A goal many of us have - what to eat to achieve optimum weight, and some special considerations for women.
I was reading through some of my previous posts on eating for fat loss and improving health, and I thought some of you might think I am promoting "a meat and fat only" diet. Nothing could be further from the truth, so this week I thought I would try and show you some examples on what to eat. Let me make it abundantly clear from the outset that I am NOT a cook, in any way shape or form. I get home from work late, and the last thing I feel like doing is cooking, so I do stuff that is fast and healthy. Anyone that actually knows how to cook can probably make amazing meals with the concepts. Secondly, I am NOT a food photographer, so the plates may not look as appetizing as they might otherwise if someone else had taken the photos. But hopefully you will get the idea of how to eat to lose weight and improve health.
I explained the science in this post, on how the key to losing weight is keeping blood sugar and blood insulin levels low. When blood sugar and therefore blood insulin levels are high, our body simply cannot burn fat - it is impossible, as the body prioritizes the burning of sugar. Fat is locked in the fat cells and can't be burned at all until blood sugar and insulin levels fall again. Furthermore, unless one is very active, the excess blood sugar will get converted to fat and stored. This is far more important than the number of calories consumed. Many people can eat a surprising number of calories and not gain weight if the foods are chosen wisely.
So what is the key? Avoid any form of sugar (anything ending in "ose" on a label), alcohol, and starch, as these are the foods that increase blood sugar and blood insulin quickly. Cutting out sweet beverages like soda pop and juice, as well as sweet desserts can be huge. Avoid flour products like baked goods and pasta, and gravies and soups thickened with flour or starch. The dieting mistake many make is eating "low fat" versions of foods, like low-fat dairy. The problem with this is the food then has a higher ratio of sugar, which leads to the blood-sugar spike and the inability to burn fat, which wouldn't happen if the higher fat version were consumed as the fat would slow the sugar's journey into the bloodstream. Quality fats are actually very healthy for us and don't cause heart disease as we have been lead to believe. There is more and more science (see below) backing up the idea that low starch, high protein and fat diets actually improve metabolic health, including cholesterol and triglyceride levels. A recent example is this study in the well respected Journal of the American Medical Association, that examined many kinds of popular diets over the course of a year, and concluded that the Atkins style diet induced by far the greatest weight loss, and the best blood profiles leading to better health outcomes. Physicians that are up-to-date with the current diet research should feel comfortable recommending this kind of diet.
When bread and baked goods are such a big part of our life, it can be hard to imagine life without them. Part of the solution can be to find substitutions. For example, put a spaghetti sauce over spaghetti squash or julienned zucchini (if you have a mandolin this can be easy). Replace the noodles in soups with bean sprouts. My girlfriend and nutrition guru Judy Chambers uses nori sheets (the Japanese seaweeds that sushi is made with) like a wrap, filling them with nut butters, humous, liver pate or soft cheeses and rolling them up for an easy snack. Yum!
So, here is a breakfast I like - free-range eggs, nitrate nitrate MSG sugar-free bacon, a fresh tomato, and kale cooked in bacon grease. YUM! Kale is a veggie that often people don't like - I highly recommend trying it cooked in good quality bacon grease. Any of the dark, leafy greens would be really tasty this way, and may be a way to make them more appealing to kids. I've done chard and collard greens this way too. For those in the Vancouver area, Oyama Sausage on Granville Island sells chemical-free, sugar-free bacon. I wouldn't advise eating the chemical-filled bacon found on most supermarket shelves, so read labels!Lunch can be a mish mash of snacks that you can bring along. Hard boiled egg, an avocado, box of cherry tomatoes, nori-sheet roll ups (bring the nut butters/ soft raw cheeses to work and roll them up at lunch time, as the nori sheets will go soggy if they sit too long.) Unpasteurized sauerkraut comes in jars that you can keep at work if you have a fridge - fabulous to add to any meal, as the bacterial culture is good for the gut, and the sour taste is great. Ready-to-eat cooked salmon chunks can be purchased, or bring a chicken leg from last-night's dinner. The key to lunch and snacks is thinking ahead. Very few coffee shops sell protein snacks and vegetables - everything has bread, so planning and bringing snacks can keep you on track. Cooking enough dinner to bring for lunch the next day also works very well.
Dinner here is grass-fed, un-medicated beef tenderloin cooked rare, steamed broccoli and bok choy with a cheese sauce made by melting raw cheddar in a sauce pan and stirring in a couple of spoonfuls of raw plain yogurt to give it a slightly sour taste. Not as smooth or fancy as other cheese sauces, but very tasty in my opinion. And a salad made from an organic salad mix from the local farmers market with a couple of cherry tomatoes cut in, and a dressing of flax oil and balsamic vinegar. A meal of simple flavours, and very quick to prepare.
When going out for dinner, it may be helpful to have a protein/fat snack before leaving home (piece of raw-milk cheese, some raw walnuts) so you have an easier time keeping your hands out of the bread basket. Most restaurants are happy to exchange the baked potato or the rice pilaf for more above-ground veggies if you ask them. Remember that the goal is to stop the spikes of sugar and insulin, so if you do have a glass of wine or a starch, make sure you add a protein and a fat with it to slow the sugar into the blood stream. I would guess that one would put more weight on eating plain bread than having it with a generous portion of butter or cheese. Fat and protein fill us up better than carbs, so frequently we actually eat fewer calories eating this way.
Ratios of protein, fat and veggies to eat can very depending on one's metabolic type. I would suggest going without any grain initially if weight loss is the goal, and then adding back in whole grains by the tablespoon until you find you are not losing weight anymore. Whole grain does not mean bread - the grain should actually be whole, and soaked for a few hours before cooking to decrease the nutrient inhibitors and increase the protein. I usually will have grains (buckwheat, millet, quinoi) 3 to 4 days a week for breakfast with a pat of butter and some whole raw milk or full-fat plain yogurt, and then avoid grains at lunch and dinner. Here I indulged with some apple slices and cinnamon.
Men tend to lose weight very quickly on the no sugar, no alcohol, no starch diet, which can be very frustrating for women, when couples are trying to lose weight together, and the guy drops a lot of weight and the gal loses a lesser amount. Women's complex hormonal system complicates the picture significantly. Most women will lose some weight on this plan, but if it does not work, I would suggest contacting a functional medicine doctor to get hormone levels tested, as often women put on or keep weight on when estrogen is unbalanced by progesterone. This is why weight gain at menopause is so common. Women don't suddenly start eating more, but rather hormone shifts have occurred resulting in a higher ratio of estrogen to progesterone leading to weight gain. This hormone imbalance is most likely the explanation in women that carry a lot of their weight in their hips. Once tested, bio-identical hormone creams can be prescribed as needed by the physician to balance the hormones properly, and aid in weight loss.
Please do keep the comments coming on my blog. If you want to search for other posts by title or by topic, go to www.wellnesstips.ca.
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