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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Diet vs Lifestyle
In this article, I will assume that when you’re reading this, you have committed to some level of weight loss. Whether that weight loss is for an event (i.e., wedding, prom, hanging at the pool, going to the beach, vacation, etc) it doesn’t really matter. Or, perhaps, you’ve just decided to make a change and simply want to be thinner than you are. Whatever the reason for the weight loss, the goal is still the same… to lose the weight.
What is your goal?
I’m not asking how much you want to lose. We’ve already established that you want to lose weight and you’ve likely already determined how much. No, this question is asking for how long do you want the weight gone? It’s a valid question. The reason I’m asking this question is very much the crux of this entire article. If you are looking to lose your weight for a month or two and then ‘forget about it’ and go back to ‘normal eating’, then this article really isn’t the answer.
This article may help you attain that goal, but this information is not intended nor designed to lead people back into the dieting trap. This article is designed to help people get out of the diet trap and bring about lasting change. If you are committed to lasting change, then you’ve come to the right place.
Thinking patterns evolved
Let’s start by discussing what the food industry has done for America (and, arguably, the world). We’ll start by saying that the food industry is, first and foremost, in it for the money. Secondarily, they supply food. Plain and simple, without profits they can’t stay in business, so money always comes first. From Kraft, Hershey, ConAgra, Archer Daniel Midland to Burger King, McDonald’s and Wendy’s, the mantra is the same. Eat more. It’s a simple and subtle, yet consistent message. The more we eat, the more money they make. It’s simple economics. It’s also economics working against the waistline. The bottom line is, eat more so they make more money. I’ll discuss how that thinking manifests shortly. As long as you keep this ‘money making’ aspect of the industry firmly in your dietary planning, you can easily maintain your weight loss goals. Remember, it’s about their profits, not your waistline.
Money making manifestation
The ways in which the food industry keeps to their profit goals is through marketing. Whether that marketing is on TV, in print, on menu or on the packaging, the message is always there. Eat more. How? On packages, there are many ways they accomplish this. Some subtle, some not-so-subtle. The first and most bold is the ‘serving suggestion’ combined with ‘image enlarged for detail’. So, for cereal, as an example, it’s always a heaping huge bowl of cereal filled to the top. Granted, the image is ‘enlarged’ so determining scale is out. But, that’s the point. They don’t want to give you a frame of reference so you equate that imagery with the bowls in your cupboard (probably huge due to standard manufacturer sizes). So, then you turn to the ‘Nutrition Facts’ panel and see that 1 cup is 110 calories. You naturally equate the ‘serving suggestion’ to the ‘1 serving size’ and pour your cereal thinking you’re eating 100-110 calories. The thing you don’t realize is that bowl of cereal you poured might account for upwards of 300-400 calories depending on bowl size. Combining that with 2% milk, you are looking at 244 calories in 2 cups of milk. That turns what you thought was a 100-110 calorie meal into a 500+ calorie meal. Granted, 500 calories for a single meal is probably fine by itself, but the nutrition in cereal and milk is questionable. Basically, it’s carbs and fat with some protein. The vitamins you receive have been fortified both in the cereal and the milk. On top of that, the milk contains bovine growth hormones that could interfere with weight loss.
With restaurants, the idea is similar. Show a picture of a great looking meal on the cover or next to the food item. They tempt you through the look of the food. Of course, if you’ve ever eaten at a restaurant once, you know the food never looks like it does in the photographs. But more than this, the size of the meal is also, again, quite large and hard to judge scale. On the plus side to this, however, is that many states (including California) are now requiring nutrition guides be placed on the table. So, you can look up that oh-so-delicious-looking-meal and realize that that meal is actually 1100 calories. Yes, that’s 1100 whopping calories. Over 1/2 of the recommended calories for a 2000 calorie a day diet. Again, over half of the calories for 1 day’s meals. So, the plate may appear appetizing, but you need to dig deeper to see just how calorie dense that meal really is.
You should begin to understand why are waistlines are exploding. We can’t eat like this and expect to remain thin. But, the food industry has been slowly and steadily increasing portion sizes so that we’re to the point of gut busting, yet oblivious as to why.
Convenience and Instant Gratification
The second aspect of this thinking paradigm shift is in convenience and speed. The restaurant (and food) industries have additionally ingrained into our consciousness the need-for-speed. We have to have it now. That food should be something that’s ready in 5-7 minutes. The microwave and other innovations have also instilled this thinking. Granted, some foods don’t need to take long amounts of time to prepare. Some do. However, it’s not the speed here that’s at fault. It’s the fact that most meals that can be prepared rapidly are usually the foods with the highest calorie density (see below). So, with speed can come higher calories. The food industry has played off of our need-for-speed and produced foods that prepare rapidly, but those foods are usually overly calorically dense.
Bucking the system (and your friends, relatives and colleagues)
So, now the main aspect to weight loss is bucking the system. You don’t have a choice in this matter. The industry has so ingrained into the American consciousness that more is better that you have to forget that mantra and retool your own thinking. In addition, that now means you have to ignore your friends’, relatives’ and colleagues’ comments. What matters is your goals. If you want to lose the weight, you must look at portions and do what needs to be done to meet your goals. That means you need to think critically about what got us to the gut busting mentality and retool your own personal programming. It also means eating smaller portions and eating less calorie dense foods. However, this does not mean starving yourself. It also doesn’t mean you can’t eat the foods you like. You must eat them in smaller sizes.
I know, it’s hard to ignore friends’ and relatives’ comments. It is. But, if you are committed, you have to do this. When they ask you to eat over, accept. But, don’t eat more than what you need. Remember, you also do have ‘cheat’ meals.
Calorie density
As food engineering has progressed, prepackaged foods have become increasingly more calorie dense. Calorie density means that the manufacturers have been able to pack in more calories into smaller and smaller sizes. This also means that you cannot easily spot high calorie items simply with your eyes. You now need to weigh the foods. So, that means if you don’t have a scale in your house, you need to get one. Scales are important because weights are the only true way to measure calories. For example, 85g of chicken is 120 calories (that’s ~3 ounces). But, can you spot 85g of chicken just by looking? No. 85g of chicken is actually a small amount of chicken. It’s about 1/3 of a small-med chicken breast. That also means that a small-med chicken breast is about 360-400 calories. But, some chicken breasts are now enormous (thanks to hormones). So, here’s another example of density. Because chicken producers are now able to produce humongous chicken breasts, restaurants may even be serving these on your plate. These breasts might be 600 calories. The food scale is your friend, so weigh your foods. It’s the only way for you to be certain of how many calories are in your foods.
Cheat meals
What is a cheat meal? Simply, a cheat meal is a meal that lets you eat a ‘normal’ (ahem) sized portion. A portion that you would find in a restaurant. Yes, that 1100 calorie meal above would be considered a ‘normal’ sized meal. But, this is a once-a-week meal. This is something that should be considered a treat or a reward. Think of it as a way to eat out and make it appear like you still accept the ‘eat more’ mantra. That you blend in with your waistline bulging friends. Then, once the meal is over, you immediately go back to your regular eating schedule as normal. And yes, I realize, I haven’t gotten to what is a ‘regular meal’ answer. We’ll come to that next.
So, what is regular sized meal?
Going by the 2000 calorie-a-day guideline of the FDA, let’s examine. It’s very simple math here. 2000 / 3 = 667 calories per meal. That’s assuming you eat only 3 meals per day. If you want to add in two 100 calorie snacks per day, then let’s calculate. 2000 – 200 = 1800. 1800 / 3 = 600 per meal + 2 100 calorie snacks. So, let’s break it out:
- Breakfast = 600
- Snack = 100
- Lunch = 600
- Snack = 100
- Dinner = 600
- Total = 2000
Here’s a challenge, I dare you to find any chain restaurant that offers full adult meals plus desert that fits into 600 calories. It’s next to impossible. Most restaurant meals start at 800 calories and finish (including a desert) well over 1800 calories just for that one single meal. How is anyone expected to lose weight eating that amount of calorie density in one meal? Combining that with several meals around that same size and you can’t.
So, this is mostly why you need to make your own meals at home. There are some restaurants that do offer lesser calorie meals. But, you need to dig through their nutritional guides to find them. For example, Chili’s offers a Guiltless Tilapia meal that’s just 200 calories (the full meal). That’s a Tilapia fillet and a side of vegetables (broccoli and shredded carrots). That would still leave 300 calories for a dessert (if following the above meal guide).
So then, what does a 600 calorie meal look like? Here’s a web site that gives you some ideas.
Grains, Vegetables and Fruits
The only thing that breads and, specifically, wheat products offer nutritionally is 1) carbs and 2) fiber. Both carbs and fiber are readily available in fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables are much more vitamin and mineral dense than breads. In general, grains of all types fall into this as well (rice, barley, rye, corn and, of course, wheat). That’s not to say not to eat grains, you can. But, you get better nutrition out of vegetables with far fewer calories. So, you can eat more vegetables and get full, yet still eating far fewer calories So, eating vegetables will give you more fiber than wheat with far fewer calories (and much less insulin response). On the other hand, fruits give about equal insulin response as wheat (because of the fruit sugars). So, always think of fruits as desert.
Weight Loss
To truly begin losing weight, you need to rethink your meals. In that goal, instead of trying to do the above 600 calorie meals, you could do 200-300 calorie meals spaced out differently. For example, you might do 6 300 calorie meals over a 6 hour period and throw in 2 100 calorie snacks where ever you feel you need them. By eating more frequently with smaller meals, you keep the body constantly processing foods and nutrition. The body burns calories to digest foods. So, you are using this food processing system to burn calories. At the same time, you need to restrict your calories to an amount just under your maintenance calorie number.
So, if your maintenance number is 2000, you might have to drop to 1700-1800 to begin losing. You might need to go to 1500. It all depends on where your number is and only you can determine that number. Once you determine the number, you can easily maintain your weight (or go back into weight loss mode) as necessary. This also means the end to ‘normal meals’. That is, meal sizes dictated by the food industry. You need to ignore that rhetoric and use a plan that actually works.
Fresh foods and density
Food designed by nature is food the way it was intended to be found and eaten. That means, when foods are eaten the closest to that foods natural state, the more healthy it is (barring pesticides, hormones and fertilizers). When foods are in their natural state, they are the least calorically dense and the most nutritionally dense. This means, you can eat more of them to satisfy your hunger and, at the same time, not go over your calorie goals. You will also meet your body’s nutritional requirements. Such foods include broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, green beans, corn on the cob, carrots, etc.
On the other hand, foods designed in factories are the farthest away from nature that they can get. These foods are devoid of nutrition and very calorically dense. These foods must be fortified (vitamins and minerals are added back to these devoid products). These foods include bread, pizza dough, Pillsbury Dough, Cookies, Cakes, Pies, Ice Cream, Cheese and processed cheese food (Velveeta).
Foods that fall into the unsure status include Milk, Eggs, Chicken, Pork, Beef, Lamb, Veal, etc. While meats contain dense proteins and are necessary for the body, the commercial meat industry uses questionable practices to get these foods into the stores. So, unless you trust your meat supplier explicitly from farm to market, you may be getting extra things in your meats you are not really needing. That’s not to say that you can’t eat meat, let’s just say that you should limit meat consumption to only the amount needed to fulfill your daily protein requirements. As far as bovine milk, this is an calve food not designed for human consumption. See Randosity’s Milk: Does it really do a body good? for more details. Milk (and milk products, like cheese, yogurt, kefir, cream and butter) should be avoided as they are not necessary for the human diet. There is nothing in milk that cannot be had from other sources of solid foods including meats and vegetables.
Portions vs Exercise
To truly lose weight requires rethinking. It requires making yourself acutely aware of marketing practices and thinking about how manipulative these images really are. You need to determine your own calorie intake per day, but that will likely be no more than 2000 calories per day (unless you are an extremely active person like a bodybuilder, a runner, a biker, a hiker, a skier, a climber, a swimmer or a surfer). If you are not extremely exercise active, then you need to reduce your calories to fit a less active lifestyle. The bottom line is, calories in have to be less than calories expended to lose weight. The more active you are, the more you can eat. The less active, the less you can eat. It’s simple math here.
So, you need to reduce your portion sizes to accommodate a less active lifestyle. Increasing your exercise levels does not give you cause to binge, however. You still must stay below your energy expenditure to lose weight. You must equal your energy expenditure to maintain your weight. It’s very simple logic.
Permanent thinking
The hardest part is changing your thought behavior to become a permanent way of life. You can’t keep thinking ‘Oh, I only need to lose 5 pounds in 30 days’. No, instead you need to think, ‘They’re tricking me into that portion size’. So, eat a piece of cake, but eat a 50-100 calorie piece. Eat a size that fits into your daily eating schedule. As long as you adhere to portion sizes and calorie relationships that fit with your goals, you will continue on your weight lose goals. Don’t forget your cheat meal, though. You can use this as a crutch to help keep you on track. Eventually, this crutch won’t be necessary every week and you will fall into a normal eating behavior that is correct for your long term goals. You just need to give your body a chance to adapt (usually several months). And yes, your body will adapt to the correct portion sizes over time. Getting over that hump can take some time.
Let’s Recap
To affect permanent lasting weight loss, you have to understand misleading marketing materials that can lead you astray. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. You need to retool your thoughts about food and your current lifestyle for long term changes, not for a month or two. So, think about how you can affect food changes that you can live with for the rest of your life. We also learned that a real meal size is about 600 calories (for a 2000 calorie a day diet). In fact, your meal size might be smaller than this to affect weight loss. It’s also difficult to find 600 calories in restaurant meals. You may have to request substitutions in restaurant meals to reduce the calorie density. Fresh natural foods are always healthier than processed industrial foods. Processed industrial foods tend to be high calorie density foods. So, you need to rethink your thoughts on foods and the way you think about foods. If you are committed to making these thought changes and learn more about foods, you can make a permanent lasting change towards a thinner you.
Obesity Overtaking America
You’ve heard all about this issue in the media. But, what you may not know is that this issue is now even reaching into the military (including our armed forces in Iraq). The Pentagon has reported that obesity has doubled since 2003 in the US Military. Here are people who are actively serving for our national security and they’re becoming obese. I always thought that army food wasn’t that great and was designed to keep the troops’ healthy. I guess that’s not happening.
Some people attribute stress to the obesity epidemic in the US. But, who or what is to blame for the growing waistlines? Clearly, people do need to take responsibility for what they eat. On the other hand, the human body does not come with an owner’s manual. So, these two issues combined with the media, the food industry, so-called professionals, easy access to foods and misinformation lead to the waistline growth. Which one is to blame? They all are.
Food Industry
I know we all want to blame and, in some cases, even sue the food industry for this issue. In some cases, lawsuits may even be warranted. However, each person needs to take responsibility for their body. Unfortunately, in some situations it may not be possible to purchase and eat your own foods. You may end up being in a semi-captive situation where you eat what you are given and have no access or say in the foods that are served. In these cases, that establishment is to blame for feeding you poor quality food choices. This may be the situation in the military. This situation may also follow for lower income families who need to eat, but cannot afford to purchase produce due to its higher costs.
However, when the person can purchase their own food, make their own food and then eat that food freely, that’s where self-responsibility must take place. You can’t blame the food industry when you have choices. Basically, as a consumer, you must take responsibility for your food choices. But, even more than that, you need to take responsibility for your body. You can’t push your growing waistline off onto food manufacturers because you made the choice to eat their food. There may be other liabilities that you can call the food industry on, but it isn’t personal responsibility for your body.
Food manufacturers do, on the other hand, provide loads of misinformation on their food items, so you have to become an intelligent and informed shopper to avoid these FDA-endorsed yet very deceptive food labels. Note that deceptively labeled food items would be a liability for the food manufacturer except for the fact that the FDA has endorsed and approved those mislabeling practices. So, while you may want to sue the food manufacturer for mislabeling, you simply cannot. These practices are definitely legal. But, that doesn’t make them right, helpful or help you make an informed choice. That said, you need to understand how to read the labels and discard the useless deceptive information and to determine just how nutritious something really is for you.
Three types of macronutrients defined
Of the three types of main nutrients your body needs, these are protein, carbs and fats. Protein consists of meats, fish, eggs and is also in other products like milk, cheese, nuts and beans. Fats consist of oils and is in foods including butter, avocados, nuts, fish, meats and table oils. Carbs may be the hardest to identify in foods, but consist of both starches and simple sugars. Starches include corn, rice, wheat, barley, sorghum, rye or any other type of grain. Simple sugars include any granulated sugar (sucrose), fruit sugars (fructose) and dextrose (included in some food items). Sugar Alcohols should also be considered a simple sugar of sorts and these include maltitol, xylitol, mannitol (or any other sugar ending in ‘ol’). Other sugars include maltodextrin and oligofructose among others.
All sugars ultimately become glucose in the body. So, eating that piece of bread is ultimately the same as eating a piece of candy. The only difference between candy and bread is the amount of fiber it contains. Most finely granulated white flour is really no better than sugar and digests with similar speed. With white flour based foods, you might as well be eating straight sugar. Eating ‘whole wheat’ based items may slow down the digestion some, but that’s all dependent on the amount of fiber. Most ‘whole wheat’ items may be partially made with white flour, so be careful with that.
Basically, your plate needs to consist of proteins, fats and carbs in the proper quantities to keep the body balanced. Too many of any one of these nutrients and your body will compensate by becoming fat or having other issues.
A Society of Grain
The grain industry has a huge hold over our food supply. You simply look at the average American meal and you will see one thing that dominates the plate: grains. These include primarily include corn, wheat and rice. But, there is also barley, rye and sorghum. These grains are then made into items such as bread, crackers, cakes, cookies, cupcakes and pasta. Once added to the plate, these items consume at least 25-50% of our dinner plate and probably 50-100% of our snacks.
Starchy vegetables
On top of these heavily starchy grains, we add yet another starch to our plates in the form of a potato and corn. Yes, corn is both a grain and a vegetable depending on how it’s used. So, between the bread and the potato, our dinner plate now contains probably 50% or more starches. If you add corn as a side dish, that’s even more starch and makes up for at least 75% of the meal. But, starch and starchy vegetables aren’t the complete answer to obesity.. even if the low-carb diets would like you to think so. We’ll come back to the starch and weight relationship shortly.
Vegetables
In the vegetable category which should consume at least one-third of the plate, we should be serving green leafy vegetables such as cabbage, lettuce, swiss chard, spinach, mustard greens and similar. Other vegetables include broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beets, onions, garlic, soybean (green), green beans, leeks, etc. Unfortunately, many people choose to skip this portion of the meal. But, this portion needs to consume at least 25% of the plate (and actually, these should consume the most). The reason they should consume the most is that they are high in fiber, low in calories and fill you up. Unfortunately, many vegetables can also cause flatulence and other intestinal issues (due to higher amounts of fiber).
Protein portion
Of the rest of our plate, we reserve the protein portion of the meal. This includes foods such as, obviously, meats like beef, chicken, eggs, pork, turkey, fish and other seafood. For vegetarians, there are other sources of proteins such as legumes, soy and other vegetable proteins and even milk (if lacto-vegetarian).
Beans
Legumes should be catagorized separately because they are both a starch and a protein at the same time. So, while it’s great that they contain protein, they are also fairly starchy. So, eating them in addition to other starches only serves to undermine any sensible weight loss approach. So, be careful when adding beans to your plate. Beans include white beans, kidney beans, black eyed peas, English peas, sugar snap peas, peanuts, refried beans, black beans, Lima beans, fava beans, etc. It’s pretty easy to identify a bean on the plate just strictly due to its consistency and texture. Beans also have one additional side effect that can be unpleasant in a lot of people: gas. So, if you know you are intolerant of beans, be careful adding them to your plate.
Fruits and Nuts
Fruits should be considered a sugar (carb) combined with fiber. So, when adding these in, understand that they add to your total calorie intake as well as your sugar intake for the day. Nuts are considered both a protein and a starch. So, again, add them into your total protein and carb intake for the day. Fruits, like vegetables, are far lower in calories than nuts. So, you can add more fruits to your diet (assuming you aren’t carb intolerant or diabetic) and reduce your calorie intake. Nuts, on the other hand, are high in calories. So, eating lots of nuts can add a lot more to your calorie intake than you think.
Dairy
Dairy products (cheese, milk, milk-based products) can be reasonably high in both calories and carbs (lactose), so be careful when adding lots of dairy to your diet. Yes, diary does contain calcium and vitamin D (fortified), but you should try to find other ways to add calcium and D to your diet than through dairy.
Junk Foods & Soda
When trying to readjust your diet to be more healthy, you really have to get rid of these from your diet. Junk foods are those that add calories without substance. They may make you ‘feel’ good while you’re eating them, but the sugar high that you get and the subsequent weight gain isn’t wanted. So, avoid junk foods. Junk foods include potato chips, pretzels, bread (more than one piece per meal), crackers, Triscuit, Wheat Thins, cookies, cakes, cupcakes, rolls, biscuits or anything basically that uses refined white flour. Refined white flour needs to be removed from any healthy diet. Junk food also includes straight sugar based candies like hard candies and candy bars. It also includes pies and ice cream. If you need baked goods, then make them from nuts, coconut or other alternative flours than refined white and wheat flours. Note that whole wheat flour isn’t. If the flour is ground to a powder, then it is not whole. This is yet another label that mislabels the food. Anything that’s ground to a powder consistency is refined to the point where it takes no digestive processing. Note that I also include Pizza and Hamburgers in the junk food category because the food contains 40% or more refined wheat based flours.
As for commercial sodas, avoid them. If you must drink sodas and want to be frugal, buy a SodaStream carbonator and carbonate your own water. A SodaStream will save you money over time and prevent you from having to carry home heavy bottles of soda water. If you can afford the costs and want to deal with carrying heavy bottles home, buy soda water in liter bottles. Then, use your own sweeteners (like Stevia) and flavorings (like Vanilla) to create your own homemade sodas. This avoids the acidic issues of commercially produced sodas and it also avoids the unnecessary preservatives and additives that are placed into commercial soda flavorings. It also avoids the added sugars and potentially unhealthy lab created sweeteners.
Resting body caloric needs
The number one issue when it comes to weight gain or loss is how much to eat. The suggested daily calorie allotment on the Nutrition Facts label of foods usually shows a 2000 calorie a day and sometimes a 2500 calorie a day value. This labeling implies that this is the number of calories YOU should be eating. In fact, this assumption is incorrect. You cannot know how many calories per day that your body needs unless you get evaluated by using a device that measures your resting caloric needs. One such Resting Metabolic measuring device is called the BodyGem. This device measures several things at once through a mouthpiece where you sit and breathe. As the devices are quite expensive, they can be found at better health clubs like 24 Hour Fitness. As part of getting a membership, 24 Hour Fitness will measure your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) with the BodyGem. For example, my resting body caloric needs were tested at 1700 calories per day. Even more than this, you need to understand what that number represents. Is that the number at which the body will stay in equilibrium (i..e, no gain and no loss)? Or, is that the number at which the body will gain or lose weight? This information was not made clear to me. So, getting yourself tested is only half of the battle. You need to make sure you understand what that number represents.
Calorie?
Many people just assume that people know what a calorie represents. In fact, most people don’t. One calorie is the amount of food it takes to raise one liter of water one degree when that food is burned. So, they burn the food in a controlled environment and then determine the how many calories the food is based on how much it raises the water temperature. Note, however, that burning food is not an identical process the body uses to convert the food into energy. Burning something is a combustion chemical process. The body doesn’t use combustion to convert the food into energy. Instead, it relies on lock and key chemicals (solvents) to dissolve the molecular bonds of the foods. Thus, a calorie is only a representative measure of how the body works. It’s symbolic and is allegedly equivalent enough that it works. So, we’ve all taken for granted the calorie and what it represents when it may, in fact, not be as accurate as we would like. For the sake of argument, however, we will assume that the calorie as measured is accurate for the purposes of this article.
Unrealistic labeling
Unfortunately, the FDA and the food industry are both working together to keep the public misinformed. It’s unfortunate, but the food labels are really not there to help consumers. The Nutrition Facts label is probably the only label on the package that you can trust as far as sheer numbers go. So, what is inaccurate about the labeling? Well, let’s start with the numbers of servings. Realistic labeling for a small package of chips should state 1 serving per package. Instead, many food manufacturers break down what should be a single serving into multiple servings. So, you might find that single serving package stated as 2.5 servings. So, the entire nutrition facts will only show you the amounts for 1 sub-serving of that bag of chips (which is about 1/3 of the package). Ok, so who’s going to eat 1/3 of a package and put it away? For many reasons, this labeling idea is stupid. First, it’s a single serving package and should be treated and labeled that way. Second, no one will store 2/3 of the package for later consumption as it will be stale in only a few hours. But, the casual consumer might not look at the number of servings and assume that they ate 80 calories when they, in fact, just ate ~240 calories.
The numbers of servings issue is but one on the label. In addition to the above, the Nutrition Facts lists total Daily Value (DV%) based on a 2000 or 2500 calorie per day diet. Again, you need to know if your body gains or loses fat based on those assumptions. If your body gains at 2000 per day, then you shouldn’t be using those DV values as a guide. You will need to calculate your own Daily Values for yourself based on the Nutrition Facts panel.
Other mislabeling issues include the front of the package. Again, based on the number of servings they put into the Nutrition Facts panel, they can then say ’80 Calories Per Serving’ on the front of the package. This then makes the consumer assume that because it appears to be a single serving package that the entire package contains 80 calories. Again, mislabeling at its finest.
What it comes down to is read the Nutrition Facts label closely and read two pieces of information: Numbers of Servings and Calories Per Serving. Then multiply that out in your head to find out how many REAL calories are in that package. Remember: Numbers of Servings * Calories Per Servings = Total Calories in package. Always determine this before you put that food into your cart. What you think may look like 80 calories may end up being 500 calories.
Eating Out
With laws being enacted in many states requiring restaurants to put nutritional information on the menu, you can now see that Pepper Encrusted New York Strip with Penne Pasta and Spinach is 1500 calories. 1500 calories! That’s nearly my entire daily allotment of calories in one meal! Combine that with their 800 calorie desert and you’re well over your daily recommended intake with one single meal! That doesn’t even take into account breakfast and lunch you ate earlier.
Weight Loss
It’s simple, to lose weight you need a calorie deficit. That means that you take in less calories than your body expends in a day. With a calorie deficit, the body reaches into its fat stores to provide energy. This means you can’t eat that 2300 calorie meal combined with breakfast and lunch and expect to lose weight. It won’t happen. In fact, that’s the recipe for weight gain. This will, over time, add pounds to the hips and give you the spare tire that you don’t want. It makes you buy bigger clothes and feel bad about yourself. But, the food industry feeds other industries including the health industry, the insurance industry, the hospitals and on the other side, the food industry itself, the restaurant industry and even the clothing industry (as you get bigger). So, eating more and gaining more weight gives you incentive to spend more money on health and weight related issues (including gym memberships, supplements, weight loss fads, diet supplements and so on).
The simple truth about weight loss: you lose weight through a calorie deficit. You have to eat less than your body expends. Yes, this means you need to remain hungrier than you’ve ever been. But, hungry means your body is losing weight. You can’t lose weight without being hungry at times. But, the desperate hunger you feel initially will subside over time as your body pulls from the fat stores and gets used to less calories.
Calories per day
This is yet another misnomer. We think of our bodies in terms of a 24 hour period and how many calories we shove into it during this period. This is wrong. The body doesn’t know the concept of a day (or a 24 hour period). The body utilizes a continuous cycle of processing. When you eat, you interrupt the fat loss process by adding external calories. Once those calories are finished being processed by the body, the body can then go back to utilizing internal calories from its own stores. This means smarter eating. When you do eat, eat foods that process completely to give maximum nutrition and then allow the body to go back to processing internal stores. This means smaller meals more often to reduce food processing times. Large meals keep your body processing external foods far longer. With a larger meal, there is a large likelyhood that your large meal will still be processing once you start your next meal. So, your body never gets into fat loss mode between meals.
Instead, you need to think of your body as a constant processing machine. It doesn’t recognize a 24 hour day. It continually processes. So, you need to think about eating foods not in a 24 hour period but on a continuous basis. So, about every 2 waking hours you should eat a small meal. That’s the necessary amount of time it takes to process the small meal. You do not need to eat while sleeping. In fact, the sleep fasting period lets your body burn fat. However, if you go too long between meals, the body may go into survival mode and conserve. Adding a small meal keeps the body aware that it is receiving external fuel and helps prevent survival conservation mode. Note that the body’s conservation mechanism can help you lose weight (as well as gain it), so you need to understand how to manage that by eating small meals.
Lower Calorie Foods
By reading the Nutrition Facts panel closely (including numbers of servings) you can accurately determine if that food fits within your calorie requirements. For example, you can eat that cookie if you want. But, if you’re looking at 200-300 calories per meal, that 160 calorie cookie is over half of that meal. You can do it, but you need to readjust your meal intake accordingly.
Eating Out Continued
Once you get into eating smaller meals more often, you may find that eating out is a thing of the past. It’s almost impossible to find restaurants that will serve you a 200-300 calorie meal. Most average meals in restaurants are around 800-1200 per meal. You can limit this by leaving food on the plate, but that’s a waste of money. If you’re with friends, they may think you’re odd not eating an entire meal. I find it simpler to make meals for myself at home. On the other hand, you do need a cheat meal occasionally to keep the body off-guard and kick it out of survival conservation mode. So, your cheat meal should be a ‘standard’ meal you will find at a restaurant, in addition to your 200-300 calorie per meal meals every 2 hours. You should add a cheat meal no more than once per week.
Starch and Weight
Because starch is a big staple on our plates, we must acknowledge the role it plays in our health. We cannot deny that starchy foods are a contributor to our obesity. Most starchy foods are combined with fat and that’s a recipe for fat storage. The reason, starchy foods raise blood insulin levels and insulin is a carrier to bring the fat into our cells for storage. So, the more insulin the body produces, the more likely you are to store fat. When combined with an overly large calorie meal, these body processes are perfectly aligned to store the fat in our cells. Because we continue to eat the same way day in and out, we do not give our bodies a chance to release the fat. So, more and more storage of fat is added and never removed. Thus, we get fatter and fatter to the point of obesity. As a result of this, we need to put starch into perspective. This means, reducing the amount of starches you eat at a meal and reduce their overall importance in the meal itself.
Losing Fat?
If you’re committed to losing the fat, you need to understand the body’s food and survival mechanisms, food labeling, foods that work for you and nutrition. Our bodies were designed to be hunters and gatherers. That means we eat meals when we find foods in the wild. Once we find them (or hunt them), we would basically eat smaller meals more often rather than sitting down for a big meal. We would also expend our energy engaging in food search. The body’s internal processes have not changed since the days of the hunters and gatherers. But, our meals and energy uses have. We now eat more calories in one sitting than ever in human existence. We sit on couches watching TV, web surfing and playing video games. The body just can’t cope with the excessive calories and, thus, adds the fat to the stores for future famine. In fact, eating too many calories triggers the body’s survival conservation mode by storing the fat for famine situations. The famine situation never comes, so we get fatter and fatter. Just as not eating enough food can trigger storage conservation, so does eating too much.
There is a middle ground where you need to eat small meals to keep the body’s food processing active, but not enough food to kick in fat storage mode. This is the balance in eating that you need to observe. The balance is in calories that you eat, but not always what you eat. The specific foods that you eat fills in the blanks for vitamins and minerals. Limited calorie intake prevents fat storage and encourages fat store release. Note that as our foods have become more calorie dense, they have been lacking in vitamins and minerals. So, you may find that you need to add supplements for vitamins and minerals. I recommend individual vitamins in gelatin capsules versus packed tablets containing recommended Daily Values (which could be inaccurate).
On a final note, once you get to your target body shape and weight, you will need to find your equilibrium mode to maintain that weight. To do this, increase your calorie intake for each meal and eventually you will find that equilibrium. You will also need to eat more food the more active you become. If you drastically increase your daily activity, you will need to compensate for that activity by increasing food intake to prevent, again, survival conservation mode (among other health issues that could arise).
Disclaimer: This information is not intended to be used to as a diagnosis, to diagnose or as a diet. It is strictly to be used for information purposes. You will need to find your own way to lose the weight. These suggestions may work to help you understand the body’s processes, but you will need to choose the foods that keep you healthy and let you lose the fat. Everybody’s body is different, so this information may not work for you. You should also consult with a doctor before launching any calorie restricted diet to determine any pre-existing conditions prior to dieting. This information is provided as is. All risk of use of this information is assumed by the reader. This information is copyright 2009 Randosity. All rights reserved.
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