Greetings,
For most people, the thought of weighing all their food is a bit daunting; to say the least. The idea seems even more depressing for those of us who have failed at Weight Watchers and/or other calorie counting diets. We remember all too well the routine of buying only those foods which converted easily into a rigid Weight Watchers' point system. We also recall, how sharing a delivery meal with friends could turn into a college freshmen algebra exam if anybody within the non-Weight Watchers collective dared to order any non-conforming menu items.
When I finally gave up Weight Watchers; I left thinking, "Surely you don't need to obtain two Bachelors of Science degrees in math and nutrition in order to eat healthy?"
Well, there is some good news and there is some bad news.
The good news is that you definitely don't need to be a mathematician with a minor in nutrition in order to eat healthy. Frankly, the only people that I find who are obsessed with counting calories, are either working as super models or living unhealthy (not mutually exclusive). Hate to burst your bubble, but I have yet to receive a single endorsement for this blog from the super model community.
Yes, healthy people are conscious about calories, but only at about the same level of consciousness that you and I give to personal hygiene (sorry about the awkward comparison again, but that is the best way I can think of putting it; suggestions welcomed).
Healthy people neither routinely devourer a candy bar, a bag of potatoes chips and diet soda for lunch or mull over the calorie count of the whole wheat pita bread vs. the flat bread either. Healthy people just aim to strike a reasonable balance when it comes to food.
The reality, however, is that nothing worth having in life is free from a little work. Good health is no exception. Hence, monitoring your food intake is essential to losing weight and being healthy; and if that wasn’t enough of a bombshell; lasting good health requires that you monitor your food intake for the rest of your life! Ouch, that hurts.
There is just no way around it; trust me I have tried. You don't have to take my word for it though; just ask the 7 out of 10 Americans who admit to attempting a diet at least once in their life. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of expert research confirms that successful weight management is predicated in-part on a person being aware of how much food they eat. Shocking! You must be aware of the amount of food you eat in order to successfully manage your weight. I know what you are thinking; Neil is ready for Harvard Medical School now!
Simply put, lasting weight management requires that people eat healthy meals of a modest portion size; along with equally modestly portioned healthy snacks.
This is a simple concept which I believe should remain simple.
The corporate titans that control the American diet industry along with Big Food, have turned the simple concept of portion control into a multitude of complex formulas, replacement meals, nutritional supplements and various other programs that you must buy.
If useful at all, the caloric precision mandated in these programs is more suitable for the elite athlete who is undergoing intense training in preparation for a major competition; not the average person who is trying to improve their health while losing weight in the process.
The initial focus of any diet plan should ONLY be on building a FOUNDATION for healthy eating and improved health. Only after that foundation is established, should a person consider using complex calorie counting strategies or other mechanism to achieve specific nutrition and weight management goals.
For example, during my first triathlon training session, I asked my coach, Bing Howell, about the importance of shortening my transition times between each stage of the event.
For those not familiar with triathlons, the race consists of three stages; first the swim, then the bike and finally the run. There are transitions required to go from swim to bike and from bike to run. Veteran tri-athletes like Bing have turned these short transitions into a pure art form. Filled with synchronized acrobatics like pedalling and undressing at the same time and using only two movements to slip off bike shoes while putting on already laced running shoes; these pros will be in and out of transition in seconds. It is absolutely amazing stuff to watch.
After posing my questions regarding improving my transitions, Bing looked at me with his characteristically big grin and said, "Kid you don't need to even think about transitions, until you have gotten more comfortable with the outdoor swim, run and ride." “At best, a faster transition will shave seconds off of your time.” Half jokingly (but not really), I said, “You are probably right, I will probably be the only person taking a 3 minute breather during each transition.”
He went on to say that, “Improving your overall fitness just a little bit, especially for a beginner like you, can literally shave several minutes off your time; so focus on that first.” The same is true for Americans who are struggling with a poor relationship with food.
I have grown to hate those daily health video blogs produced by the major networks (who also receive billion is adverting revenue from Big Food) that feature a so-called nutrition specialist who gives Americans helpful hints on staying fit and remaining healthy. You know the ones, a slim women along with the host will go through three or four dishes suggesting healthy alternatives to the foods that you love, “Instead of cooking it in lard, she switched to vegetable oil; instead of the milkshake she has a frozen yogurt; instead of the fries, she had baked sweet potatoes with a touch of cinnamon”.
NEWS FLASH: Most American's are not overweight and unhealthy because they chose the bagel instead of the wrap. They are not overweight because they chose fried chicken over the baked; and they are certainly not over weight because they prefer putting the full fat ranch dressing instead of fat free Italian dressing on their salad. No! These are the food equivalents to transition times.
My race time is slow, because I need to make major improvements in my swimming, running and biking times.
Likewise, most overweight Americans are overweight because they have adopted tremendously bad habits which result in them routinely substituting TREATS for MEALS & SNACKS. They also are in the habit of adding loads of TREATS to their otherwise healthy MEAL & SNACKS. The eat this instead of that diet advice is basically asking you to switch this TREAT for another TREAT that is not as bad.
In plain English, we are not overweight because we had the fried chicken; we are over-weight because we had the 3-piece fried chicken and biscuit with a supersized ice tea on the side BEFORE dinner!
We are not overweight because we had the bagel instead of the wrap. We are over-weight because the bagel was wrapped around 10 ounces of processed chilly, processed cheese and processed steak!
We are not over-weight because we prefer the full fat ranch salad dressing; we are over-weight because we prefer the full fat ranch salad dressing as a nice cool dip to complement our 20 piece hot wing STARTER! (Note to self, never, for the rest of your life, eat or drink any food with the number 20 in it; under any circumstances.)
Counting calories in the absences of understanding the difference between a TREAT and a SNACK is like mastering the swim to bike transition without knowing how to swim or ride a bike! Sure you may manage to consume less than 2,000 calories per day, but you did it by switching a few TREATS around here and there and eating a little less junk than you normally do.
So we have come back full circle to the question at hand. How do we monitor our food intake, without subjecting ourselves to a futile exercise of counting calories, points or anything else which has no real relation to food?
Before we settle on the answer, we still must deal with one more issue. Some experts advocate that it is not the volume of food which is primarily driving up obesity rates in America, but rather the poor quality and high calorie content of the foods that have become prevalent in our diet.
The logic is sound. You can eat much more green salad then BBQ chicken wings. The not so easy part is convincing the person to switch from grilled wings to grilled asparagus and roasted tomatoes.
They go on to say that obesity rates in America will only be lowered once we begin reducing those foods which are high in fat, sugar and salt.
Of course there is a lot of truth to that advice. Restricting the amount of fatty, sugary and salty foods that you eat will definitely contribute to improved overall health and weight loss. The problem that I have with this message is that it lacks an inspirational vision for people to follow.
Think about it? Have you ever seen a CEO lay out their vision for the company by telling all the employees what they shouldn't do? Can you imagine the late Steve Jobs saying, “In order for Apple to dominate the global mobile phone space all employees must not come to work late.”? What about a basketball coach? Can you imagine Phil Jackson giving a locker room pep talk which focuses on things like being at practice on time and observing late night curfews?
No! They provide their followers with the vision to achieve anything they put their minds to. They do however admonish them that any success will require a well organized plan and a little hard work. Likewise, nobody wants a vision for good health that focuses on which foods they must give up. This is especially the case when there or many more foods that they can eat than foods that they are supposedly suppose to quit.
Furthermore, we need recognize that America has become a toxic food environment. Telling people to give up tasty foods that they have to see every single day several times a day would be like a doctor visiting a nuclear site and telling the workers that the key to preventing cancer is breathing clean air. Duh?!?!
Secondly, that advice is only partly true. We see healthy people everywhere who enjoy a juicy hamburger or eating at nice restaurants from time to time. Is the dieter supposed to be left thinking, that they will forever be relegated to naughty corner healthy food for the rest of their life.
Instead of asking a person to improve their poor relationship with food by diagnosing everything they eat; I think that a positive vision with a couple of consistent and transparent restrictions is far more effective.
My vision for health is simple;
“Enjoy the rich variety of all the foods under the sun, but remember that each meal must include two vegetables and weighs no more than 8 ounces.”
We should immediately recognize that these two rules are easy to follow and will remain consistent regardless of what the food manufactures throw at us. It doesn’t matter if they claim to take all the fat and salt out of a processed piece of meat. It doesn’t matter if they eliminate the sugar from your favourite candy bar. It doesn’t matter if they claim that you favourite surgery cereal now has twice as much whole grain as before. All that matters is that you include at least two vegetables (one fruit substitute allowed) and that your meal is of a modest portion size (8 ounces).
To that end, if you are visiting a relative’s house for dinner; make sure you add some collard greens and sweat potatoes along-side those ribs. Should be easy right?
More importantly however, when you go to the grocery store to shop for your own family; make sure you select enough produce to meet your vegetable and fruit requirement for the entire week.
In essence, the Five Rules lay out the vision for a healthy life and weight loss. It is up to each individual to fill in the details that work best for them during their period of Self Discovery.
All that has been stated, along with countless hours of researched has convinced me that the most effective way to monitor your portion sizes during the initial 60 days of observing the Five Rules is to weigh you food. You should NEVER consume a meal larger than 8 ounces.
Why weight? I chose weight because it is the closest proxy to the most natural way that humans are suppose to measure their portion size; with their EYES.
Think about it. When you enter a family cookout, does your cousin shout from the grill, "Hey, do you want 500 calories worth of BBQ spare ribs or do you want your usual 1,500?." No, he says, "I know you are hungry, I left 3 juicy ribs [that you can see] on the warmer just for you!"
Sustainable weight management can ONLY be achieved if your eyes work as accurate gauges for regulating the amount of food that you should eat. Being healthy doesn’t mean that you always turn down those nice juicy spare ribs. Being healthy means that your eyes will tell you that, even though there is no way in hell that you are going to turn down those spare ribs, that amount of food is way more than you need and way more than you NORMALLY eat.
Unfortunately in America, through aggressive marketing by corporations attempting to maximizing profits and the influx of cheap foods spurred on in-part by politically motivated commodity farm subsidies our portion sizes have deceptively increased throughout the years.
The result is that the average Americans’ eyes are conditioned from birth to reject, as too small, any portion size that is anywhere near what our bodies actually need.
We have all met Americans who come back from a vacation abroad. What is the first thing they say, “Man, I love the trip, but they don’t give you enough food over there in Europe.” Really? What they should be saying is, “Man, I like the trip, but in Europe you don’t routinely get enough food to maintain a size 42 waistline; I am glad to be back in the good ole USofA.”
It is clear that all of us need to undergo a short process where we recalibrate our eyes to what a sensible portion size should look like. It will take about 2 months for your eyes, brain and body to begin internalizing the actually amount of food that you NEED. Only after the mental deprogramming has occurred will you no longer need to weight your food.
Measuring your food serves other important purposes in addition to portion control. For instance, for a brief moment before each meal, you will be forced to pause for a second and give a small bit of consideration to what you about to eat. (I wanted to spare you the personal hygiene comparison, but it is about at that level). Having to weight that Big Mac and fries will likely deter you from eating so many of them; it is sort of like those liability waivers that adventure sports companies force you to sign before you jump out of their airplane head first at 50,000ft without a back up parachute.
The final point is that contrary to what sceptics may initially believe; weighing your food is easy and fast. Let’s break it down a bit further.
If you think about it, what you eat and where you eat fall into one of four quadrants 100% of the time.
Quadrant 1: Eating Home Cooked Meals at Home
Every kitchen should be equipped with a food scale; even if it was initially intended for food preparation. When you get home, look hard throughout your kitchen. After the dust settles, you will likely locate that old scale way in the back on the top shelf of your pantry. If not there, it may be hidden deep at the bottom of one of you cabinets behind the stack of Betty Crocker cookbooks that you inherited from your grandmother.
With the scale on the table, I simply place my plate onto the food scale instead of placing it directly onto the counter table. Easy right; Of course it is.
Quadrant 2: Eating Home Cooked Meals Outside of the Home
By default, a home cooked meal must be prepared at a home. Regardless of how familiar the food may be, Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles should not be classified as home cooked.
So if you cooked the food at a home; you should have access to the same food scale mentioned before. Hence, in the morning or the night before, I take a few minutes to weigh all the food that I plan to eat while away.
Again it is really easy. I set out the containers that I am going to carry with me to work or school and put the required ounces of the various foods in each. For example, on one day in particular I cooked some collard greens, lentil soup with mixed vegetables, cabbage, pork chops and of course a green mixed salad. The morning of, I figured that I would have three meals in addition to breakfast. According to the Five Rules, those three meals should add up to 24 ounces. So with 5 items I got out my scale and filled each container with 5 ounces (rounded up) of each item.
For the rest of the day, I didn’t have to worry about weighing my food; and I didn’t have to carry my scale with me to work or school. Yes, after serving a bit for lunch and so on, each meal will not equal 8 ounces exactly, but I know that the total amount of food consumed will average out to 8 ounces per meal.
This technique is also a good way for your eyes to slowly but surely begin the recalibration process.
To make things even easier, American stores are filled with ingenious topple ware which divided into more compartments than you can count. I have a air-tight lunch plate that houses at least four different foods.
As promised, no website log in or college algebra required and you can eat whatever you like. Placing each container on top of the scale is the only difference between the process just described and a normal routine of brown bagging lunch to work or school.
Also remember that I decided to have four meals. I am not recommending that you do the same. If you want five or six or seven or eight meals; it does not matter; as long as the portion size for each meal does not exceed 8 ounces.
Quadrant 3: Eating Non Home Cooked Meals at Home
When I tell people that they should watch their portion sizes, they immediately assume that I am a health freak. The reality is that I am far from it. I am a country boy from South Carolina that grew up on a Black Angus farm who enjoys a good BBQ when I see it.
Having said that, if you are struggling with poor health and an even poorer relationship with food; you should likely reduce the number of times you eat out at a TREAT factory or order from a TREAT factory.
There are exceptions to every rule, but the evidence is pretty clear that, in general, American restaurant only serve TREATS or MEALS that have been covered in TREATS.
Can you consistently order pizzas from Papa John’s and just have one slice? Yes. Can you consistently order Chinese take-away and stay within the Five Rules. Yes?
The problem is that doing this will require that you consistently demonstrate a higher level of will power towards food than the average healthy person has. If you actually possessed that degree of above average will power; you would not be reading this blog.
My advice is that if you want to have a TREAT; then have a TREAT. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that 8 ounces of a TREAT is a meal. No, it is just an 8 ounce TREAT. It makes more sense to have a TREAT occasionally and continue with the Five Rules shortly after.
The Five Rules is not a diet plan in the sense that you can fall on or off the wagon. The Five Rules just acknowledge the simple habits that healthy people incorporate into their daily routine. If you are in the habit of arriving to work on time and one day you show up late; you didn’t fall of the proverbial wagon. You were just late. Tomorrow you will likely go back to your normal routine of arriving to work on time. The same is true about the Five Rules.
With that being said, regardless of where the food is prepared; if you are at home you can easily weigh your food because you have access to the same scale. This should be simple and easy to do.
Quadrant 4: Eating Non Home Cooked Meals Away from the Home
At this point, I have exhausted the subject of MEALS, SNACKS and TREATS.
In short, you should only occasionally find yourself eating in Quadrant 4. Contrary to what Big Food and the restaurant industry are telling us, there are loads of fun things to do on the weekend other than stuff our faces until we drop.
Unlike popular diet advice, I think that you should really enjoy yourself on those occasions that you do decide to eat out. As mentioned during a previous post, if you have to regularly eat out due to work or travel commitments; restaurants are the only time that it makes sense to count calories. Find a calorie range that works for you and try to stick to that range when making your food selection. Also remember to include two vegetables.
In the long run, improving your health will most likely require that you shift more of you eating routine to Quadrants 1 & 2. There is just no way around it. Quadrants 3 and 4 should be reserved for occasional outings; in much the same way that you might enjoy a shot of whiskey from time to time.
So do you have to weigh everything that you eat all the time for the rest of you life? Probably not. Once your eyes are completely calibrated to a normal portion size you are free to ditch the scale. If however, you start to gain weight, or you feel really tired after eating; you should immediately pull that scale from behind those Betty Crocker books.
Happy eating
