Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (33 page)

4. Beware of the starchy vegetable.

For the Six-Week Plan, limit cooked high-starch grains and vegetables to one cup a day. One cup of a high-starch vegetable would be one corn on the cob, one small-to medium-size baked potato, or one cup of brown rice or sweet potato. Fill up on the raw vegetables and cooked green vegetables first. However, most of your starch consumption should come from colorful starchy vegetables—such as butternut or acorn squash, corn, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, and sweet potatoes—rather than starchy grains.

All whole grains should be considered high-starch foods. If you do use bread, a thin whole wheat pita is a good choice for sandwiches because it is less bread and can hold healthful fillings such as vegetables, eggplant, and bean spreads. When you eat grains, use whole grains such as brown or wild rice, and use them in place of a cooked starchy vegetable at dinner. Refined starchy grains (such as bread, pasta, and white rice) and white potatoes should be even more restricted than the vegetable-based starches, which are more nutrient-dense. Restricting the portion size of rice, potatoes, and other cooked starchy vegetables to one serving is not necessary for everybody to lose weight on the Life Plan, only for those whose metabolism makes it difficult to lose weight. Many can still achieve an ideal body weight by cutting out refined starches only, such as white bread and pasta, without having to limit starchy vegetables to merely one serving. Your diet should be adjusted to your metabolic needs and activity level.

5. Eat beans or legumes every day.

Beans are a dieter’s best friend. On the Six-Week Plan the goal is to eat an entire cup of beans daily; you may have more than one cup if you choose. Beans are a powerhouse of superior nutrition. They reduce cholesterol and blood sugar. They
have a high nutrient-per-calorie profile and help prevent food cravings. They are digested slowly, which has a stabilizing effect on your blood sugar and a resultant high satiety index. Eggplant and beans, mushrooms and beans, greens and beans are all high-nutrient, high-fiber, low-calorie main dishes. Throw a cup of beans on your salad for lunch. Eat bean soup. Scientific studies show a linear relationship between soup consumption and successful weight loss.
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As a weight-loss strategy, eating soup helps by slowing your rate of intake and reducing your appetite by filling your stomach.

6. Eliminate animal and dairy products.

For the Six-Week Plan, eliminate animal products completely or, if you must include them, use only lean fish (flounder, sole, or tilapia) once or twice a week and an egg omelet once a week. No dairy products are permitted in the Six-Week Plan.

7. Have a tablespoon of ground flaxseeds every day.

This will give you those hard-to-find omega-3 fats that protect against diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
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The body can manufacture EPA and DHA from these omega-3 fats for those of us who do not consume fish. An additional source of omega-3 fat might be a few walnuts or soybeans. Edamame, those green soybeans in the freezer section of most health-food stores, taste great and are a rich source of omega-3 fat. I also recommend a nutritional supplement containing DHA, especially for those who are poor DHA converters (which can be determined via a blood test). Vegetable-derived (from microalgae) DHA is a good choice.

8. Consume nuts and seeds in limited amounts, not more than one ounce per day.

Pecans, walnuts, sunflower seeds, and other nuts and seeds may be rich in calories and fat, but scientific studies consistently report that nuts and seeds offer disease protection
against heart attack, stroke, and cancer and also help lower cholesterol.
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They can be used in larger amounts once you reach your ideal weight. Raw nuts and seeds are ideal foods for kids, athletes, and those who want to gain weight. One ounce of nuts is about 200 calories and can fit into a cupped hand, so do not eat more than this one handful of nuts per day. They are best used in salads, salad dressings, and dips, because when eaten with greens, they greatly enhance the absorption of nutrients from the green vegetables. You should never snack on nuts and seeds; they should be part of a meal.

9. Eat lots of mushrooms all the time.

Mushrooms make a great chewy replacement for meat. Exploring their variety is a great way to add interesting flavors and textures to dishes. Store them in paper bags, not plastic, as too much moisture speeds spoilage. Try adding them to beans, seasoned with herbs and lemon juice. Even though they are a fungus and not a real vegetable, mushrooms contain a variety of powerful phytochemicals and have been linked to decreased risk of chronic diseases, especially cancer.

10. Keep it simple.

Use the basic skeleton plan below to devise menu plans so you will know what to eat when there is no time to decide.

You do not have to prepare fancy recipes all the time. If you’re going to be out for a while, just grab some leftover vegetables; lettuce and tomato on whole grain bread or stuffed into a whole wheat pita pocket; and a few pieces of fruit. Wash and dry plenty of heads of romaine lettuce on the weekend or when you have the time.

“The best prescription is knowledge.”

—Dr. C. Everett Koop

Losing weight will do you no good unless you keep it off. When you adopt a nutritarian diet style as a longevity plan, slimness will be a by-product of your new commitment to excellent health. Once the Six-Week Plan is over, you will move on to the Life Plan, which offers more choices. This is a critical juncture. You have lost a great deal of weight; you don’t want to revert to your previous unhealthy diet. You need to decide not only how to maintain the benefits you have achieved but how to change your diet forever. Many of my patients have found a good balance by following the 90 percent rule.

For longevity and weight loss, the Life Plan diet should aim to be made up of at least 90 percent unrefined plant foods. My most successful patients treat processed foods and animal foods as
condiments, constituting no more than 10 percent of their total caloric intake.

The obvious corollary to the principle of consuming a large quantity of nutrient-dense foods is that you should consume smaller quantities of low-nutrient foods. Therefore, if you want to follow a nutritarian diet style to achieve dramatic health and longevity benefits, you must not have significant amounts of animal foods, dairy, or processed foods in your diet. If you desire these foods, use them occasionally or in very small amounts to flavor a vegetable dish. After the Six-Week Plan, if you want to add animal products back into your diet, then add a little white-meat chicken or turkey once a week, and beef even less frequently. In this manner, you can alternate: one night with a small serving of animal product and the next night a vegetarian dinner. Use animal products primarily as condiments—to add flavor to soups, vegetables, beans, or tofu—not as the main dish.

If after the first six weeks you choose to reintroduce dairy back into your diet, use fat-free dairy only (skim milk, nonfat yogurt). You can add an unsweetened fat-free yogurt or soymilk yogurt to your fruit breakfast, but do not eat fruit-flavored yogurt, as it contains sugar. Your total animal-product consumption (beef, poultry, fish, dairy products) should be limited to twelve ounces or less per week. Keep a close eye on your weight with both these additions.

How does this work out in terms of calorie consumption? The accepted wisdom is that the “average” woman should consume fewer than 1,600 calories daily, and a man fewer than 2,300 calories. To hold to the 90 percent rule, I recommend women not consume more than 150 calories per day of low-nutrient food, or about 1,000 calories weekly. Men should not consume more than 200 calories of low-nutrient food daily, or about 1,400 calories weekly.

In real life, this means that if you choose to have a bagel for lunch, you use up your 150-calorie allotment of low-nutrient food for the day. If you put one tablespoon of olive oil or a few ounces of animal food on your salad for lunch, then you should
have only plant foods for dinner, with no added oils, pasta, or bread. Using the 90 percent rule, you are allowed to eat almost any kind of food, even a small cookie or candy bar, as long as all your other calories that day are from nutrient-dense vegetation.

In general, the Life Plan dictates that you eat not more than one or two items of low-nutrient foods daily. Everything else must be unrefined plant foods. The number of calories consumed will vary from person to person. Those who exercise or who are naturally thin can eat more than those who exercise less and have a weight problem. Therefore, the number of calories permitted from these low-nutrient foods should decrease as your total caloric intake goes down. For those who have a lot of weight to lose, eat less than 100 calories per day of low-nutrient foods.

Most people are addicted to the foods they grew up with. They feel deprived if their diet denies them the foods they love. With the Life Plan these food loves will become condiments or rewards for special occasions. You will be surprised how much more you will enjoy a healthier diet once you become accustomed to a different way of preparing foods and eating. It will take time; there will be a period of adjustment.

The USDA Food Guide Pyramid that most people are familiar with is designed around the foods Americans choose to eat already. Its goal is to improve the poor eating habits of Americans,
but it fails. The USDA pyramid does not encourage the consumption of nutrient-dense plant foods. Anyone following the USDA guidelines, eating six to eleven daily servings of refined grains (breads, cereals, pastas) and three to five servings of animal products and dairy, is certain to obtain insufficient antioxidants and phytochemicals, depriving himself or herself of the opportunity to maximize prevention against common diseases. However, I do not recommend a grain-based diet. Potatoes, rice, and even whole grains do not contain the phytochemical power of fruits and vegetables. As I showed earlier, a high intake of refined grains in the diet is linked to common cancers. A high intake of fruits has the opposite effect. Fruits protect powerfully against cancer.
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My food pyramid represents a nutritarian diet style emphasizing high-nutrient foods as the base of the pyramid. These nutrient-dense foods provide the majority of calories, while other foods contribute only a minimal amount.

THE LIFE PLAN: DR. FUHRMAN’S FOOD PYRAMID