When you lose weight, where does it go?

You are constantly burning calories... every hour of every day... even when you sleep.  On average, about 2000 calories a day.  If you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. One pound of body fat contains about 3500 calories.

So... to lose weight, eat less!

So simple to say, but so hard to do.   This is a behavior problem and you need to change your behavior.  This requires focus and discipline. But you can do it if you set your mind to it.  Here are some tips to help.

If you don't measure it, you can't manage it.

Get a scale and weigh yourself every day.  It doesn't have to be a fancy scale or even a very accurate scale.  I have a $3 scale from Ikea. We are looking for changes over time.  Write down your weight every day on a piece of paper next to the scale.  You will notice that your weight jumps around a lot.  Often it will go up or down a few pounds from one day to the next.  Don't panic!  This is normal.  We are looking for a long term trend and after a few weeks you should be able to see a trend in your weight.  It's easier to see if you graph your daily weight.

Write down everything you eat.

Most people don't realize how much they eat or even what they eat.  To get started, keep a food diary for a week.  Write down everything that you eat along with the amount you eat.  Most packaged food comes with the number of calories and portion size.  If you need to find out the calories in other foods... Google it! 
Add up the number of calories you eat each day.  If it's significantly less than 2000, you'll lose weight. You should aim to eat 1500 calories a day to lose weight.

Meals

Don't skip meals.  Eat three meals a day.  When you skip a meal, you tend to overeat at the next meal. Breakfast is probably the most important meal.  Never skip breakfast.

Adjust your portion size.  Eat smaller portions. Use smaller plates. Don't go back for seconds. Eat slowly (it takes about 20 minutes to feel full after a meal).  Don't snack between meals.  It's a good thing to be hungry before a meal. 
Once you get an idea from your food diary of how much you are eating, try to adjust your portion size so that you eat about 500 calories at each meal.  At this level, you will have satisfying meals and your total daily calories (1500) will be less than you are burning through normal activities.  You will lose weight.  


What NOT to eat.
All of these foods are contain empty calories and are unhealthy.  Avoid these foods.  Depending your your current diet, this may be easy or may be hard.  Just remember, these foods provide calories but not good nutrition. 

• white flour

• white rice

• sugar (in all forms... cane, beet, corn, etc.)

• salt (2000 mg sodium max per day)

• animal fat (cows, pigs, chickens, etc. all contain saturated fat and cholesterol

• dairy products (milk, eggs) 

Instead of white flour, eat whole grain breads. Eat brown rice instead of white rice. Avoid all sugar and also artificial sweeteners which seem to have a bad effect on your metabolism.
There is a large body of evidence that animal fat (cholesterol and saturated fat) which comes from cows, pigs, chickens, etc. is bad for you.  It causes cardiovascular disease and cancer.  It's just not healthy.

What to eat. 

• Fish is healthy. 

• Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, beans, vegetable oil.

Look for vegan recipes.  There are free of the unhealthy foods listed above and contain lots of healthy nutrition.

Alcohol

Alcohol in moderation is healthy.  However, it does have calories.... another reason to drink only in moderation.  Most alcoholic drinks contain about 100 calories per serving (5 oz. wine, 1.5 oz. distilled spirits). Beer and mixed drinks have more calories since they have more carbohydrates (beer 150 calories/ 12 oz.). 
Alcohol has calories.  Be sure to write down your alcohol consumption and count the calories.  Drink in moderation.  Just a few beers (3) have as many calories (450) as a full meal.

Exercise

If you exercise, you burn more calories but it takes a lot of work to burn calories.  One hour of strenuous exercise will only burn a few hundred calories. It's good to exercise regularly for the health benefits.  However, don't expect to burn a lot of calories through exercise unless you are willing to run marathons daily.

So... where does the weight go?  

Fat is made up of strings of carbon atoms. When you burn fat for fuel, the carbon is broken apart, combined with oxygen from the air your breathe and ends up as carbon dioxide and it is released when you breathe.  When you lose weight, it literally disappears into thin air.

Packing it all in

Backpacking Fun

For those who might be interested, here is my meal plan for my recent backpacking trip to Yosemite National Park. 

The goal is to carry as little weight as possible while still providing tasty and nutritious meals.  Of course, you could just not eat and live off the "fat of the land" for at least a week.  One pound of body fat provides about 3500 calories (about what you burn in a day of hiking) and most of us have at least a few extra pounds.  However, it's not that much fun to be hungry for the whole trip.

Clearly you want to avoid carrying any water so you choose dry ingredients.  Carbohydrates and protein provide 4 calories per gram while fats are 9 calories per gram.  The high caloric density of fats provide an advantage so I add olive oil and also choose nuts which are high in healthy vegetable fat.  You normally burn about 2000 calories a day but when hiking this can double.  You don't need to replace all of the calories you burn except on long trips so I aim for about 3000 calories a day which provides for large satisfying meals and snacks.

Here is my menu:

Breakfast:

Museli (oatmeal, raisins, almonds, dried fruit)... (I add hot water)
Coffee

Lunch:

Hummus (Casbah hummus mix is great with added olive oil)
Peanut butter
Wasa bread (dry crackers)

Dinner:

Start with a grain such as:
Brown rice (Safeway has instant "parboiled" brown rice which cooks quickly)
Quinoa
Couscous
Add vegetables:
Dried vegetables (REI carries the "Just Tomatoes" brand of dried vegetables)
Olive oil (adds flavor and high density calories)
Seasoning (salt, pepper, garlic, onion flakes plus your favorite spices)
This is easy to prepare.  Just put everything in a pot and boil for 10-20 minutes until the grains are done.

Snacks:

Gorp (peanuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, raisins, dark chocolate M&Ms, dried fruit)

I pack about 3000 calories a day.  This menu averages about 5 calories/gram due to the olive oil and the fats in the nuts and chocolate which means that you should pack about 600 grams (1.3 pounds) per day.  You can divide this any way you want.
I also carried about 200 ml/day (7 oz.) of red wine which is terribly inefficient (less than 1 calorie/gram) but is very satisfying with dinner.

A note about protein.
This is a vegan menu and people often ask "What do you do for protein?"
The grains and nuts contain protein.  The grains are about 10% protein (Quinoa is 15% high quality protein) and nuts have about 20% protein.  Fats have no protein.  If you assume that you are eating at least 2000 calories of 10% protein (a conservative estimate), you will consume 200 calories of protein. At 4 calories per gram this gives you 50 grams of protein which is the upper limit of the 35 to 50 grams of protein which is the recommended daily intake.  Your body can't really use more protein (even when exercising) and in some cases it can be detrimental to your metabolism.  Nutritionists recommend 10% to 20% of your calories come from protein. So, this diet contains plenty of protein.

Salad - Part 2 - Real Salad

A real salad with lettuce, brown rice, black beans, carrots, tomatoes, green beans and whatever else I could find in the refrigerator. Vinaigrette dressing.

There has been some feedback from my last Salad post.
I do like salad but I think that just lettuce and dressing is not very healthy.  There's just too little of the healthy vegetables and most of the calories are from fat.
So... what constitutes a "Real Salad"?

1. Vegetables!

Start with lettuce and add lots of vegetables.  Good additions include:
cooked beets
carrots (cooked or raw)
artichoke hearts
tomatoes (of course)
corn (steamed corn cut from the cob is great)
green beans 
asparagus
brocolli
... etc.

2. Beans 

Garbanzo, kidney, white, black, cannellini, etc.
They're all great!

3. Dressing

Dressing is good.  However, avoid "creamy" or cheese dressings since they usually have unhealthy animal fat.  Never buy dressing in a bottle!  It's usually full of additives and unhealthy ingredients and it's a waste of money and bottles.  It's so easy to make your own healthy dressing.

Oil and vinegar with a little salt and pepper is easy and tastes great.  Always use olive oil which is healthy and has a good flavor.  There are lots of good vinegars from light rice vinegar to white and red wine vinegar to balsamic.

Or, learn to make a classic vinaigrette.  This is easy and gives a great flavor. There are thousands of variations. Start with oil and vinegar and and add seasonings such as Dijon mustard for a classic or fruit flavors for variations.

Salad - Part 1 - Lettuce

We have a running discussion in our house about the value of salad.  My feeling is that it just isn't very healthy.
We're talking about lettuce.  We're not talking about pasta salad, three bean salad, Greek salad, etc.  Just lettuce.
To most people, a salad is lettuce (and, of course, salad dressing).  Sometimes there will be additions like tomatoes, croutons or some other vegetable but for the most part, it's just lettuce... and dressing.
One big heaping bowl of lettuce looks impressive but you are lucky to get more than an ounce or two by weight of lettuce.  What nutrition is in two ounces of lettuce?  Not much.  About 10 calories from carbohydrates and negligible amounts of protein... no fat.  Less than 1% of RDA of vitamins.
Then you add salad dressing. 
Two tablespoons (standard serving size) of salad dressing contains 150 to 500 calories.  Most of this is from fat.  If it's a cheese or milk/cream based dressing, this is bad fat.  If it's olive oil, it's good fat.  Most salad dressings also have 300 to 500 mg sodium in a serving.  This is as much as a third of your daily allowance for sodium.
The calories and sodium from the dressing overwhelm any nutritional benefit from the lettuce.
It's just not worth it.

What about Kale?

One of the joys (and trials) of the CSA box is that each week you are presented with new opportunities to figure out how to cook vegetables which are not a regular part of your shopping list.
The past few weeks have given us the opportunity to consider kale.

It is great as a vegetable stir fry with onions and garlic.  It is also good with Costa Rica Gallo Pinto.

Still more kale arrived this week and we tried this recipe which had been recommended:

Baked kale chips

Wash and dry kale and tear the leaves into chip size pieces. (Discard the stems.)
Coat lightly with oil (I used sesame oil which has a nice flavor but olive or another oil work well).
Spread out on a cookie sheet and salt lightly.
Bake at 350 F for 5-10 minutes.

These are great!

Bread

Bread.
Real bread.
I've been making bread for a long time.  First by hand and then with bread machines.  My latest machine is a Cuisinart (purchased at Costco) which has a "Rapid bake" cycle which only takes one hour and works very well.
It's hard to find store bought bread which is real 100% whole wheat.  It also has lots of odd ingredients (dough conditioners??) and always too much salt.  Most commercial bread has about 400 mg sodium per 100gm (2 slices).  Since I use only 5 gm salt (2 gm sodium) in an entire loaf, it ends up at about 150 mg sodium per 100 gm.

Bread:

350 gm water (you'll need to adjust this to the right dough consistency)
1 tsp. (5 gm) salt
300 gm whole wheat bread flour
75 gm ground flax seed

40 gm gluten flour
10 gm baking yeast

Lately I've been adding 100 gm sunflower seeds to make a nice nut bread. 


I just put everything in the bread machine and use the Rapid Bake (1 hour) cycle.  Works great.
I've given the weights of the ingredients since I've found the easiest way to measure is to just put the bread mixer pan on the scale and add the ingredients directly by weight.  That way you don't end up with a lot of measuring utensils which need to be cleaned.  I use metric grams since pounds and ounces and cups and teaspoons drive me crazy.