Understanding Calorie Density: The Secret To Losing Weight Effortlessly

Weight loss is a simple matter. If you eat more calories than your body needs you will gain weight. If you eat fewer calories than your body needs you will lose weight. It doesn't get any simpler than this. Yet we humans tend to analyze and theorize even the simplest things until they're so complicated nobody can figure them out. We do this when it comes to losing weight.
We confuse the above principle when we rephrase it as “Eat Less, Move More”, or “Eat Less, Exercise More”. We've all heard it phrased this way often enough and it has become the standard formula for losing weight. And it sounds like the same thing as the principle above, doesn't it? It isn't. One is talking about eating fewer calories, the other is talking about eating less food. When we rephrase it to say “Eat Less” we focus on eating less food under the mistaken belief that doing so is the best way to eat fewer calories. It isn't. The truth is that we eat the amount of food we do for a reason. We have a biological drive to eat food and we tend to eat the same weight of food every day. If one day we eat more or less than our normal, we tend to compensate for it the next. If we repeatedly eat less food than our biological drive tells us to, we find ourselves spending every waking moment thinking about food and feeling like we're starving to death, until eventually we give in and eat our fill. This is why diets fail so many people. While some people do succeed with this, they're few and far between. They're the ones with superhuman willpower, or they're sadists and like self-torture! But most people only suffer and fail. Repeatedly. Countless diets come and go, and all of them work under the same principle, which is that we can muster the willpower to do something different for a certain period of time, and the hope is that you'll lose enough weight to make you happy before you run out of willpower. These diets fail because they work against the powerful biological drive we all have to eat. Some people, because they can lose the same 25 pounds over and over every time they try their specific diet, actually believe what they're doing is working! They eat what they want until they decide they're too fat, then starve and deny themselves until they're at a more acceptable weight, then repeat the process over and over. That is not health or success, that is a cycle of abuse.
Fortunately we don't need to east less food. We only need to eat fewer calories. They are NOT the same thing. Repeat that to yourself! Eating fewer calories is NOT the same thing as eating less food. Eating fewer calories leads to weight loss and success. Eating less food leads to hunger, pain, and eventually, failure. What's the difference? Some foods have more calories than other foods. Once you understand the fact that you tend to eat the same weight of food every day it's as simple as satisfying your appetite on those foods that will do it with fewer calories! You will not find it easy to lose weight eating cheeseburgers, french fries, ice cream and milkshakes. Those foods have enough calories in relation to their weight that you'll find yourself hungry again before you've burned off the calories they provide. On the other hand, you'll find it hard not to lose weight if you ate nothing but broccoli. Broccoli is so low in calories compared to it's weight that you would likely be sick of eating it before you consumed enough calories to gain weight. In fact, it is so low in calories that you'd waste away into nothing, even if you ate pounds of it at a time. Fear not! I am NOT pushing an all broccoli diet! I am only explaining the concept of Calorie Density.

Calorie Density is the relationship between how many calorie a food has compared to how much the food weighs. Since we tend to eat the same weight of food every day we can satisfy our appetites with foods lower in calorie density and consume fewer calories overall for the same volume of food we're used to, and start to lose weight while satisfying our appetite. Or we can satisfy our appetites with foods higher in calorie density and consume more calories overall, staying at our current weight or perhaps even gaining. The basic principle one needs to understand is that if we are not losing weight on our current diet then we need to start eating more of the foods that are lower in calorie density.

With the mental focus being on eating MORE of the lower calorie density foods we are not setting ourselves up for failure. We are not setting ourselves up for the pitfalls that await people who try to eat less food. We are, instead, setting ourselves up for success! It is nice to step on a scale and see that your heroic efforts to eat less have caused you to lose weight. It is a far greater joy to lose weight and realize you didn't have to deny your God given appetite for food! The one lasts only as long as your willpower holds out, the other lasts as long as you want it to because you aren't denying your appetite, you're satisfying it.

For our sake, we'll define Calorie Density as the number of calories in a pound of a specific food. I know, we seldom eat an entire pound of any one food, but that's not the point. We're not measuring actual food we're eating, and WE ARE NOT COUNTING CALORIES. We're measuring the difference in calories between different foods of the same weight. With Calorie Density it's not important how many calories are in any one serving of food, it's important to know how that food compares to the same weight of another food. I've chosen to use a pound as the measure of weight because some low calorie foods would read 0 if we measured in too small an amount. We could use any weight we wanted to. It could be calories per ounce, kilogram, or ton, as long as we measured each food the same.

Below is a list of some foods and how many calories there are in a pound of that food. Keep in mind that the foods listed below show the calories for how we're likely to eat them. Nobody eats raw chicken, uncooked rice, or unpopped popcorn. The only numbers that matter to us here are the calories of the food as it is when we're ready to eat it.

(I've taken the information below from http://cronometer.com)

Food	Calories-Per-Pound
Lettuce, Iceberg	64
Celery, Raw	73
Peppers, Sweet, Green, Raw	91
Spinach, Raw	104
Cauliflower, Raw	114
Cabbage, Raw	114
Strawberries, Raw	145
Cantaloupe, Raw	154
Broccoli, Raw	154
Honeydew, Raw	163
Brussels sprouts, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt	163
Butternut Squash, Baked	182
Onions, Raw	182
Carrots, Raw	186
Oranges, raw, navels	222
Apples, raw, with skin	236
Blueberries, Raw	259
Mangos, Raw	272
Cereal, hot, Purity cracked wheat, prepared	313
Oats, regular and quick, cooked with water	322
Potatoes, boiled	395
Bananas, Raw	404
Potatoes, Baked	427
Corn, boiled, drained, without salt	436
Rice, brown, long-grain, cooked	504
Millet, cooked	540
Quinoa, cooked	545
Barley, pearled, cooked	558
Spaghetti, whole-wheat, cooked	563
Rice, white, long-grain, regular, cooked	590
Beans, black, boiled	599
Turkey, breast, roasted	613
Beans, pinto, boiled	649
Kentucky Fried Chicken, Coleslaw	654
Spaghetti, cooked, enriched, with added salt	713
Pork chops, boneless, broiled	731
Chickpeas, boiled	745
Chicken Breast, meat only, roasted	749
Beef, ground, 95% lean/ 5% fat, broiled	776
Taco Bell, Soft Taco with chicken, cheese and lettuce	858
Steak, lean, fried in olive oil	890
Ice Cream, Vanilla	940
Ice Cream, Chocolate	981
Tortillas, ready-to-bake or -fry, corn, without added salt	1008
Chicken thigh, meat and skin, roasted	1040
Beef, ground, 80% lean / 20% fat, pan-broiled	1117
Bread, whole-wheat, commercially prepared	1121
Smuckers Seedless Strawberry Jam (Preserves)	1135
Burger King, Whopper, with cheese	1135
McDonald's, Big Mac	1167
Bread, white, commercially prepared	1203
Burger King, Chicken Tenders	1312
McDonald's, Chicken McNuggets	1321
Beef, Chuck Roast, trimmed to 1/8” fat, braised	1339
Honey	1380
McDonald's, French Fries	1435
Burger King, French Fries	1503
Pork sausage, fresh, cooked	1539
Kentucky Fried Chicken, Popcorn Chicken	1594
Cheese, swiss	1725
Pretzels, hard, plain, salted	1725
Kraft, Stove Top Stuffing Mix Chicken Flavor	1730
Popcorn, air-popped	1757
Rice cakes, brown rice, plain	1757
Sugars, granulated	1757
Cake, chocolate, commercially prepared	1766
Cheese, cheddar	1830
Beef Jerky, chopped and formed	1861
Crackers, saltines (includes oyster, soda, soup)	1911
Cheese, parmesan, grated	1957
Tortilla chips, yellow, plain, salted	2265
Nutella	2454
Potato chips, plain, salted	2461
Bacon, cooked, pan-fried	2420
Milk Chocolate	2429
Nuts, Cashews, dry roasted, with salt added	2606
Peanuts, all types, dry-roasted, with salt	2656
Peanut butter, smooth style, with salt	2670
Nuts, almonds, dry roasted, without salt added	2701
Chocolate, dark, 70-85% cacao solids	2715
Margarine, regular, with salt	3237
Butter	3255
Oil, Coconut	3913
Oil, Olive, Extra Virgin	4013
Oil, Canola	4013

So what does all that mean to those of us trying to lose weight? Simple. If you fill up on foods higher in calorie density you're probably going to gain weight. If you fill up on foods lower in calorie density you're probably going to lose weight. If you're wanting to lose weight and it's not happening, you need to look at the foods you eat and replace some of the foods higher in calorie density with foods lower in calorie density.

Sometimes the same food can have a wide range of calorie density depending on how it's processed or prepared. One example is corn. Whole kernel corn, boiled in water, is 436 calories per pound. But if you grind that corn into corn flour, process it into tortilla chips, and bake them with a little oil... you now have a whopping 2265 calories per pound! It is similar for potatoes. Boiled potatoes are 395 calories per pound. But if you eat them in the form of McDonald's french fries you have 1435 calories per pound, and if you process them and deep fry them in oil to make potato chips you now have 2461 calories per pound! Long grain white rice is 590 per pound while long grain brown rice is only 504 calories per pound! Make rice cakes out of that and you now have 1757 calories per pound! Let's look at wheat. You can take whole wheat berries and cook them up in water to make a wonderfully nutritious breakfast cereal. So few people do this that I couldn't find a calorie count for preparing them that way. But I did find a cracked wheat cereal in the list that weighs in at 313 calories per pound. Not bad! If we take that wheat and grind it into flour and make whole wheat spaghetti out of it then we now have 563 calories per pound. Still not too bad. But if we process that flour into regular spaghetti we now have 713 calories per pound! And if instead of spaghetti we make bread out of that wheat we now have 1203 calories per pound! Process it even further into saltine crackers and you're looking at 1911 calories per pound!

From this we learn that the more you process a food the more calories it's going to have when you eat it. The more you process food the more calories it has. And the less nutrition it has. And the less hunger satisfaction it gives you. This introduces our next point, which is Satiety. The satiety of a food is how much it satisfies your appetite. How much a food satisfies your appetite depends on it's weight, volume, and how long it takes your body to digest. The longer it takes your body to digest food the longer it's going to be before you're hungry again. Does it do any good to satisfy your appetite on foods that will pass right through you and leave you hungry again? No. Your body will digest bread faster than it will digest cracked wheat cereal. Bread is made from wheat which has already been ground into flour. It contains millions of air pockets which immediately soak up digestive fluids and break apart. Think about how long a slice of bread will stay intact if you put it in a bowl of water. Not long. Within a few seconds it's soggy and falling apart and you can't even lift it whole from the bowl without it falling apart. Your body has to do very little work to digest it because it's already been processed. Pasta is also made from flour, but it's much denser and has a lot of water infused into it. Put pasta into a bowl of water and it'll eventually get mushy and fall apart, but not instantly like bread does! It digests slower and therefore gives you more satiety. Cracked wheat cereal goes even further. It will take much longer to digest. Your body really has to work at it because it's not been ground into flour! Notice this simple principle: The more you process the wheat the more calories it has, the less nutrition it has, and the less appetite satisfaction it gives you. This is true of all foods. The more you process food the less nutrition it has, the more calories it has, and the less it will satisfy your appetite. The more whole, intact foods you eat and the fewer processed foods you eat, the easier it will be to lose weight while satisfying your appetite.

What do I eat that allows me to stuff my belly as full as I ever have, yet lose weight effortlessly week after week, month after month? Easy!! I eat mostly whole foods less than 600 calories per pound. I occasionally stray to foods higher on the list, but not often, and I am careful about how much of those foods I eat. I limit processed foods in my diet. I don't eat any meat. It's simply too high in calories and gives less satiety than other foods lower in calories. Being a lifelong meat eater who swore I could not satisfy my appetite without it, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that potatoes, rice, and beans offer more satiety than meat does! That's right!! Potatoes, rice, and beans will stick with you longer than meat will. No wonder I routinely went looking for leftovers in the fridge 3-5 hours after eating a dinner loaded high with meat. I seldom do that now because I'm still satisfied with all the potatoes, rice, pasta, and beans I eat for dinner! You can live just fine without meat. And if you cant give it up, then focus on eating MORE of the lower calorie dense foods and without even thinking about it you'll naturally eat less meat. It's true! And almost effortless, and painless.

When I talk about not eating meat I always here the same question. “Where do you get your protein?” I get my protein from the same place everyone else does. From the food I eat. Since I didn't write this to focus on protein, let me sum this topic up shortly. The World Health Organization says an adult needs 5% of their calories to come from protein. 6% if you're a pregnant female. White rice meets this requirement with 7% of it's calories coming from protein. Potatoes have 8%, brown rice has 9%, corn has 11%, oatmeal has 15%, and black beans have 27%. An even higher authority than the World Health Organization agrees! Mother Nature herself! Human breast milk contains about 5% of it's calories from protein. At no point in our lives do we grow faster than as an infant, doubling in size in just a few short months! Mother's milk is the perfect food to see us through this period of profound growth, and it contains only 5% of it's calories in the form of protein. Is there really any time in our lives when we need more? No. I'm exercising and building muscle mass just fine on my current diet, and there is a growing list of professional athletes who are discovering they can perform better than ever on a vegetarian diet. It's almost as if our entire education on nutrition in our country has been paid for by the meat and dairy industry! (Smile)

Let's talk about sugar and fat! Honey is 1380 calories a pound. Sugar is 1757. Margarine is 3237, butter is 3255. Olive oil and canola oil are both 4013 calories a pound! Adding any of these to foods to our diet can have only one outcome: It adds calories without adding satiety. You can easily double the calories in food by adding sugar or fat to it, without adding one bit of extra appetite satisfaction. You simply do not need any added sugar or fat in your diet. Not even the “healthy” oils like Olive Oil. You can get all the essential fats you need from whole plant foods. But our diets are loaded with sugars and fats and we're loath to give them up. Without them foods are bland and boring, right? Well, yeah! But only because we've been bombarding our taste buds with unnatural amounts of sugars and fats. If we stop overloading our palate with them we find we actually enjoy the tastes of food without them. It's true! It's like when the electricity goes out and suddenly everything goes quiet. The TV goes off, the radio goes off, the computers, refrigerators and heaters stop humming and everything is eerily silent. For a few minutes, anyway. And then you start to hear things. The natural sounds of the world. The wind outside. The birds. The neighbor's wind chimes. A dog off in the distance. By the time the power comes back on you've grown accustomed to these new sounds and for a brief moment actually miss them once all the noise of modern life returns. In a similar fashion your taste buds will adapt to not loading your food with sugars and fats, and what's more, they'll actually like the new tastes they experience! Some people have no trouble simply cutting down on the sugars and fats they add to their diet. More power to them! Some other people, however, find it very difficult. That is because some foods are very addictive. Sugars, fats, and cheeses are all highly addictive foods. People who are addicted to them will find it difficult to merely eat less. To those people I would suggest eliminating those foods entirely. You wouldn't suggest to a heroin addict that he merely cut back his habit to a more manageable level, would you? Of course not! You'd tell him the only way to overcome his addiction is to cut it out entirely. The same goes for food addictions. You can't cure them by merely cutting back. To be free from their hold you have to cut out the foods you're addicted to.

Summary

Start eating more foods lower in calorie density and you will naturally, without even thinking about it, find yourself eating less of the foods higher in calorie density. At some point you may choose to eliminate entirely some of the foods higher in calorie density, and your health and your weight will thank you for it! Stop adding excess calories to your food in the form of sugars and fats, and allow your taste buds to experience a new world of subtle yet delicious tastes. Doing these things will lead you to a diet that is rewarding, healthy, and lets you lose weight effortlessly while satisfying your appetite fully. If you have only a few pounds to lose you might only need to tweak your current diet a little bit. If you have more to lose, bigger changes might be necessary. If you have a lot to lose, like me, you may need to make even bigger changes yet. Not everyone has to make the drastic changes in diet that I have. While it's true that I've come to believe that a low-fat vegetarian diet is the healthiest for all humans to eat, you don't have to agree with that to put Calorie Density to work for you. I had 300 pounds to lose, that called for BIG changes! But even the drastic changes I've made are rewarding and easy to stick with because of this one simple fact: I get to eat as much as it takes to satisfy my appetite. And whatever level of changes you decide to make for yourself you can be assured of that same thing: You'll lose weight AND satisfy your appetite in the process, making it a “diet” you can live with for the rest of your life.

Eat Well! 

Norm  -aka John Smith

 

-Note-

It's very likely that some of the foods you eat aren't in the list I included. To look up the calorie density of foods I didn't list you can go to http://cronometer.com and on the right side of the page towards the bottom you can “Search Foods”. Pick the food you want, enter 454 for the number of servings and from the pull down menu select Grams for the unit of measure. 454 grams = one pound. Doing this will give you the number of calories in one pound of any food in their database, and will let you compare it to foods in the list above. If you have trouble with these instructions, contact me with a list of foods and I'll run them for you!

Weight Loss Update: 05/16/12

Today's number is:

 The scale reports I've lost 7.4 pounds over the past two weeks.  This brings my total lost to 172 pounds leaving me 128 pounds from my goal.  I continued with my lifestyle of eating to complete satisfaction, and occasionally, a bit more. (I'm still working on the "bit more" part.) However, I did modify my food intake somewhat, adding in more raw vegetables into the mix.  And I did increase my exercise considerably over the past two weeks.  These two things together caused my rate of weight loss to increase, compared to the preceeding 2 week period, putting me slightly ahead (0.48 pounds) of my long term goal of losing 1% body weight per week.
 I was hoping for an even bigger loss, since I've put so much effort into exercise, but I am by no means disappointed.  All the exercise may have produced muscle mass which would have offset weight loss, so all in all, I'm pleased!!
 For the next two weeks I think there is room for even more raw vegetables in my diet.  I will, however, lighten up a bit on the exercise. 

 Happy Eating!

 -Norm  aka John Smith

Weight Loss Update: 05/02/2012

This week's number is:

The scale reports I've lost exactly 5.0 pounds since my last weigh-in two weeks ago.  This puts my weight at 321 pounds and my total weight loss at 165 pounds.  Once again, as has been the trend for a while now, I fell slightly short of my goal of losing 1% of my body weight per week.  This time, however, this now puts me slightly below my goal of 1% per week as measured from February 8th, which is when I first set that as a goal.  How slightly?  0.56 pounds!  In the twelve weeks since Feb. 8th I've lost 40 pounds and spent most of that time ahead of my goal.  Seeing how my weight loss in that time has been mostly effortless I believe the goal of 1% of my body weight per week is not only reasonable, but quite doable.  Therefore I will continue forward with that same goal!  I much preferred being slightly ahead of my goal though, so will put in a bit of effort and see if I can steer it that direction over the next two weeks!

 Happy Eating!

 -Norm  aka John Smith

Giving Up Meat: A Guide For Those Who Cannot Live Without Meat

Last Friday my wife and I attended a buffet style fund raising dinner for our local food bank.  Most of what they served I chose to avoid. White bread, white rolls, some kind of pasta dish, mashed potatoes, both laden with dairy and fat, and a monster roast beef!   Fortunately they had a salad and a huge platter of raw vegetables, with which I filled up my plate and went on my way.

Roast Beast

 When I got to the roast beef I didn't even glance at it, but carried my plate off back to my table without even thinking about it.   I didn't want any.  I didn't look longingly at it and wish I could partake of just a little bit.  I didn't think back to my carnivore days and remember how much I used to enjoy meat.  I didn't feel cheated or deprived.  The truth of the matter is that when I looked at it I did not see food.  It might as well of been Squid Brains, Roast Of Dalmation, or something a Klingon would eat.
 I talk to a lot of people about food, nutrition, and weight loss.  It's hard not to do so after you've lost 160 pounds.  It is a topic that just comes up.  And so many people, when they hear what I eat, feel they could never eat like I do because they love their meat too much!!  I hear "I'm glad that works for you but I could never give up my meat!" all the time!  Quite often from people who know how much meat I used to eat!!
 Let's spend a minute and talk about how much meat I used to eat!  I ate more meat than 99.99999% of people on this planet.   I've never met anyone who ate more meat than I.  I would buy the largest family packs of meat the grocery store had to offer, and I'd dig through and compare the stickers to make sure I got the biggest ones!!  I do not have a large family!!  Just my wife and I, and she never ate a lot of meat.  I didn't mind...  more for me!!   Every meal was centered around meat.  I would easily eat 2 pieces of chicken while serving up our dinner plates, and my plate would always have 3 or 4 more pieces on it!  But only because I had to save some room on the plate for the potatoes or vegetables.  I almost always went back for seconds, which was really thirds when you count that which I ate before even serving up the plates!!  When putting away the leftovers, I'd judge how much I'd need for the next day to make it through till dinnertime, and if there was enough I might snack on a bit more while putting it away!!    My daily intake of meat easily averaged in the pounds.  Exactly how much I couldn't tell you, but every meal was centered around meat and if it wasn't, I felt cheated.  I never went a whole day without eating meat.  When I started contemplating making dietary changes, eliminating meat was OFF THE TABLE.  Anyone who says they'd rather die than give up their meat...   I know exactly how they feel. It's where I started, a year and a half ago.
 I remember feeling the same way about something else, many years ago.   As a young man I was an alcoholic.  I remember coming to the realization that if I didn't do something, it'd kill me.  I would not be one of those lifelong alcoholics who drank just a bit too much and stretched their disease out for many decades.  No, I drank in such excess that my life wouldn't have been manageable for that long.  I remember feeling that parts of me would rather die than live without alcohol.  I would never say such a thing out loud though!  That would be admitting just how bad my problem was!  That is because there is a stigma attached to alcohol and drug addictions.   Tell an alcoholic or a heroin addict that their addiction is killing them and they don't usually respond with "Yeah, but I'd rather die than give it up", even if parts of them really believe that...    No, instead, because of the social stigma attached they'll usually bow their heads and agree that they really should do something about their problem.  And they would, too, if they knew how to overcome that part of them that'd rather die than give up their addiction.
 But there is no such social stigma with meat, and so people are a lot more free to be honest about their feelings, and they blurt it out as naturally as any other feeling they have.  On the mild side some say they'd love to be able to eat healthier but they don't believe they could give up meat.  On the more dramatic side they say they'd rather die than give up meat!  Either way, it's an admission that even if health is on the line, they do not feel they can overcome their addiction.  And let there be no mistake about it...   we are talking about an addiction!!
 Most every alcoholic or drug addict, if honest with themselves, would love to be free from their addiction.  They'd love to not need their addiction.  They hold an intense fear of cutting back because they know they'll suffer and crave their addiction all the more, and they view a world without the substance they abuse as one of constant denial, pain, and misery.  They'd love to be free from their addiction but don't know how it is possible without much suffering and pain, and while they see people around them who have overcome their addiction they aren't sure they could do the same thing and fear trying will leave them even worse off than before.  And so rather than try they focus on the pleasure their addiction brings them and try to convince themselves that it's worth all the suffering it brings them.
 Are food addictions any different?   Yes, and no.  They're different in the sense that there aren't many social costs in having a food addiction.  There can be some social costs if you're on the very extreme end of food addictions, but for the most part, even those don't come close to the social costs attached to other addictions.  Sure, your health may suffer and you may die prematurely, but for the most part, your loved ones will still love you and everyone will have sympathy on you when your health suffers for it.   Very few people take pity on an alcoholic or drug addict who abuse themselves to the point of poor health.  The social stigma attached makes it clear to everyone: It's their own fault!!  In this regard, our food addictions are very different than other addictions.
 But are they any different in non-social costs?   No.  They still take a toll on our health.  They still convince parts of ourselves that we will suffer immeasurably if we tried to give up our addiction, and that trying will only lead to failure, making our suffering for nothing.  They convince the rest of us that the pleasures they bring us now are worth any health costs we may pay down the road. 
 Are there any meat eaters reading this?  I'm talking about people who, like I used to be, don't think they could ever live without their meat?   Would you give it up if it were painless to do so?  Would you give it up if you wouldn't miss it at all?  Would you give it up if you could look at it and not want it?  Would you give it up if you could satisfy your appetite fully and completely without it?  I'm betting some of you would, and that part of you wishes it could be this easy, but that another part of you doesn't believe it can.
 I am here to tell you that the road to giving up meat need not be filled with suffering and pain.  It need not leave you hungry.  It need not leave you with a void in your gut.  You can satisfy your appetite completely and fully without eating any meat at all!!   I do!!
 If you're willing to give it up "cold turkey", just start filling your stomach full of delicious and nutritious vegetables and starches and stop eating meat today!!    If you're skeptical, do as I did, and transition away from meat slowly.  Follow this basic principle...   you tend to eat the same weight/volume of food every day.  If you eat more or less on any particular day you'll tend to compensate the other direction the next.  Use this principle to your advantage.  Do not focus on eating less meat.  Instead, focus on eating more healthy foods.  Load your plate a bit higher on vegetables, a lot higher on potatoes, rice, beans. When you go for seconds, again, pile high the potatoes and rice!  Still put some meat on your plate, but focus on eating MORE of those other things.   You will, without any further thought, start eating less meat.  And you'll learn something in the process...   starchy vegetables and grains, like potatoes and rice, fill you up and satisfy your appetite just as good as meat, but they satisfy your hunger longer than meat does!!  It's true!!   I almost always went looking for more meat to snack on a few hours after eating dinner...  but if I fill my stomach full of potatoes, rice, and beans, I'm not hungry again till the next day. 
 You may find that over a few weeks or months that you're just not eating as much meat as you used to, and more surprisingly...  that you didn't miss it.   Use these weeks/months to watch movies and videos about modern meat production and how much less healthy it is compared to how our grandparents raised meat animals.  Use these weeks/months to educate yourself on the relationship between meat consumption and health.  Do these things and when you realize how much less meat you've been eating by following the suggestions above, you may find yourself at a point where you decide you're ready to stop eating it altogether.  And there you'll be...   ready to make that decision because you WANT to.

 Happy Eating!

 -Norm  aka John Smith

327: A Milestone To Remember!

 I remember the first time I ever stepped on a scale and had it read 327.  I was a young man, some 25-26 years ago.  327 pounds!!  I had gained almost 70 pounds since graduating high school.  I remember walking home that day, feeling how all the excess weight was slowing me down, tiring me.  I decided I had to do something about it!  And I did!  I set out with all the determination a young man could muster, and I succeeded using what we're all told is the only way to lose weight: Eat Less, Exercise More.    I had very limited success in the "Eat Less" department, but being young, determined, and in otherwise good health, I went to town on the "Exercise More" half of the equation.    Over the months to come I steadily lost weight and got down to my all-time low weight as an adult: 240 pounds.  I had lost a whopping 87 pounds!   I tried to lose more weight, but no amount of starvation or increased exercise would budge the scale any further.  In fact, it was pure torture on both fronts just to keep the scale steady, and eventually I gave in and once again started to gain weight.
 This experience laid the foundation for what would become my standard approach to weight loss over the years.  When I got "too fat" I'd eat less and exercise more, with heavy emphasis on the exercise.  This approach worked with lower levels of success each time I tried it, never matching the 87 pounds I lost on my first attempt.
 Some five or six years after that, I was again well into my 300's, I'm quite sure even higher than 327, but I don't recall ever weighing myself then.  That approach worked for me again, and again I lost a lot of weight, though this time not nearly as much and I only got down to around 260-270 pounds.
 Then again, in my early 30's, I was again well above 327 and again, I exercised my way back down, this time to around 300.  By my late 30's I was pushing 390 pounds and I again attempted to lose weight...  but by this time my body had started to rebel and after all those years of abusing it with all that excess weight, I was no longer capable of doing the massive amount of exercise required for me to lose weight.  I fizzled out at 360.
 In my low to mid 400's I tried to do as much exercise as possible, but wasn't capable of doing enough to lose weight.  The best I could hope for was to slow the speed at which I gained.
 Until now!!   This week I've sailed through the 327 pound mark and have lost a total of 160 pounds, almost double of what I lost on that first attempt all those years ago.  What's more, exercise is not the major focus, nor is eating less.   Moderate exercise coupled with a whole-foods starch-centered, plant-based, no-added-fat diet allows me to say goodbye to the torture of starving myself and of continuous exercise.  There will be no torture of trying to maintain my weight once I've lost all I need to, only the continued joy of eating the foods I've learned to love on this journey I'm on!  There will be no more 327's in my future! I've passed that mark for the last time!  Thank you Dr. McDougall!!

 Next Milestone: 300

 Happy Eating!

 -Norm  aka John Smith

Weight Loss Update: 04/18/2012

This weeks number is:

 The scale shows I've lost another 6.4 pounds in the past two weeks, which is just shy of my goal of losing 1% of my body weight per week, as measured over the past two weeks, but still puts me about 0.9 pound ahead of that goal as measured from February 2nd.
 Once again, I am left shaking my head in wonderment over how this is possible.  I have cut back on my exercise these past two weeks out of concern I was putting too much strain on my hips and knees.  In addition, I have put no effort into eating less, just sailing by on auto-pilot, as it were, and have felt more than once in the past two weeks that I've really been eating too much.  I honestly expected a weight loss of 2 or 3 pounds.  Sometimes I shake my head in wonderment over how often I shake my head in wonderment over the transition I've been going through.  Thank you Dr. McDougall!!
 These two weeks weight loss also put me past another milestone!  Expect another posting about that in the next day or two!

 Happy Eating!!

-Norm  aka John Smith

Dr. McDougall's New Book: The Starch Solution

This is not just another diet book!!   Dr. McDougall's approach to diet and health isn't a fad to follow for a few weeks and maybe lose a few pounds...    He tells you how to eat for the rest of your life and lose ALL the weight you need to, and keep it off, and enjoy the maximum health your body is capable of.   For the rest of your life!    I'm at 154 pounds and still losing.   I have my copy on pre-order!   Click the picture below to see it's listing on Amazon.

 Happy Eating!!

 -Norm  aka John Smith