these properties is a cooling sensation in the mouth.
Sugar alcohols are used in some cough drops and mints to enhance the mint cooling sensation. Another side effect of sugar alcohols is diarrhea, bloating and loose stools when eaten in sufficient quantity. The difficulty with sugar alcohols is that some people are more sensitive to these compounds than others. It’s best to avoid foods containing sugar alcohols simply to avoid unnecessary trips to the bathroom. It is worth noting that many foods labeled ‘sugar free’ actually contain sugar alcohols in replacement of the ‘ose’ type sugars. The FDA has granted food manufacturers the right to label a food as ‘sugar free’ when it only contains a sugar alcohol. Don’t fall for the ‘sugar free’ label. If you’re watching your sugar intake, sugar alcohols count as sugars.
Other alternative sweeteners include fructooligosaccharides or FOS. This sweetener is derived from the blue Agave plant as well as chicory, leeks, bananas, onions and a few other plants. This sweetener contains multiple molecules of sugar and must be broken down by the body’s chemical processes. This sweetener is not often used in the US, but may be found in some food preparations, including agave based sweeteners. It is a commonly used sweetener in Japan.
Simply for completion, sugars are found in most vegetables and fruits in varying quantities and in varying forms. Don’t get trapped into thinking you’re not eating sugars when eating fruits and vegetables. In fact, fruits can raise blood sugar levels equivalently to candies when eating particularly sweet fruits.
Stevia is short for stevia rebaudiana. While this compound is considered a sweetener, it is not a sugar at all. Instead, it’s actually a plant sterol (aka plant steroid). As a result, the use of Stevia does not raise blood sugar levels. This means it is safe to use as a sweetener by diabetics. However, because it is a type of plant steroid, it may interact with the body’s steroid receptors in other unexpected ways. There is some concern that Stevia may negatively interact with the kidneys, the nervous system and other body functions. It may even interfere with digestion. Toxicity studies assessing side effects around this sweetener are still being determined. As with any foods, you’ll want to assess your own effects after consuming it.
Proteins are any form of branched-chain amino acid. Meats, legumes and eggs all contain chained amino acids. Example amino acid types would include L-glutathione, L-arginine and Leucine which are some of the building blocks of meat, legumes and eggs. Though, legumes contain both amino acids and carbohydrates. Eggs and meat do not contain carbs, but may contain fats. Amino acids are responsible for building muscle in the human body and are responsible for many other building activities within the body.
These three macronutrient types (fat, protein and carbs) form all of the foods in the world. There are also micronutrients within foods. These micronutrient types include the vitamins A, B, C, D, E as well as minerals. All vitamins and minerals are contained in various vegetables including but not limited to green leafy vegetables, beets and carrots as well as minerals (i.e., iron) in meats. Together, the macro-nutrients and the micro-nutrients combine to make up the human food diet.
Man Made vs Natural Food
Above, I discussed how far removed a food was from nature. This is an extension of that discussion. If a food is natural and whole, by its very definition, it is natural. A food made by a human is not natural. Let’s understand natural versus man made in this context.
Corn on the cob is a whole natural food. A tortilla (made from ground corn) is a man made food.
Whole wheat kernels are a whole natural food. Bread (made from ground whole wheat kernels) is a man made food.
Sugar cane is a whole natural food. White table sugar (made from sugar cane) is a man made food.
By extension, further foods can be made from some of the above man made foods. For example, white table sugar is the ingredient to make most confections including chocolate bars, candy bars, cake and even bread.
If a food is man made, it is by its very nature, not natural. If you’re in the store shopping and you’re trying to determine if a food is “natural”, it’s easy to determine. If it’s a box on a shelf, it’s man made. If it’s sitting on the produce aisle in its raw form, it’s natural.
Natural Foods
All of the plant produce products on the supermarket produce aisle are natural. The produce industry further sub-categorizes its produce into “conventional” or “organic”. These labels mean various things to various people. However, produce with the “conventional” label typically means that the plant was grown using standard farming practices, including the use of standard chemical (sometimes toxic) pesticides. The produce may be further dressed using waxes and other “beautifying” techniques to make them pretty for store displays.
Produce labeled “organic” typically means the plant was grown using all natural methods of growth, many times without using pesticides or hormones or fertilizer at all. If a pesticide is used on an “organic” labeled product, it is typically of a non-toxic variety (i.e., vinegar or lemon juice concentrate or similar type edible and easily washable, non-toxic pesticide). This produce is not “dressed” to look pretty. You’ll find that “organic” produce may be misshapen, discolored, smaller, more ripe and may go bad faster. The size difference may mean the lack of using hormones or using “organic” fertilizer (i.e., compost).
The difficulty with these labels is that who really polices them? When you get to the supermarket and see the “organic” label and its corresponding higher price tag, is it really pesticide free? Is it really “organic”? You don’t really know. For this reason, I typically opt for produce shopping by price rather than labels. The only time I shop by label is “Grown in the USA” or “Grown in California”.
When something is “Grown in Mexico” or “Grown in Guatemala”, you really don’t know what pesticides were used. In fact, because it’s grown outside the U.S., many U.S. banned pesticides are used on this imported produce. Additionally, many of the workers who harvest these fruits and vegetables in these countries may actually be sprayed by these toxic pesticide chemicals while still in the field harvesting. As a result of these farming practices, I typically prefer to steer clear of these imported fruits and vegetables and I choose to buy produce “Grown in the USA” or “Grown in California”… particularly thin-skinned root vegetables (i.e., carrots, beets) as well as celery, lettuce and tomatoes. Thicker skinned vegetables, like avocados, I might opt for Mexico produce, but only if they’re the right kind and the right price. If locally grown vegetables are available, I always opt for these.
The Kitchen Part III
As we return to the kitchen with our newfound knowledge, our food lifestyle should consist of whole real foods more often than man-made foods. Clearly, bread is a good thing and can be eaten in moderation, even though it is a man-made food. Rice, on the other hand, is a whole real food. Yes, its hull is removed and each grain is dried, but that’s about the extent to which it is modified, unlike grains of wheat.
Rice flour is available just as is wheat flour, but rice flour is less used to make baked goods than is wheat flour. The point is, bread has a place in the diet. However, so does rice. Both bread and rice are carbs. As a result, you want to treat them as the carbs portion of your plate.
When making meals, you want about equal parts fat, protein and carbs or 33% fat, 33% protein and 33% carbs dividing up your plate. Some say you should have less protein than fat or carbs, but that should be based on how your body responds to these macronutrients. If you can’t seem to lose weight, you might want to reduce your fat and carb intake a little, which will increase your protein intake.
There’s a complex relationship in the body between these three macronutrients. Each play off the other to help build muscle or increase fat. The point is, calories are the measure of how much energy you are expending. The macronutrients (which ultimately make up your calories), see to it that you gain or lose weight based on the number of calories you intake versus what you expend.
The kitchen is the place to make weight loss a reality via what you buy, what foods you make and how much you consume. You can add exercise in to help make your body fit and expend a bit more energy. However, if you do add in exercise, don’t get caught by the exercise trap thinking you can eat a lot more simply because you ran on a treadmill for 20 minutes. It doesn’t work that way. 20-30 minutes of exercise might allow you to eat one more piece of bread than you otherwise could. A single piece of bread is not very much food and definitely doesn’t equate to the calories in a candy bar or a pint of ice cream.
The point is, choose your calories carefully. Eat when it’s appropriate. Treat yourself occasionally. Eat in moderation. Don’t be suckered in by the exercise con that leads you to believe you can eat whatever you want simply because you took a 30 minute walk.
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