Presenting Foolproof Healthy-Eating Strategies
In This Chapter
▶ Making the best low-glycemic food choices
▶ Balancing proteins, carbohydrates, and fats for successful weight loss
▶ Defining moderation for long-term weight-loss success
Knowing and feeling comfortable applying simple healthy-eating strategies can mean the difference between giving up and finding weight-loss success. Why? Because after you have a few rules down you can apply them to any situation and make them work in your lifestyle. You know the old saying “you can give someone a fish or teach him how to fish so he can have fish for life”? Eating a balanced, low-glycemic diet works just the same way. Sure, I could give you a book of menus to follow, but I’d prefer to give you some simple healthy-eating strategies so you can use them in any scenario you might experience.
This chapter delves into a few basic healthy-eating strategies that can help you benefit from low-glycemic foods, keep your calorie level in a good range, and get your food cravings under control — all without you having to count calories or solve awful math equations whenever you want to eat something. After you know these tricks of the trade by heart and start practicing them, they’ll become second nature to you.
The purpose for simplifying healthy-eating strategies is twofold: so you can get the results you’re looking for by decreasing your glycemic load and your calorie level and so you can make your new diet changes work easily in your life.
Tips for Choosing Low-Glycemic Foods
The goal of healthy eating on a low-glycemic diet is to balance your food choices every day, even when your days are hectic. Well, when life gets busy and you start depending on high-glycemic grab-and-go foods, you’ll probably find yourself saying, “I’ll get back on track tomorrow.” But that behavior counteracts all of your weight-loss efforts. I’m not saying you should eat all low-glycemic carbs all the time. Instead, I want you to feel comfortable choosing them most of the time (meaning at least one low-glycemic food per meal) while balancing your intake of medium- to high-glycemic foods. This two-pronged approach can help you stay on track whether you’re at home, on vacation, or out to lunch with friends. The following sections cover a few quick tips for making the best low-glycemic food choices.
Get acquainted with the glycemic index list
Take the time to become familiar with the glycemic index by reviewing one or more of the lists that are readily available (see Chapter 7 for one specific Web site you can seek out). The glycemic index list is your starting point because it can familiarize you with what foods have a low, medium, and high glycemic index. You’ll need to focus at first to pick up on which foods are low-glycemic and which ones are medium- and high-glycemic, but soon you’ll have memorized the glycemic nature of the foods you eat the most and you won’t need to depend on the list as much.
When in doubt, always keep in mind that using low-glycemic foods in moderation gives you great benefits.
Pay attention to portion sizes
Following the low-glycemic list of foods is simply following a low-glycemic diet. Following a low-glycemic diet for weight loss requires closer attention to the all-important portion size. Even if you’re regularly choosing low-glycemic foods and balancing them with medium- and high-glycemic foods, if you don’t pay attention to your portion sizes, you may never lose weight. Here’s why:
✓ The glycemic load of a food typically increases when you eat larger amounts.
✓ Your calorie level for the day is determined mostly by the portion sizes you eat.
The tricky thing is that the portion sizes used for glycemic index testing may be a little different than the typical recommended portion sizes for calorie control. Glycemic index testing uses very small amounts of food, so when you eat more, the glycemic load also increases. (I cover glycemic load and what makes it different from the glycemic index in Chapter 4.)
You can generally gauge that if a food’s glycemic load is very low, it likely won’t go up too much if you decide to eat more of that food. If the glycemic load is near medium or already in the medium category, then it’ll go up from there.
Of course, you also need to retrain your brain to recognize appropriate portion sizes of different foods for calorie control. Portions in today’s restaurants have increased so much that the new, larger sizes have become normal in most people’s perceptions. But eating those jumbo-sized portions regularly is a surefire way to sabotage your weight-loss efforts and up the overall glycemic load of your meal. Use Table 9-1 as a general reference for scaling back your brain’s mental image of the appropriate portion size.
A good exercise to help you get your portion sizes under control is to measure your food for one day so you can see what the actual portion sizes should look like on your plate. You don’t have to be perfect and measure your food every day (that’s no way to live your life). Measuring your food for just one day gives you enough of an idea of how much to put on your plate.
Keep the glycemic load of your meal at or under 25
If you feel more comfortable tracking numbers and having some guidelines to work toward, then this advice is for you: Strive to consume a maximum glycemic load of 25 per meal. Doing so allows you a good variety of carbohydrates for your meal including grains, vegetables, fruits, and/or dairy products.
Here’s what one possible under-25-glycemic-load meal looks like:
1⁄2 turkey sandwich on whole-wheat bread with a slice of cheddar cheese, tomato, lettuce, and sliced avocado (glycemic load of whole-wheat bread = 8)
1 cup of tomato soup (glycemic load = 8)
8 ounces of fruit yogurt (glycemic load = 7)
The total estimated glycemic load for this meal is 23.
Note: Sometimes you may not find a glycemic load for certain foods like cheese or avocado. When that happens, it’s okay to guess at the foods’ dif- ferent glycemic loads. (Appendix A notes the glycemic load of several go-to foods for your reference.) In this case, you can guess that the glycemic load for cheese is low because milk has both a similar makeup to cheese and a very low glycemic load. Avocado has too little carbohydrate in it to obtain a glycemic load measurement.
The variety of carbohydrates available paired with portion control makes keeping the glycemic load of your meals under 25 an easily attainable goal . . . unless of course you’re indulging in large amounts of medium- or high- glycemic foods. Watch out for traditional meal combinations such as spaghetti and garlic bread or pizza and breadsticks that can make maintaining a glycemic load of 25 or less difficult.
Not sure what the estimated glycemic load of your favorite foods is? Head to www.nutritiondata.com and click the Estimated Glycemic Load button on the right-hand side of the page. From there, look for the “See the foods that are:” box and click to find the foods that have the highest and lowest esti- mated glycemic loads.
The glycemic load isn’t an exact science, so no need to worry about count- ing your total glycemic load for each meal. However, if counting the numbers helps you stay on track with your weight-loss efforts, then by all means count up to 25 to your heart’s content!
Changing the Balance of Your Meals
Discovering how to balance the nutrients in your meals is an essential part of losing weight successfully on a low-glycemic diet. For a diet to be truly balanced it must contain a mix of carbohydrates, protein, and fat. You can also think of balance in terms of food groups: starches, fruits, vegetables, meat and beans, and dairy and fats. When you incorporate a variety of food groups into your meals, you help stabilize your blood sugar and supply your body with a more complete nutritional load of vitamins and minerals.
Eating balanced meals is clearly a great approach to long-term weight loss. And the best part? The rules are simple enough that you don’t have to put too much thought into it at mealtime, nor do you need to break out the calculator whenever you eat.
In the following sections, I describe the role of important nutrients and delve into the details of why keeping them balanced is so beneficial. I also share with you a simple strategy for balancing your nutrient intake at any meal, whether you’re at home, on vacation, or in a restaurant. Finally, I present a couple menus that show you just how easy it can be to balance your nutrients at each meal.
Understanding different nutrients’ roles and the benefits of balance
To really appreciate the value of balancing your nutrient intake at each meal, it helps to know some basic facts about proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.
✓ Proteins are crucial for building body tissues, regulating hormones, and pumping up your immune system. Additionally, they provide a longer release of energy than carbohydrates, helping you to feel more satisfied when you eat them. Incorporate one serving of lean meats (such as poultry, fish, or beef) or other high-protein foods (such as soy, beans, eggs, or nuts) with each meal. For help determining the appropriate portion size, see the earlier “Pay attention to portion sizes” section.
✓ Carbohydrates are your body’s main source of energy. Eating low-glycemic carbohydrates helps keep your blood sugar steady and makes for a more sustained energy release. The amount of carbohydrates you need really depends on your activity level and metabolism. For weight loss, women should have two servings of starchy carbohydrates from whole grains and at least one fruit or vegetable serving each meal; men should have three servings of starchy carbs from whole grains and the same minimum amount of fruits and veggies per meal.
✓ Fats can also be used for energy, but their primary task is to aid nutrient transport and cell functioning. Fats have a slower energy release, allowing you to feel more satisfied with your meal for a longer period of time. Use small amounts of fat for cooking and preparing cold foods, but don’t feel like you have to include it at each meal. Always remember that a little fat goes a long way. Healthy fats include avocadoes, nuts, fish, olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil, and olives.
The tricky part about dietary fat and weight loss is twofold: When people are overweight, they can store fat more readily because they have increased levels of the fat-storing enzyme called lipoprotein lipase, which transfers food fat from the bloodstream to fat cells. As you may already know, fat contains 9 calories per gram compared to just 4 calories per gram for protein and carbohydrates. Thus, fat adds extra calories. This combination of fat storage and extra calories can make weight loss difficult for individuals consuming too much fat in their diets.
Balancing your intake of protein, carbs, and fat at each meal does many great things for your body, not least of which are
✓ Helping control your total calorie level (because you’re eating more low- calorie foods)
✓ Keeping your blood sugar stable to avoid stimulating your appetite and storing more calories as fat
✓ Helping control your food cravings
✓ Keeping you feeling full and satisfied
✓ Supporting your mood to avoid emotional-eating triggers On the other hand, unbalanced consumption of protein, carbs, and fat can lead to
✓ Unstable blood sugar that can stimulate your appetite and lead you to eat more
✓ A cycle of food cravings
✓ Not feeling satisfied, which may cause you to overeat
✓ An increase in your total calorie intake because you’re eating too many high-calorie foods
✓ Emotional-eating cycles
The negative effects of not balancing your nutrients can creep up on you quite quickly. For instance, if you eat too much fat at one meal, your calorie level will increase rapidly. On the other hand, if you eat too many carbohydrates, you may experience blood sugar spikes that can lead you to feel starving an hour later, possibly creating a situation where you store more calories as body fat. Eating the right balance of fat and carbohydrates (and protein!) keeps your blood sugar and calorie level under control all the time.
Embracing the plate method
The plate method is a fabulous way of balancing your nutrients because it divides your plate into subsections so you know how much to eat of each food group. The idea is to fill your plate with the good, lower-calorie food, leaving only a small amount of room for the foods you should limit — fats and high-glycemic foods. According to the plate method, half of your plate should be filled with fruits and/or veggies, one-quarter with a protein source (such as meat, fish, or poultry), and one-quarter with a low-glycemic starch or grain (such as barley or whole-grain bread). Figure 9-1 provides a template of the plate method that you can easily follow.
When people overeat, they tend to do so with starchy carbohydrates (grains, potatoes, breads, and the like) and meats (beef, poultry, fish, and so on). These are high-calorie food groups where a lot of excess calories come from. The starchy carbohydrates also create the blood sugar spikes that you want to avoid. Using the plate method allows you to better control your consumption of these two food categories each meal so you get the perfect balance of carbohydrates and protein.
Many dinner plates nowadays are huge. In fact, they’re really more like plat- ters. My dinner plates don’t even fit into a standard-size cupboard anymore, and I even have to lean them forward in my dishwasher. If you have the same situation with your dinner plates, don’t strictly follow the plate method because you can all too easily pack a lot of food on those enormous plates. Instead, try measuring out the appropriate portion sizes of different foods to see what a portion of each food group looks like on your size of plates. After you have a rough idea, you can estimate from there on out.
If the portion sizes on your big plates look very small and make you feel like you’re depriving yourself with dieting, try using the plate method with your smaller salad or dessert plates. Because of their smaller size, they’ll look like they’re chock-full of food even though they’re holding the same amount as the larger plates did. If you have an old set of china, you can also try using one of the dinner plates from that set because the plate size is more normal than today’s monster plates.
With that in mind, it’s time to see the plate method in action! Tables 9-2, 9-3, and 9-4 demonstrate how to use the plate method with three classic meal options.
Everything at restaurants is bigger, even something as simple as a sandwich, which is why the calorie level is so high for restaurant meals. Have that to-go box ready to help you portion your meal to a more realistic size. (Flip to Chapter 11 for some additional guidelines for dining out.)
Putting it all together with sample menus
Using the plate method to balance your nutrient intake and eating the right portion sizes are guaranteed to make a big difference in your weight-loss efforts. The following sections offer sample breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus that illustrate all of these strategies put together.
Sample breakfast menu
Start the day off right with a balanced, filling breakfast (and yes, I mean more than just coffee in a to-go cup). Here’s a simple on-the-go breakfast menu you can readily enjoy:
Peanut-Butter Monkey Smoothie (1 cup milk, one frozen banana, 1 table- spoon reduced-fat peanut butter)
1 slice whole-grain bread
In this example,
✓ The milk provides a nice balance of a low-glycemic carbohydrate with a moderate amount of protein.
✓ The banana provides low-glycemic carbohydrates and one full serving of fruit.
✓ The peanut butter serves as a fat source and a source of protein.
✓ The whole-grain bread is a low-glycemic starch.
This meal has an estimated glycemic load of 25 and an estimated 367 calories. Even though it doesn’t go on a plate, it fits the plate method presented earlier in this chapter because it provides a nice balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fat.
Sample lunch menu
This sample lunch menu illustrates how easy it is to eat a balanced yet tasty lunch:
Tuna sandwich (two slices whole-wheat bread, 3 ounces tuna, 1 teaspoon mayonnaise) Side salad (2 cups mixed greens, five cherry tomatoes, 1 tablespoon lowfat vinaigrette salad dressing)
In this example,
✓ The tuna counts as a serving of protein.
✓ The mayonnaise counts as a serving of fat.
✓ The whole-wheat bread makes up two servings of low-glycemic whole grains.
✓ The salad features low-glycemic vegetables.
✓ The salad dressing adds another half-serving of fat.
This meal has an estimated glycemic load of 20 and an estimated 430 calo- ries. The combination of low-glycemic grains, high fiber, protein, and fat helps you feel comfortably full for a longer period of time while avoiding major insulin spikes that may cause you to store fat more readily.
Sample dinner menu
Balancing your nutrients at dinner works the same way as at lunch. Following is a sample dinner menu that incorporates balance along with appropriate portion sizes:
4-ounce grilled chicken breast
2⁄3 cup herbed quinoa
Side salad (2 cups mixed greens, 1 tablespoon lowfat vinaigrette dressing) In this example,
✓ Chicken counts as a serving of protein.
✓ Herbed quinoa is a serving of low-glycemic grains.
✓ Asparagus and salad form three servings of low-glycemic vegetables (asparagus = 1 serving, salad = 2 servings).
✓ Vinaigrette dressing and the oil for cooking the quinoa count as two fat servings.
This meal has an estimated glycemic load of 13 and an estimated 465 calories. Notice how this meal ups the ante on vegetables? If you ever feel like you aren’t getting enough to eat, the trick is to have two different vegetables. You can eat a lot more food for a lower glycemic load and calorie level by simply upping your veggie intake.
Finding Moderation with Medium- and High-Glycemic Foods
Moderation is one of those important secrets to long-term weight loss, even when you’re following a low-glycemic diet. Eating only low-glycemic and low- calorie foods in just the right balance is easy to do for two weeks or even a month, but it’s pretty darn hard to do 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I certainly can’t, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who can. There will always be times when you won’t have the best choices in front of you or when you’re just craving a specific food.
Trying to be perfect with a diet typically backfires. People who do that often fall off the plan and go back to their old habits. I call this an all-or-nothing approach because you’re either onboard with said diet or you completely stop and say you’ll start up again at a later date. This all-or-nothing approach is the difference between following a temporary diet and making long-term lifestyle changes. Following a low-glycemic diet is a lifestyle change, which means you make the best choices but still leave yourself some wiggle room for fun.
If you’re a perfectionist, accepting the concept that you don’t have to perfectly follow a low-glycemic diet 100 percent of the time may be challenging. Just remember that moderation really is the best way to maintain weight loss long term. In the next sections, I explain how to use moderation with a low- glycemic diet and how to balance your glycemic load throughout the day.
Defining moderation
People in the diet industry tend to throw the term moderation around as if it has some concrete definition that everyone knows. But what I’ve learned as a registered dietitian is that people have different perceptions, or definitions, of moderation. For one person, moderation may mean having a high-glycemic item once a week. Another may say once a day, and yet another may consider it okay to have one a few times a day.
Here’s a real-life example of just how confusing the concept of moderation can be: I once had a client who ate eight to ten Hershey miniature bars throughout each day, basically having a few after each meal. She considered this moderation as opposed to sitting down and eating more in one sitting. However, her “moderate” snacking still added up to way too many calories, sugar, and fat. This wasn’t her fault. It was just her perception of moderation because no one had ever defined the term for her.
Having some guidelines around moderation will help you stay on track. (It also gives you some wiggle room for when you really want that jasmine rice with your stir-fry or you want to indulge in some chocolate cake at a birthday party.) Following are some quick guidelines to define moderation more clearly and make your weight-loss process much easier:
✓ Eat medium-glycemic foods once or twice a day, or less.
✓ Eat high-glycemic foods two or three times a week, or less.
Balancing your glycemic load for the day
Striving to balance your glycemic load for the day is another way to follow a low-glycemic diet in moderation. The idea is to always make the best choices.
Try one or more of the following suggestions to help you control your calorie level and balance higher-glycemic foods throughout the day:
✓ Avoid eating multiple high-glycemic foods in one meal. If you’re going to indulge, do it with one food item at that particular meal and make sure the rest of your foods are low-glycemic. For instance, if you choose to have spaghetti, don’t eat a bunch of garlic bread with it.
✓ Consume smaller portions of high-glycemic foods. Remember, portion
size matters with glycemic load (as explained in Chapter 4). Eating less
decreases your glycemic load a bit for that meal. Even switching from, say, 1 cup of rice to 2⁄3 of a cup makes a difference in a particular meal’s glycemic load.
✓ Avoid eating both high- and medium-glycemic foods in one day.
Choose one or the other if you can and make the rest of your choices low-glycemic. For instance, if after lunch you have a slice of the special pumpkin pie (a high-glycemic food) that your coworker brought in, skip the macaroni and cheese (a medium-glycemic food) with the kids at dinner.
✓ Split the portion size of two high-glycemic foods. If you’re out to eat or at a party and you see two foods you love that are high-glycemic, eat a half portion of each to enjoy your favorites while still keeping your glycemic load down. For instance, maybe you spy potato salad and chocolate cake at the company picnic. You can have your cake (and potato salad too!) if you eat a small slice of it and 1⁄3 cup of the potato salad. This compromise is better than consuming a cup of potato salad and a large piece of cake.
An all-or-nothing approach will almost always keep you stuck in weight-gain/ weight-loss cycles. Ditch that approach and find a balance instead. On a low- glycemic diet, you can and should allow yourself to indulge without feeling guilty, but you shouldn’t abandon your low-glycemic lifestyle for weeks at a time. When you indulge, make sure it’s a conscious decision that you know works within your guidelines. After all, who doesn’t want to have cake on his birthday or potato salad at a barbeque?
0 comments:
Post a Comment