Wednesday, October 12, 2011

FATS:


I have been asked to supply some recipes for losing weight.  Losing weight is not about recipes, it is about getting healthier.  As you get healthier your weight will automatically come down to your ideal level, whatever that number is.  I can supply some recipes we use but unless those recipes suit you or unless you are able to modify them to your tastes and needs, they  would be useless.  In order for you to be able to modify those recipes, you need to understand the basics of why those recipes are designed the way they are.  That is why I am spending more time discussing the background material so that you are armed with the logic of the whole thing.

For many years we were told that we should be eating according to the “food pyramid”, which meant eating a lot of grains.  Now Michelle Obama has been talking about “MyPlate”, which looks surprisingly similar to the plate I have described previously.  However both, Food Pyramid and MyPlate, recommend eating low-fat foods.  My experience in losing weight is exactly the opposite.  I was able to reduce my weight without eating any low-fat foods and by actually eating a lot of high-fat foods.  In the interest of full disclosure, I have to state that typically we do use low-fat milk (1%) that is because we are so used to 1% milk and whole milk simply doesn’t taste good to us anymore.  Apart from that we do not eat or drink any low-fat items.  We consume large quantities of peanut butter, almond butter, peanut oil, flax seed oil, olive oil, organic butter, Mayo, “half and half”, cheeses, walnuts, almonds, pistachio nuts, and avocados regularly.  I finish a one-pound jar of almond butter in ten days only from eating my breakfast.  We prefer almond butter to peanut butter simply because almond butter is a lot easier on your digestive system than peanut butter.  As a side note, almond butter is more expensive than peanut butter, however very good quality pure almond butter can be purchased from Trader Joe’s at a great price.

So how did I lose 70 pounds while eating foods that were not low-fat or fat-free?  Here is my theory, and I am sticking to it.  When we eat fat-free or low-fat foods, we give the body the message that there is scarcity of fats.  Along with fat-free foods most people eat a lot of carbs, which then get converted into glucose or eat proteins, which also eventually get converted into glucose.  One of the functions of insulin is to take the extra glucose in the blood stream that is not being used by the cells as energy and convert it into storage for future energy in the form of fat.  So guess what happens, you gain weight. 

On the other hand when you eat low-carb foods along with regular fats, the body gets the message that there is an abundance of fat and there is no need to store it.  Besides, eating less carbs insures that no excess glucose is available in the blood stream for conversion into fat.  Now if you only eat just the minimum amount of carbs and also exercise, then your body will need more energy for its use than it takes in.  It will get that additional energy by burning the stored fat since the body has already been told that there is no of scarcity of fat.   Ergo, you lose weight

My mantra:  I will not eat any fat-free or low-fat foods ever again.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Answer to Quiz#2:

I did receive several answers to the quiz and they were correct answers.  All those items listed have the same amount of carbs, approximately 15g each.  You can use this basic list to count carbs.  Alternatively, some people like to simplify the counting by calling 15g of carbs as equal to one serving of carbs.

Formula: 15g carbs = 1 serving of carbs

So, in order to decide what to make for a 60g dinner you can simplify the process by converting 60g of carbs into 4 servings of carbs.  Now, all you have to do is pick 4 items from the list.
·         A cup of milk
·         Half an orange
·         Half an apple
·         Half a banana
·         A third cup of white rice
·         A third cup of brown rice
·         A quarter cup of granola
·         A third cup of daal
·         A third cup of sambar
·         Three cups of raw greens
·         One and a half cup of cooked green vegetables
·         A third cup of corn
·         A quarter cup of baked potato
·         A quarter cup of french-fries
·         On tablespoon of sugar
·         One roti (chapatti) 8” diameter
·         A regular slice of bread
·         Half an English muffin
·         One fourth of a bagel

As an example, if you pick the following four items then you have balanced a meal of 60g or 4 carb servings that will satisfy you:
·         Three cups of raw greens
·         One and a half cup of cooked green vegetables
·         A cup of milk
·         Half an orange

Then, you can improve upon it by making minor modifications:
·         Three cups of raw salad
·         One cup of cooked green vegetables (Cabbage or cauliflower)
·         Half a cup of cooked okra
·         Half a cup of milk
·         Half a roti
·         Half an orange

By the way, if you want to eat one full roti, then your total goes up to 67g and that is perfectly OK.  Just make sure that your daily total stays around 170g.  You can also make thin Gujarati style rotis that are 10g each and your dinner will look like this:
·         Three cups of raw salad
·         One cup of cooked green vegetables (Cabbage or cauliflower)
·         Half a cup of cooked okra
·         Half a cup of milk (or yogurt)
·         Two Guajarati rotis
·         Half an orange
This totals of about 70g.

You can receive from your local PBS station, “Incredible Health”, a program by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MD.  I have not purchased the program but I have recently seen parts of it on KPBS in San Diego.  I realized that I had been following essentially the same technique.  My blog is equivalent of “Cliff Notes” of that program.

So look at your lunch or dinner plate as if it is the head of Mickey Mouse.  One large circle with two small circles representing ears at 10 O’clock and 2 O’clock positions.  Think of one ear as a position for your half glass of milk or equivalent yogurt.  Look at the second ear as the location of your half a piece of fruit (orange, apple, or banana).  Look at the big circle (face) as your 10” dinner plate.  Always fill half the plate with raw salad.  (I will have a detailed discussion on salads and dressings another time.)  Fill one quarter plate with whatever grains you want to eat, one roti or a slice of bread.  Fill the last quarter with meat or chicken (I can’t believe I wrote that!) or as I do, with a cup of cooked vegetables.  There you have it, a dinner of 60g to 65g carbs.

Here are some very important pointers:
1.   Serve yourself completely before you start to eat.
2.   Do not leave any serving bowls on the dinner table.
3.   Your dinner plate should look full and colorful.
4.   Your immediate reaction upon looking at your dinner plate should be; “Oh my God I won’t be able to eat all this food!”
5.   Do not get up hungry.

You must feel satisfied at the end of the meal, and you will feel satisfied if you follow these pointers.

For the first six months I was making detailed notes of everything I ate on a spreadsheet.  I was adding up carbs, fat, proteins, and calories for each meal and each day.  I was measuring everything I ate.  After a while I was very comfortable with the whole process and did not have to enter data in the spreadsheet.  I have simplified the process so that you don’t have to create a spreadsheet.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Quiz#2:

What is the one thing that is common among the following items, apart from the fact that they are all food items?
·         A cup of milk
·         Half an orange
·         Half an apple
·         Half a banana
·         A third cup of white rice
·         A third cup of brown rice
·         A quarter cup of granola
·         A third cup of daal
·         A third cup of sambar
·         Three cups of raw greens
·         One and a half cup of cooked green vegetables
·         A third cup of corn
·         A quarter cup of baked potato
·         A quarter cup of french-fries
·         On tablespoon of sugar
·         One roti (chapatti) 8” diameter
·         A regular slice of bread
·         Half an English muffin
·         One fourth of a bagel

Enough clues! 
Please enter your answer by going to the comment section of the blog.
I will give the correct answer in tomorrow’s blog.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Why Exercise?

As you regularly limit your carb intake to 170g, you’ll start losing weight.  And you’ll feel good about it, initially.  Soon, you’ll find out that you are getting tired and feeling less energetic.  Pretty soon you’ll decide that without eating more food you are going to continue to feel less energetic.  So you’ll eat more carbs and the next thing you know you’ve gained weight.  Solution?  Exercise. 

This is how it works.  When you reduce your intake of carbs, your body creates glucose from your muscles.  This makes you feel weak.  You lose weight but not the bulge around your waist and are disappointed.  Losing weight from your muscle mass has a couple of other problems too.  One, the muscles burn more sugar than other tissues.  So if you reduce muscle mass then you’ll actually slow down the process of weight reduction.  Two, your heart is made mostly of muscles.  You don’t want to weaken your heart.

When you exercise the exact opposite happens.  Your muscles crave for energy, your brain needs glucose to operate, and the rest of your body wants energy too.  What happens next?  You guessed it, the message goes out to the reserve storage of energy, fat, to convert itself into usable energy in the form of glucose.  The next thing you know is that you are losing that bulge.  Many times, as I found out, you’ll lose the bulge before the weight loss shows up on the bathroom scale!  Also, you’ll feel more energized.

The best exercise you can do is also the simplest.  It does not require any paraphernalia. Walking 30 to 60 minutes a day gives you all the exercise you’ll ever need.  When you walk you make all your big muscles work.  When the muscles have to work they don’t lose mass, instead they grow by consuming energy in the form of sugar.  Now the body has to provide more energy for that expenditure.  Where does the body get the needed extra energy from if you don’t eat it in the form of carbs?  By burning fat. 

The body has its own intelligence.  It will take fat from where it thinks it is most expendable.  In my case, I first lost fat from around my face and neck, and much later from around my tummy.  Also, don’t get discouraged if you lose weight quickly initially and if there is no change for two or three weeks.  The body likes to adjust itself in mysterious ways.  There is no need to solve the mystery.  Just as long as you are losing about a pound a month on an average, then you are doing really well.

I don’t like to exercise.  I did not exercise regularly prior to ending up in the hospital.  Now I walk regularly for 30 to 60 minutes a day.  I get 30 minutes of walking out of the way in the morning.  I do not like the gym scene; heads bobbing up and down on treadmills, smell of sweat, jocks flaunting themselves, CNN blaring away every disaster, FOX news spewing out negativity.  I do not like to walk on treadmills even at home.  Walking on a treadmill is very boring for me.  Most people watch TV while walking on a treadmill.  I am averse to watching news and don’t need to know who got murdered.  I like to walk on the streets of downtown San Diego.  There is always something new and interesting to see every time.  In Gaithersburg, I like to walk around the lake at Washingtonian Rio.  There, I try to walk in the sun if it is cold and at night if it is hot outside.  If it is snowing, we drive to a mall and walk there.  If the roads are icy, then I walk in my apartment for 30 minutes.  If you can’t walk for 30 minutes then walk for 10 minutes three times during the day.  A recent study found that women who walked once every day for 30 minutes received the same benefits as the women who walked three times a day for 10 minutes each.  There are no excuses for not being able to walk.
 
Here is a multiple choice quiz for you.  You are traveling and have to catch a flight.  You reach the airport at least an hour before the flight takes off.  These days you have to reach early for security reasons.  Which of the following three would you do upon reaching the departure gate?
(a)  Settle down comfortably near the entrance of the gate and read a book.
(b)  Go to the Starbucks in the terminal, pick up a cup of latte and a muffin, and relax while enjoying the treat.
(c)  Walk around the terminal building for 30 minutes.

If you don’t know the answer to this question, then go back to the beginning of the blog and read it again.

By the way, it is perfectly OK to do other forms of exercises.  Swimming, jogging, and bicycling are also good.  Here is why walking is the best.  Swimming requires going to a pool.  Jogging is high-impact and can damage your joints.  Bicycling needs a bike.  I used to bike a lot in India and had to be operated upon for pilonidal cyst because of that.  Walking has none of those side effects.  Finally, how fast should you walk?  Answer: at whatever pace that is comfortable for you.

Mantra: I will walk 30 to 60 minutes every day, no excuses.
Repeat after me:
·         I will eat no more than 170g of carbs every day.
·         I will never eat a scone or a muffin again.
·         I will never eat from a buffet at an Indian restaurant.
·         I will never eat commercially prepared cereal ever again.
·         I will wait at least three to four hours after dinner before lying down to go to sleep.