I've discovered that eating whole foods has done wonders for me despite being a couch potato. I now avoid refined foods as much as possible though I still, on rare occasion, give in to the proverbial Big Mac attack. What I have found is that I'm not as hungry as I usually am and I've actually lost 30 pounds by doing nothing more than eating properly.
My sister's father-in-law, Bob Tyzbir, is a well-regarded
professor of nutrition at UVM and we have had long talks about the effects of various ingredients on the body. He actually makes this stuff interesting! He's been doing original research on the effects of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) on the body and the results are frightening. The body doesn't metabolize HFCS the way it does other sugars. His research, which is a gigantic team study taking many years and is being prepared for publication, shows that HFCS really does a number on the kidneys and the liver causing dangerous insulin spikes. The problem is it's in nearly every refined food on store shelves. It's not just candy either. HFCS is nearly always in soda, in prepared tomato sauces, ketchup, mustards, frozen foods, ice cream, and nearly any other prepared condiment or prepackaged meal. He's quite convinced that it is one of the leading nutritional causes of the high incidence of diabetes, heart disease, and some other malady I don't remember. As he puts it, there is no daily threshold for HFCS. In his opinion, any is too much.
After we talked about this I made a concerted effort to eliminate HFCS from my diet and the effects are striking. I've lost weight, feel better, and my blood sugar is in much better balance. Sure I'll eat a few gummibears or a mint or something on occasion, but the really hard part is shopping for foods that don't have HFCS in them.
He also really dislikes refined starches but concedes that if it's a choice between cane sugar and HFCS, always take the product with cane sugar instead. Refined carbohydrates start their conversion to sugar in the body from the moment you start chewing on them. Whole grains, whole carbs, are far better for you because the body can process them into something other than sugar.
When I cook, I usually steam or stir fry. Neither are difficult to learn and require minimal dishwashing afterwards. They're also both very healthy for you while being interesting enough to want to eat. I do make spaghetti frequently but always use whole-grain pastas and tomato sauces without HFCS and add lots of fresh vegetables. I rarely eat red meats because I don't usually care for them though I love a good hamburger and barbecue. My preference is for shellfish so I eat lots of shrimp, clams, and scallops when I cook. They're wonderful sources of low-fat protein. The veggies I cook are all from the produce section and when you stir fry, all you need to know is the order in which to cook them. It takes very little effort to do it right. At the end I usually add a sauce like garlic chilli or hoisin from a Chinese market where they sell true (and non-HFCS) versions of these sauces though making your own sauces usually isn't difficult. To sweeten the mix I generally put in some pineapple and stir fry it or add it to the tomato sauces. Pineapple in stir fry is delicious and it holds its firmness when cooked.
I don't eat small portions either. I generally eat until I'm stuffed and even then I'm losing weight because unprocessed foods make you feel full faster and so you naturally eat less. They also make you feel less tired because you don't get a sugar rush and crash. Your body is also better able extract nutrients from the foods so you're healthier. Bob, the nutritionist, tells me that if your body gets the nutrients it needs, the body turns off the appetite. What happens with so many processed foods is that they're so nutritent poor by the time they reach the table, that the body can't extract the nutrients it needs, instead converting most of the food to fats and sugars. As a result, your body quickly becomes hungry again in an attempt to tell you to feed it the nutrients it needs. You're taking in more calories than you need to satisfy your nutrient requirements.
The body does become addicted to sugar. You have to ween yourself off it, but when you do, you'll find your sugar cravings nearly cease completely. Bob does say that paying attention to cravings is important. They're your body telling you it needs some particular nutrient in a food. When you're weening yourself off sugar, ignore those cravings, but do pay attention to it after you've gone off sugar. On occasion your body will crave sugar, but when that happens, try to grab some fruit or, at worst, something with unprocessed sugar in it and eat as little of it as needed until the craving subsides. Otherwise, listen to your cravings. You'll find that when your body is satisfied, it won't be hungry nearly as often.
There's one last dictum Bob is fond of:
Breakfast like a king, lunch like a lord, dine like peasant.
In other words, make your first meal of the day your largest and the last meal the smallest. Here in the west, we tend to do just the opposite. Breakfast is also when you want to take in the majority of your simple carbs (jams, white baked breads). At dinner, simple carbs should be avoided though fresh fruits are OK any time. Of all fruits, Bob is big on bananas, and particularly after dinner. Bananas are high in potassium which helps to prevent leg cramps (charlie horses), and potassium is also very important for the production of semen :naughty:. Bananas are packed with good nutrients which are very easy for the body to extract. He says it's as close to nature's perfect food as there can be and also appears to elevate mood though he hasn't done any formal research on that.
Some good recipe sites:
Meals For You
Cooks.com
World's Healthiest Foods
Eden Foods
Epicurious.com
My grandparents were kind of amazing. They ate red meat five or six times a week at all three meals, cooked with lard, cream, and butter, and loved nothing better than prime rib. My grandfather passed away at 94 after suffering a fall, and my grandmother is still alive at 96. How did they do this? My (and Bob's) theory is that it's because my grandmother cooked everything from scratch. All her baked goods, all her produce, all her meats were basic whole, unrefined foods. She even made cakes, icings, and sauces from scratch. She made wonderful Hollandaise sauce and slathered it on everything! All this took more effort and time than most people have, so modern recipes are geared to less prep and cooking time, but the principle remains the same. Neither of my grandparents were great athletes. They enjoyed swimming in summer, and walking and gardening other times of the year. That's all they did to keep fit really. Yet neither of them had heart disease or cholesterol problems. My grandmother's heart, according to her doctor, could go for another 10 years! People of their generation (born in 1910 and 1912), ate like this all the time yet did not have nearly the incidence of heart disease, cancer, or diabetes that we see today. What's the major difference? Processed foods. When pre-packaged processed foods started becoming popular in the 40s, my grandmother never took to them. She hated cake mixes and frozen foods. She preferred to freeze or can her own vegetables from the farm and to make her own ketchup,
amazing pectin-free sun jams, mustards, and sauces. She even made her own dinner rolls and breads. And yes, it was all completely delicious. I cannot think of a better example of just what processed foods have done to us. They ate like kings on the bounty from the local markets and the farm itself yet we eat relatively little and suffer from all kinds of what I believe are nutritionally-related diseases that were rare in their day.
See, the whole deal isn't controlling your appetite, but what you eat. Once you change the
types of foods you eat, you'll find yourself feeling less hungry naturally. You'll feel full when you do eat and you'll be hungry less often. You'll have more energy, be sharper of mind, and even have a better mood. It angers me no end that so many diets make you jump through all kinds of hoops and you're still hungry or your palate is so numbed by eating the same things that you lose all will power. It really, really, doesn't have to be like that at all. I eat really well and yes, I'm not perfect. I fall for Doritos or Funions sometimes and I'm guilty of buying frozen pizzas which aren't from Trader Joe's. Sometimes you just drag yourself home after a day much longer than you prepared for and you just don't have the energy to cook. It happens. What matters is that you cook and eat right the great majority of the time. What's really nice is that the more you do it, the easier it becomes so you can throw something together really quickly without having to guess. My grandmother was expert at this. She could just look at a cake or a roast and know when it was done. Simple as that. That skill took years to perfect of course, but in the year or so I've been eating and cooking with whole foods, I've gotten pretty good with it; particularly with the wok recipes.
Eat right and you won't need to worry about regaining weight or following a strict diet plan.
I'm pushing Bob to write a diet book that focuses on these very things. I think it would be huge.