Working with Guidelines for Healthy Low-Calorie Living: Doing your diet research, Figuring out your calorie counts, Getting the scoop on low-calorie nutrition and Exploring ways to cut calories.

Working with Guidelines for Healthy Low-Calorie Living

In This Chapter

� Doing your diet research

� Figuring out your calorie counts

� Getting the scoop on low-calorie nutrition

� Exploring ways to cut calories

Medical doctors and dietitians have proven again and again that cutting calories and adopting a low-calorie lifestyle, one that includes plenty of physical activity to burn calories, is the only sure way to shed extra pounds and keep them off.

This chapter explains why you need to commit to a low-calorie lifestyle to lose weight, gives you formulas for figuring out your calorie needs, and lays the groundwork for making healthy food choices on a low-calorie diet plan.

Cutting Calories for Weight-Loss Success

Before you start a low-calorie diet, you may want to know why cutting calories is the only surefire way to lose weight and why you need to commit yourself to low-calorie living for long-term success. Understanding the reasons behind what you have to do is a surer road to success than blindly jumping in. In the following sections, I compare past diet trends and explain how you can successfully incorporate a low-calorie diet into your life.

Registered dietitians, licensed nutritionists, doctors with an active practice in weight control, exercise physiologists, and licensed or certified psychotherapists who specialize in compulsive overeating are all in a position to provide sound weight-loss advice or refer you to another expert who can. In addition to having the appropriate educational background and experience with weight loss and weight maintenance, these experts generally stay up-to-date with the latest research and developments. You don’t have to get your guidance directly from any of these experts, but you need to be sure that what- ever weight-loss advice you follow comes from a reliable source.

Comparing low-calorie diets to other diets

If you’ve been around for a few years, you’ve probably seen a ton of popular diets come and go. Even if you’re new to the diet scene, you’re probably well aware of the many magazine articles, books, infomercials, and Internet pop- ups that bombard you every day with promises of easy new ways to lose weight. If you live long enough, most of these diets and promotions will surface again in some form, making the same old promises to a new audience of overweight people looking for that one magic diet that really works.

Unlike a low-carbohydrate diet, a low-fat diet, or a high-fiber diet, a low- calorie diet focuses strictly on limiting the number of calories you consume. Here’s a secret, though: All diets, no matter what nutrients they’re high or low in, must restrict calories if they help you lose weight.

Counting calories is the oldest method of intentionally losing weight, going back at least as far as 1918, when Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters defined calories and showed dieters how to count them in her book Diet and Health with Key to the Calories. Peters recommended a diet low in fat and high in carbohydrates, and one that averaged 1,200 calories. Calorie counting has gone in and out of fashion since that time, but now, almost 100 years later, it’s back. Calorie counting is the only weight-loss method that has stood the test of time.

In the mid-1980s, counting fat grams became the new way to lose weight. The message that dieters heard was that calories don’t matter as much as fat. I actually heard people say that you could only get fat from eating fat, or that if you stick to a low-fat diet, you can eat 200 extra calories a day. Of course, these statements may be true if you plan your menus very carefully, but many dieters forgot to factor in calories they were consuming from other sources.

Eventually, dieters tired of counting fat grams, seeking out lowfat foods, and gaining weight as a result of all their efforts. The fat-free fad faded away, and high-protein diets moved in as the new wave in weight control. High-protein diets became very popular when dieters discovered that they could lose weight if they cut back on carbohydrates and ate more high-protein foods at every meal. Increasing the amount of lean protein foods you eat and cutting back on carbs usually does help with initial weight loss. One reason why is: Your body needs extra water to digest and metabolize foods that are high in carbohydrates, especially high-fiber foods. When you start cutting back on these foods, your body no longer holds onto that extra water. So along with any weight you lose by cutting calories the first few weeks of your diet, you lose water weight, which can be motivating when you first start dieting.

However a high-protein diet has some serious downsides. You don’t eat much bread on a high-protein diet. No bagels, no muffins, no waffles, certainly no cookies, cakes, or pastries. Some high-protein diets say you can’t even have a potato. As a result of these limitations, most people can only stick to a low- carb diet for several months at most.

If you’re considering a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet, you need to know this valuable piece of information. A sugar called glucose, which comes from foods high in carbohydrates, is the only fuel your brain can use for energy. Lowering or even eliminating carbs (and not getting enough glucose) affects your body in several ways:

� Your brain could be in trouble. Your brain can only use glucose for energy, so it can’t work without it.

� In order to protect your brain, your body turns to its muscles, breaking them down to provide your body with substances it can use to make its own glucose.

� Meanwhile, as your body starts using fat stores for energy (because not enough carbohydrate is available), you develop a condition known as ketosis.

When your body is in a state of ketosis, you’re not eating enough food, especially carbohydrates. In response to the ketosis, your metabolism slows down and you stop burning fat. As a result, you only want to view this type of diet as a short-term solution for kick-starting a more balanced diet plan.

Any diet that emphasizes one food group over another or virtually eliminates a whole category of foods is bound to throw your body chemistry out of whack. That’s why a nutritionally balanced, reduced-calorie diet that pro- motes normal, healthy eating habits is the best route to weight control.

For most people, the goals and benefits of following a low-calorie diet are to lose weight, to develop better eating habits, and to maintain weight loss in hopes of reducing the health risks that come with being overweight. Chapter 16 describes these benefits — which include more energy, better sleep, and lower risk for developing medical problems such as high blood pressure and heart disease — in greater detail.

Some experts say that weight cycling — losing weight and gaining weight repeatedly over time — is bad for your health and that it’s better to stay at one higher weight than to suffer the ups and downs. The jury is still out though. No one knows for sure if weight cycling is bad for you. (Check out Chapter 2 for more info and how weight cycling affects your overall health.)

Figuring out what a “low-calorie” diet means to you

A low-calorie diet can take different forms for different people, but the one thing common to all successful low-calorie diets is commitment. In the follow- ing sections, I explain how you can personalize your low-calorie diet while maintaining a full commitment to your new lifestyle.

Maintaining flexibility

On first glance, a low-calorie diet may seem very rigid, but cutting calories may not be as hard as you think. Sure, you’re limited to a rather exact number of calories, which can limit the amount of food you’re allowed to eat. But actually, if you choose to eat mostly low-calorie foods, you can eat plenty of them! If you choose to eat higher calorie foods, you have the flexibility of eating whatever type of food you want. You may have to eat smaller portions than you’re used to, but no one’s going to tell you that you can’t have a bagel, a bowl of pasta, or a chocolate cookie.

Most weight-loss experts believe that some rigidity is good when you really want to lose weight because the closer you follow a strict diet, the better chance you have of mastering new eating habits and seeing quicker results. Don’t worry; you don’t have to eat exactly the same number of calories each day or include any foods in your diet that you don’t like, just because you think they’re good for you. It simply means that the more committed you are to your low-calorie lifestyle, the better it will work for you.

Even though this book contains one, straightforward, low-calorie diet plan, it’s a flexible plan. This plan has plenty of room for personalization because I know that no one-size-fits-all diet plan can work for everyone who wants to lose weight. You have to be happy with your diet or you’ll never stick to it.

No matter if you like to cook most of your meals from scratch, if you prefer stopping at a deli or restaurant for take-out on your way home from work each day, or if you keep your cupboard and freezer stocked with convenience foods, you can work any of these eating styles into a low-calorie diet plan that suits your particular lifestyle.

Adopting your new dietary lifestyle

The concept of “going on a diet” fell out of fashion years ago, when both weight-control experts and those who struggle with their weight began to agree that weight-loss diets don’t work because they don’t keep the weight off in the long run. Diet was recognized for what it had become to so many overweight people: a four-letter word.

The reason is simple. If you “go on a diet,” the implication is that, at some point, you’ll go off the diet. And that’s what most people do. As soon as they’re off the diet, their excess weight usually returns because they’re no longer doing what they did to keep it off.

The new way to diet is to adopt a dietary lifestyle and embrace it as your own. Instead of going on a diet, practice healthier living by eating better, eating less, making sure you get enough physical activity, and reprogramming your thinking so that you can continue these healthier habits for a lifetime.

If ever there was a commitment you need to take seriously, it’s the commitment you’re making when you follow this low-calorie diet plan. Let it lead you into a healthier lifestyle that can keep you at a healthy weight for the rest of your life. This “diet” is a commitment to never give up on yourself.

Focusing on Formulas for Low-Calorie Living

The first thing any dieter wants to know is “How much food can I eat?,” which is the same as asking, “How many calories can I have?” The answer is simple: To lose weight, you have to eat fewer calories than you’re eating now. Yes, you can burn some of your extra calories off through physical activity, and in fact you can burn off a lot of extra calories if you’re an avid exerciser or plan to become one. But to lose weight, most people also have to cut some, and often, many, calories from their diet.

If you like math, then the formulas you find in this section are for you. Dietitians and other weight experts sometimes use these formulas to help dieters determine a sensible range of calories within which they can safely lose or maintain weight.

You can use these formulas to figure out approximately how many calories you can eat every day to prevent further weight gain or to get to a healthier weight. After you establish your calorie allowance, you can work with the menu plans in Chapter 6, which are also designed to help you work within a range of calories to start losing weight right away. All weight-loss formulas are limited, however, and the results they give are very general guidelines, not absolute numbers to live by every day.

Determining the number of calories you need

Your body needs a minimum number of calories to have enough energy to be healthy, which is called your resting metabolic rate. By figuring your resting metabolic rate, you can determine the amount of calories your body needs just to keep your heart pumping, your brain thinking, your kidneys clearing, and all your other body systems operating properly.

1. Calculate your body’s basic calorie needs.

To do so, take your healthy weight (if you don’t know it, choose a midrange weight from the healthy weight range chart in Chapter 2), or the weight you want to be, and multiply it by 10 if you’re a woman or 11 if you’re a man. (Men get more calories in their calculations because they tend to be taller and have a higher ratio of muscle to fat than women.)

(Healthy weight) × (10 or 11) = Your basic calorie needs

So, for example, if you’re a woman who is 5-feet, 5-inches, your weight goal may be 140 pounds. Using the formula, 140 × 10 = 1,400, which amounts to your basic calorie needs for a day.

Along with your basic calorie needs, the next three steps can help you figure out the maximum number of calories you can eat while you’re trying to get to your goal weight.

2. Figure out how many calories you need for the amount of exercise you get.

Read the following descriptions and then multiply your basic calorie needs from the previous section by the percentage that matches your activity level.

Sedentary (20 percent): You sit, drive, lie down, or stand in one place for most of the day and don’t do any type of formal exercise. Multiply by 0.20.

Light Activity (30 percent): You walk for exercise, up to two hours every day. Multiply by 0.30.

Moderate Activity (40 percent): You take exercise classes, dance, do a lot of housework, swim, or ride a bicycle most days. You do very little sitting. Multiply by 0.40.

Heavy Activity (50 percent): You play physical sports, have a labor-intensive job, or engage in heavy workouts at the gym almost every day. Multiply by 0.50.

(Basic calorie needs) × (Percent activity level) = Activity calorie needs

To continue with the example, take your basic calorie needs (1,400) and multiply that figure by .40. (Just suppose that you take a couple exercise classes a week and go with your kids for a couple of bike rides a week.) Your activity calorie needs are 560.

3. Figure out how many calories you need for normal digestion and metabolism of food.

Yes! It’s true! You burn calories digesting and absorbing the food you eat. Add your basic calorie needs from Step 1 and your activity calorie needs from Step 2, and then multiply the total by 10 percent (0.10).

(Basic calorie needs) + (Basic activity needs) × 0.10 = Calories for digestion

With the example, your basic calorie needs (1,400) plus your activity needs (560) equals 1,960 calories. Multiply that by 0.10 and you get the calories you burn for digestion: 196.

4. Add your basic calorie needs, your activity calorie needs, and your calorie needs for digestion.

The resulting figure represents your total energy needs in calories. (Basic calorie needs) + (Activity calorie needs) + (Digestion calorie needs) = Total calorie needs

To finish the previous example, your basic calorie needs (1,400) + your activity needs (560) + your calorie needs for digestion (196) = your total calorie needs (2,156).

This number — your total calorie needs — represents the number of calories you can eat every day to maintain a healthy weight at the activity level you’ve chosen. When you’re trying to lose weight to get to a healthy weight, this number is a good guide to the maximum number of calories you can eat on any given day while you’re dieting. But remember: This number is just a guide. The actual number of calories that works for you depends on how much you exercise as well as other individual factors, such as your age and your individual metabolic rate.

Using another formula for weight loss

If you know exactly how many calories you normally consume each day (and you can figure that out by keeping track of your calories in a food diary, as demonstrated in Chapter 4), use this shortcut to find out how many calories you need to cut from your daily diet. To lose a pound of body weight in a week without doing any additional exercise, you have to cut 3,500 calories from your diet that week, or an average of 500 calories a day. So, if you currently consume about 2,000 calories a day, you have to cut your daily calorie allowance by 500 calories, to 1,500, to start losing a pound a week.

At some point, the number of calories you can eat and still lose weight will get too low and you’ll have to stop cutting calories. Your only option at that point is to exercise more. That’s why losing weight initially is much easier when you have a lot to lose and much more difficult when you’re down to those last 10 pounds and you don’t have many calories left to cut.

In the following sections, I give you a couple of strategies, based on the formulas in this chapter, for choosing a calorie range that can help you lose weight or maintain your current weight and prevent more gain.

Finding your weight-loss range

Everyone has a range of calories within which they can lose weight. If, through your calculations, you determine that you can lose a pound or two a week if you stick to a 1,500-calorie diet, you’ll find that you can lose that same amount of weight on a 1,400- or 1,600-calorie diet.

Sometimes the best way to find your personal calorie range for losing weight is by trial and error. If you want, you can skip all the formulas and calculations in this chapter, go right to Chapter 6 (featuring a variety of menu plans), and put yourself on a 1,500-calorie-a-day diet plan. That level may or may not help, but it won’t hurt you. If you find it impossible to stick with, or if you stick with it and lose more than 2 pounds the first week, you may consider adding 100 or more calories to your days. (A safe limit when you’re losing weight is 2 pounds a week. If you lose more than 2 pounds, you’re losing too quickly. If you lose too much weight early on, you’re more likely to gain back some or all of it.) If you don’t lose any weight at all, skip down to a 1,200- calorie plan and see what happens at the end of a week.

After you master the art of eating low-calorie meals and sticking to a pre- scribed number of calories every day, you may see that you can “cheat” a little on your diet by occasionally indulging in some of your favorite higher calorie foods and still lose or maintain weight. Eventually you can figure out how to balance your calorie intake over the course of several days, or even a week, rather than focusing on one day at a time.

Preventing weight gain

If you’ve recently been gaining weight, or you’re not quite ready to commit to the lifestyle changes required to lose weight, you first want to avoid any further weight gain. Doing so can be a huge accomplishment in and of itself. After you stop gaining and your weight levels off, you can move on to the next stage of your plan, which is to start losing weight.

To stop weight gain in its tracks, use the quickest formula for figuring out how many calories you need to stay at your current weight and possibly start losing weight: Multiply your weight times ten. Stick to within 100 calories of that amount on most days so you can stabilize your weight until you’re ready to embark on a sensible, long-term plan.

Understanding the Nutritional Nuts and Bolts of a Low-Calorie Diet

Right now, you’re probably thinking more about losing weight than you are about protecting your health while you’re following a low-calorie diet. As a dietitian, I have to look at you more holistically. I have to look at the effects of the food choices you make on your current and long-term health. That’s why I’m including this primer on all the important nutrients you need in your diet and the foods that provide them. Think of this section as a freshman level course in basic nutrition with an emphasis on calorie control.

Getting the nutrients you need

In the old days, dietitians were trained to say “There are no good foods and no bad foods, just too much of some foods.” That’s still true to a certain extent, but dietitians know better now. Some foods are much better for you than others and, for many people, some foods seem to have an addictive quality that makes it impossible to resist eating more, after you’ve had a taste. That quality doesn’t make them bad foods, but those foods aren’t good for you until you gain better control over the amount you eat.

This section discusses good food sources of all the nutrients that are essential to a healthful low-calorie diet. You also figure out how to make smarter choices with treats and sweets, and how some junk food can still play a role in a healthy low-cal diet.

Carbohydrates

The bulk of your calories — a little more than half, or 55 to 60 percent — should come from foods high in carbohydrates. You may have heard about the two types of carbs — good carbs and bad carbs. The following bulleted list explains each more in-depth and tells you why most of your carbohydrate calories should come from good carbs.

� Simple carbohydrates: Foods high in “bad” or simple carbohydrates are candies, cookies, chips, cakes, pies, sodas, and many of your other favorite foods that supply plenty of calories from sugar and refined flours, but not much in the way of good nutrition.

Simple carbohydrates are just that: simple. They’re not as complicated, chemically speaking, as complex carbohydrates. Foods high in simple carbohydrates, for the most part, supply mostly calories and little or none of the good stuff. That’s why dietitians refer to these foods as “empty calorie” foods.

� Complex carbohydrates: Foods high in “good” complex carbohydrates include whole grains, beans, and vegetables.

Foods high in complex carbohydrates are better for you because they contain vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytochemicals (substances found in plant foods that are neither vitamins nor minerals, but are thought to convey health benefits).

Fruit is the exception to the rule. Fruit contains plenty of simple sugars, but it also contains valuable nutrients, including many of the disease-fighting antioxidant vitamins and phytochemicals. Dietitians and other nutrition experts always put fresh fruit in the “good” carb group.

If you’re eating simple carbohydrates such as cookies, pastries, and fried chips in place of healthier foods, or if you’re simply eating so many of these foods in addition to healthier foods that you’re gaining weight, then junk food is a problem for you. Eating these foods is okay, however, if you only eat them some of the time and in small amounts. In Chapter 15, you can find tips and recipes for fitting simple sugars into a healthful low-calorie diet.

Protein

When discussing protein, you first need to know about amino acids, which are the chemical “building blocks” of protein found in food. After you eat the amino acids in say, a hamburger, your body absorbs them via your blood- stream where they spend most of their time connecting and reconnecting with each other to form thousands of different proteins that do thousands of different jobs in your body. Some of the most important roles amino acids and proteins play in your body include

� Antibodies: These proteins protect you from bacteria, viruses, toxins, and allergens.

� Hormones: Protein is an essential component of many of your body’s most important regulating hormones, including those that regulate food intake and metabolism, such as insulin and leptin.

� Repair: Protein is essential for mending muscles, bones, and skin, and for pregnancy and growth.

� Replacement: When you wash your body, comb your hair, or clip your fingernails, you’re losing body cells that contain protein that needs to be replaced so that new skin cells, hair, and nails can grow.

Adult women who are at a healthy weight need approximately 45 to 60 grams of protein in their daily diets; most men who are at a healthy weight need at least 60 to 65 grams. Because most foods contain some protein, reaching or exceeding those amounts from day to day is easy. Meat, poultry, fish, egg whites, and reduced-fat dairy products are all especially good sources of high-quality protein in a low-calorie diet, but vegetarians and near-vegetarians have nothing to fear about getting enough protein. Legumes, nuts, breads,

pastas, and soy foods are also good sources, and even most fruits and vegetables, which are almost pure carbohydrate, contribute a gram or two.

Check out Table 3-1 for a list of some common foods and their protein scores.

Fat

There are many different types of dietary fats and some act very differently in your body than others. If all you care about are calories, then the type of fat or oil you use to prepare or flavor food doesn’t matter, because they all contain 9 calories per gram or approximately 100 calories per tablespoon. But if you’re concerned about your overall health, and I hope you are, then the type of fat you use matters very much.

The most healthful fats are in liquid form. Olive oil, canola oil, corn oil, and other liquid fats are thought to be best because they can help keep your blood cholesterol and blood fats at acceptable levels. The fats to watch out for are the hydrogenated fats (oils that have been chemically converted to solid fats), which are listed on the ingredient labels of many processed foods such as crackers and pastries, and the saturated fats found mainly in animal products such as meats, butter, and whole-milk dairy products. In the case of animal foods, you can easily trim away excess fat from meats and choose leaner cuts of meat and reduced-fat dairy foods.

Your body needs some fat (at least 20 grams) to help absorb and transport fat- soluble vitamins, such as vitamins A and E; your skin and hair need fat to look alive; and your brain and nervous system need fat to function effectively. But eating too many foods that are high in any type of fat can, and probably will, cause you to gain weight and affect your health. Medical experts say that no more than 30 percent of your daily calories should come from fat and many recommend even less. On a 1,500-calorie diet, 30 percent is about 50 grams of fat. The smart thing to do, overall, is to eat small amounts of the right types of fat.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that all lowfat foods are low in calories. Some are, but many aren’t. Check and compare the calorie counts on the labels of similar products to be sure you’re getting a lower-calorie food. For instance, many reduced-fat cheeses contain one-third to half the amount of calories of their full-fat cousins. But the same can’t be said for some flavored yogurt products and other foods, like peanut butter or cookies, that may have the fat removed but are sweetened with enough sugar to make up the calorie difference.

Vitamins and minerals

Each and every known vitamin is essential to good health and you need them all in your diet, but you only need them in small amounts. That’s good news for low-calorie dieters who are only eating small amounts of food!

Vitamins comprise the two following categories:

� Water-soluble vitamins: These include vitamin C, all the B vitamins, and beta carotene, which your body converts to the fat-soluble vitamin A.

To ensure you get plenty of vitamin C and beta carotene, eat a variety of fruits, veggies, and whole-grains. Meat and dairy products supply the B vitamins.

� Fat-soluble vitamins: These include vitamins A, D, E, and K. You get D from egg yolks and dairy foods, E from vegetable oils, nuts, and wheat germ, and K from leafy green vegetables such as spinach and broccoli. You get vitamin A from yellow, orange, and dark green vegetables.

You don’t get energy from vitamins; you can only get energy from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. But your body uses vitamins, specifically the B vitamins, to metabolize carbohydrates, fats, and proteins and produce energy. Like protein, vitamins also play a huge role in the growth, maintenance, and repair of most of your body cells.

Like vitamins, minerals help keep your body healthy by keeping your bones dense, your heart pumping, your immune system strong, and all other body systems functioning properly. Scientists know of 22 minerals that are essential for good health. You can find some minerals, such as iron and zinc, in meat and seafood, others such as calcium and magnesium in dairy products, and still others, such as potassium and selenium, from fruits, vegetables, and grains. Minerals are just another reason to eat a varied diet!

Fiber

Fiber is a carbohydrate found in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, but it’s a unique type of carb that your body can’t digest. You eat it and it passes out of your body unchanged. Because of the way fiber works (or doesn’t work) in your body, it keeps your digestive system healthy and also helps regulate blood cholesterol and sugar levels. Those contributions are noteworthy for a substance that, technically, isn’t even a nutrient.

Fiber also has other benefits. It can help you shed excess pounds. And as soon as you lose weight, fiber can help you maintain the loss. It’s sounding better and better all the time, isn’t it? High-fiber foods can help you stick to a low-calorie diet and make that diet work for you. Do you want to know how? Read the following list:

� High-fiber foods are bulky so you feel satisfied after you eat them.

� High-fiber foods take longer to digest than other foods, so they stay in your stomach longer, helping to prevent hunger from striking too soon again.

� High-fiber foods are naturally lowfat, and fat contains more calories than carbohydrates and protein.

Nutrition experts recommend that adults get at least 25 grams of fiber each day. In Table 3-2, you see how some foods stack up in terms of their fiber con- tent. In Chapter 7, you can find a full-day’s menu that emphasizes fiber at each meal. In Chapter 12, you can find a list of high-fiber foods commonly eaten for breakfast.

If you plan to increase the amount of fiber in your diet, do it slowly! Adding too much, too soon, can wreak havoc on your digestive system in the form of gas, cramping, or diarrhea. Your best bet is to add a gram or two of fiber at a time, every few days over a period of several weeks, and be sure to drink plenty of extra water as you go along. Fiber soaks up liquids like a sponge in your stomach, and if you don’t have enough extra water to help move it along, your plumbing will jam up.

Water

Water is calorie-free. No other natural substance can make that claim, so drink up! When you’re trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, you certainly don’t want to waste precious calories on other drinks.

Of course you also need to drink plenty of water for other reasons. For one thing, you can’t live long without it. You need a constant flow of water coming in to replace the water that goes out through breathing, perspiration, and excretion. Water keeps your muscles moving, your blood flowing, and your joints bending. Even your bones need water to stay healthy.

Drinking more water is a matter of developing new habits. The following are just a few ways to bring more water into your life on a regular basis:

� Keep a bottle of water nearby at work.

� Carry a water bottle with you wherever you go.

� Whenever you see a water fountain, take a sip.

� Always ask for water when you sit down at a restaurant. Not only does asking help you fill your water needs, but it also can help fill your tummy and curb your appetite as well.

Most people need to aim for 8 to 10 cups of water a day. If your diet is high in fiber or sodium (salt), you may need more. If your diet is high in watery foods like lettuce, tomatoes, oranges, watermelon, milk, and yogurt, you can probably drink less because the water from these foods counts toward your daily requirement.

Phytochemicals

When phytochemicals first came on the nutrition scene in the early 1990s, many people thought they were miracle substances. They weren’t vitamins or minerals. Health experts described phytochemicals as non-nutrients found in fresh foods that could help prevent and fight cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Scientists estimate that hundreds, if not thousands, of them exist in foods, most commonly in fruits and vegetables.

Researchers still have a lot to discover about phytochemicals and their specific roles in fighting disease. The jury is also out as to whether or not phytochemicals work when they’re isolated from foods and put into a capsule or pill and sold as supplements. What experts do know is that many health- promoting substances are found in foods, some with rather unnatural sound- ing names like lycopene, flavanoid, indole, genestein, and carotenoid, that may save or extend your life. When you’re following a low-calorie diet, eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables is important to ensure you get as many phytochemicals into your diet as you can.

Keeping your energy high and your diet interesting

What’s different about low-calorie nutrition and regular nutrition, you may ask? When you’re on a low-calorie diet, you need to make smart food choices because getting all the energy and nutrients you need from food is more difficult than when you’re consuming more calories.

Creating balance

A nutritionally balanced meal contains mostly carbohydrates from grains, fruits, and vegetables; some protein from meat, poultry, fish, dairy products, beans, nuts, or eggs; and a small amount of fat. With the exception of most fruits and vegetables, most foods have at least a little bit of fat, so you’re automatically getting some fat in a balanced meal. Small amounts of added fat also help balance the meal.

You can easily determine if you’re eating a balanced meal. When you look at your plate, more than half needs to be covered with foods that are high in carbohydrates, and less than half with foods high in protein.

Balance is particularly important in a low-calorie meal plan because a balanced diet helps ensure sustained energy as your body absorbs different types of foods and different combinations of foods and converts them to energy at different rates. Foods that are high in simple sugars move more quickly into your system and are metabolized and converted to energy more immediately. Foods that are digested more slowly, such as some complex carbohydrates and fats, provide energy later in the day.

Eating a variety of foods

After you balance the major food groups, choosing a variety of different foods within those groups helps ensure a good balance of vitamins, minerals, and other substances in food that keep you healthy.

One way to know whether or not your diet contains enough variety is to look at the colors on your plate. The more colors you see, the better variety of nutrients you’re getting from your meal. Eating a variety of foods also helps keep your low-calorie diet more interesting and more appealing so that you stick with it.

Using Proven Strategies for Cutting Calories

When it comes to healthy weight control, how you eat is just as important as what you eat. The “what” is all about the actual food that’s on your plate and in your mouth. The “how” is all about how much you actually eat, how many calories are in the types foods you choose, and how to make low-calorie choices within different food groups to ensure a nutritionally sound diet.

Controlling portion size

If you can control the portion sizes of the foods you eat, you can eat anything you want. For example, if you can eat one small piece of chocolate or one small scoop of ice cream or one handful of chips, you can eat those foods every day and not worry about gaining weight from them. Right now, you’re probably saying, “Yeah, right!” because you can’t imagine being able to eat such small amounts of your favorite indulgence foods and feeling satisfied. Don’t worry. It’s a process you have to discover; it doesn’t usually happen overnight.

The menu plans in Chapter 6 call for very specific amounts of foods, or in other words, portion control. When you prepare meals using these menus for guidance, you figure out how to eyeball a specific amount of food and know that it’s an appropriate amount to eat on a calorie-controlled diet. The portion sizes represent an average number of calories for each food group. In other words, you may see 1 cup of broccoli on one menu and 1 cup of mini carrots on another. You’re free to ignore both suggestions and substitute a cup of snow peas or a cup of asparagus. That’s because, as a group, a portion of one vegetable contains approximately the same number of calories as the same portion size of another vegetable. For more information on calorie counts by portion size within the different food groups, check out Appendix B.

In addition to helping you lose weight, a good weight-loss plan shows you how to eat in a way that you’ll eventually be able to maintain your weight loss without being on such a strict diet. You won’t always have to struggle with concepts like portion size, after you figure out what eating a reasonable amount of food means. The plus side to controlling your portion sizes is that by limiting the amount of each individual food you eat, you can eat several different types of foods. Eating different types of foods not only helps ensure you’re getting a balance of essential nutrients, but it also helps keep your low-calorie diet from getting boring. (See “Keeping your energy high and your diet interesting,” earlier in this chapter, for more about balance and variety in a low-calorie diet.)

However, you can go overboard, even with the good stuff. On a low-cal diet, you can eat too much of the good stuff, such as fruit and vegetables, because all foods supply calories and even the most nutritious foods add excess calories to your diet if you eat too much of them. As a result, you need to know how to control your portions when you’re on a mission to lose weight.

When you’re home, you can portion out your food with measuring cups and spoons as a way of teaching yourself what a serving size looks like. When you’re eating out, the easiest way to figure out portion control is by using visual aids for standard serving sizes. Picture this:

� A 3-ounce serving of meat or poultry is about the size of a deck of cards or the box that holds a cassette tape.

� A standard muffin is about the size of a tennis ball (not a softball!).

� An ounce of cheese is about the size of a pair of dice.

An even easier strategy for measuring just about any type of food is to count on your fingers. You can use your hand to measure your favorite foods at home and to gauge your portion sizes when you’re away from your own kitchen. For instance, a standard portion of meat is about the size of the palm of your hand. Make a fist, and you’re looking at a cup of vegetables or pasta. From the tip of your thumbnail to its second joint is about the size of an ounce of cheese. The more average-size your hand, the more accurate these measurements are. But if you’re a large person, with large hands, you need to eat a little more food anyway, so this strategy still works for you. See Figure 3-1 for an illustration of this hands-on approach.

Eating “free” foods

On a low-calorie diet, you don’t always have to eat low-calorie foods. But if you want to eat large quantities of food, then you have to make low-cal choices. That’s the premise behind any diet that says you can eat great volumes of food and still lose weight. After all, if I give you permission to eat all the spinach or romaine lettuce you want on this diet, you couldn’t possibly eat enough of either of those foods to make a dent in your diet. At the same time, you could fill up on them or other leafy greens to cut your appetite and to make sure there’s not enough room left in your stomach to fill up on too much of anything else. That’s why eating a big salad (with just a little light dressing) at lunch and dinner works as a weight-loss strategy for so many people.

The same basic concept applies when you’re choosing foods for meals and snacks and you want to eat larger quantities of food. That’s when you have to make low-calorie choices at the level of individual foods. You can choose to use up your 100-calorie snack allotment by eating a small handful of fruit- flavored gum drops or jellybeans, or, for the same number of calories, you could eat half of a pineapple, five plums, or two cups of steamed green beans with a spoonful of light salad dressing for a dip.

Of course, if what you want to eat is a handful of jellybeans, then don’t force yourself to eat fruit or vegetables. But these examples serve to show how choosing lower calorie foods on a regular basis can make room for those occasional indulgences.

When you’re dieting to lose weight, sitting down to a large quantity of food is certainly more satisfying and less discouraging than sitting down to a plate that contains only small portions. Whenever you need more than your calorie limit allows or you need to “cheat” on your diet for any reason, feel free to choose foods from this list to help fill up your plate:

� Bouillon or fat-free broth

� Cabbage

� Celery

� Cucumber

� Green or red onions

� Greens: escarole, mustard, collard, dandelion

� Lettuce (any kind)

� Mushrooms

� Plain coffee or tea, including herb teas

� Radishes

� Seltzer, club soda, sparkling water, or other calorie-free drinks

� Spinach

� Unsweetened pickles, such as dill, “new,” or half-sour

� Zucchini or yellow summer squash

To add flavor to “free” foods, use “free” condiments such as mustard, horse- radish, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, lemon juice, lime juice, or vinegar, or sprinkle your free foods with fresh or dried herbs and spices. Garlic, onion, and hot peppers go a long way toward seasoning steamed vegetables without adding any notable calories.

Watching calories from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats

After you decide a low-calorie diet is for you, you probably need to cut calories where you most indulge. For example, do you eat a big bowl (or container) of ice cream every night? Are you snacking too often on crackers and chips between meals? Does your sirloin steak take up your entire plate? Your excess calories probably aren’t coming from big bowls of salad, unless you’re filling your salad bowl with cold cuts and topping it off with gobs of dressing. And you’re probably not gaining weight from vegetable side dishes, unless the only vegetables you choose are the starchier, more caloric ones like French fried potatoes and buttered corn.

Look at your diet to examine your food preferences and figure out if you overindulge when it comes to a particular food group. Keeping a food diary (see Chapter 4), and reviewing it with this purpose in mind, may yield some surprises about just how much of a particular type of food you actually eat.

The number of calories a food supplies depends on the amount of carbohydrate, fat, or protein in that food. That amount is shown in grams, which is a measure of weight.

� A gram of carbohydrate supplies four calories.

� A gram of protein supplies four calories.

� A gram of fat supplies nine calories.

Keep in mind that a gram of alcohol supplies seven calories, which makes it closer in calories to fat than to protein or carbohydrates. Cutting back on calories from alcohol can help you lose weight.

When you compare carbohydrates or protein to fat, you can see that, gram for gram, fat supplies more than twice as many calories. That’s why cutting back on fat works for some people as a diet tool. But cutting fat is strictly a tool for people who are eating too much fat to begin with; it can’t work alone as a strategy for losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight.

The following sections explain how to save calories and where to cut calories from carbohydrates, fats, and protein.

Choosing the best carbs

Contrary to some popular diet myths, cutting carbohydrates from your diet will only help you lose weight in the long run if you’re eating too many carbohydrates to begin with! If you know you overdo it when it comes to cakes, cookies, pies, and even breads and pastas, then you probably already know you have to change your diet to trim some of those carbs for a better balance.

Cup for cup, starchier vegetables — potatoes, winter squash, corn, and green peas — are much higher in calories than other vegetables, but that doesn’t mean you have to avoid them. You just need to watch your portion sizes when you choose these foods as side dishes.

On a low-calorie diet, the best carbohydrates are fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables, and high-fiber grain foods. For instance, if you like to eat pasta, choose whole-wheat varieties. You can mix whole-wheat pastas with regular pasta if you don’t want to go completely whole-grain. You can also mix brown rice with white rice or mix rice with grains such as barley and cracked wheat to boost the fiber.

Increasing protein

If you eat a lot of one type of food on a calorie-controlled diet, you have to eat less of another food to stay within your calorie limit. Because fat is already limited in most sensible diets, the choice becomes whether to increase protein and decrease carbohydrates, or to eat more high-fiber carbs and fewer foods that are high in protein. A balanced diet gets 15 to 20 percent of its calories from protein. On a 1,500-calorie diet, that translates to at least 56 grams.

The best sources of protein on a low-calorie diet are seafood, poultry, lean meats, reduced-fat dairy products, and vegetarian sources such as soy foods and grain products. Chapter 5 contains plenty of information for making healthful protein choices at the supermarket.

If you tweak your low-cal diet to include more protein, know that it’s a short- term solution for weight control. Like other trendy diets, a high-protein plan (a diet that gets more than 20 percent of its calories from protein) doesn’t help you control your weight in the long run and can have a negative impact on your long-term health (see “Comparing low-calorie diets to other diets,” earlier in this chapter, for more info on how it impacts your health).

Trimming fat

Fat supplies more than twice as many calories as either protein or carbohydrates, so if your diet is high in fat, you can start cutting there. You can make the cuts in more than one way. To cut down on the amount of fat in your diet, you can

� Choose naturally reduced-fat and fat-free foods. In addition to naturally lowfat foods like fruits, vegetables, and leaner cuts of meat, you can take advantage of lowfat dairy products and other foods that may be lower in calories because they’ve been modified to reduce the amount of fat they contain. (Just be careful to compare labels to make sure lower-fat foods are also lower in calories.)

� Eat a wider variety of foods so that fat takes up less space in your diet.

Fill up on naturally lowfat foods, such as salads, broths, fruits, vegetables, legumes, and grains, so that you’re not tempted to satisfy your hunger with higher fat foods.

� Control your portion sizes. Doing so ensures that you’re not getting too much fat from any one food. For instance, eat 1⁄4 of a bag of French fries, not the whole thing!