The Eat This, Not That! No-Diet Diet: The World's Easiest Weight-Loss Plan! - Softcover

CHAPTER ONE
 
The Eat This, Not That! No-Diet Diet is a low-calorie, high-fiber, fat-free product made with no trans fats or added sugars.
 
It’s designed to strip pounds from your body like magic! Simply tear any chapter from the book for each meal (or any 5- to 7-page section at snack time), place in a microwave-safe container, add ¼ cup water per page, and microwave on high for 60 to 90 seconds. Add salt and ground black pepper to taste, and serve with a side of steamed kale. By eating only pages from The Eat This, Not That! No-Diet Diet (and some kale) five or six times per day, you’ll shed 5, 10, even 20 pounds per week! What could be easier?
 
Okay, we’re kidding. But the claims and strategies outlined in the above paragraph aren’t really that different from what most traditional diet books try to sell you. Perhaps you’re not physically eating their books, but you are often eating a rigid, unappealing, and, in the end, temporary “diet” that’s seldom any more realistic than the plan outlined above. And that’s why, in the long run, most diets fail. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that regardless of the type of diet plan you choose, any diet you go on will lead to weight loss if it includes a calorie deficit. This finding is echoed by recent studies published in the journals Diabetes Care, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and the Archives of Internal Medicine.
 
And typically people on diets lose 5 to 10 percent of their starting weight in the first 6 months. But according to researchers at UCLA, most people who go on these diets gain that weight back, and then some, within 1 year.
 
That’s because most diet plans require you to do one of five things:
 
Eat only meals that fall within the narrow confines of a particular “zone” or food ratio or point system.
 
This was the classic Weight Watchers plan, a concept that used to assign the same value to a couple of apples as it did to a mini packet of Oreos. In fact, Weight Watchers revamped its point value system right after Thanksgiving 2010 because it had become apparent that you could live entirely on nutrition-free junk food and still be on their program. Worse, you can eat up all of your points at one meal and starve yourself for the rest of the day—the worst thing you can do for your metabolism (the internal calorie-combustion system you read about in the last chapter).
 
Eat only foods containing one particular ingredient.
 
You’ve heard of these: the Cheesecake Diet, the Peanut Butter Diet, the Grapefruit Diet. They all work—until they don’t work. People fall off of restrictive diets for the same reason dogs eat Christmas wrapping paper—because after days and weeks of the same food, day in and day out, you’ll put any piece of garbage in your gullet just to break up the boredom.
 
Eat only foods that don’t contain one particular ingredient.
 
Think of the Atkins diet, in which you have to give up carbohydrates—even severely restricting fruits and vegetables. You miss out not only on vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other things necessary to make life possible, but also on the flavors and textures that make life bearable. In the long run? Not sustainable.
 
Eat only foods you’ve cooked at home.
 
There are plenty of “diet books” out there that are composed of only the culinary musings of some faltering celebrity chef who’s desperate to cash in on his fading status. Sure, you’ll lose weight eating low-cal foods at home—and cooking for yourself is by far the best way to control your calorie and nutrition intake. But unlike former celebrity chefs, most of us have day jobs. It’s not like we can whip up Acorn Squash with Porcini Mushroom Stuffing in the break room at the office, you know?
 
Eat only extremely expensive foods delivered to your home by the company that came up with the diet.
 
Hey, we applaud Dan Marino, Marie Osmond, Don Shula, and all the other folks who got rich and fat in the latter part of the last century and who are now touting home-delivery weight-loss plans. But seriously: Unless you’re a Howard Hughes–type billionaire shut-in, shelling out big bucks for the privilege of waiting for dinner to arrive night after night isn’t that viable a way to live. It’s rare, but sometimes even we get invited to work functions, birthday parties, holiday gatherings, dates, that sort of thing. And then there are those pesky day jobs that so many of us have.
 
What’s needed is an eating strategy that’s not so much a traditional “diet,” but rather a completely new approach to food and weight loss. We need a plan that takes into consideration the simple fact that we eat in different ways, at different times, and in different settings. Sometimes we do cook at home. Sometimes we have meals at nice restaurants. Sometimes lunch or dinner arrives at our doorsteps, or comes at us through our car windows. And sometimes we just nosh on ready-to-eat food that’s been prepared in a supermarket and stored on its shelves. Any “diet” or eating plan that forces you to focus on only one of these sources of food—or forces you to eliminate one or more foods—just isn’t going to work in today’s world.
 
Plus, we have a variety of cravings. Sometimes we want sweets, sometimes we want meats. Sometimes we feel like a nut, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we hunger for an exotic culinary adventure (new sushi restaurant? Cool!). Other times we just want to curl up with comfort food and some bad TV (a bowl of Campbell’s Chicken & Stars makes a nice accompaniment to Dancing with the Stars, by the way).
 
And that’s where The Eat This, Not That! No-Diet Diet comes in. For years, we’ve been showing you how to make smarter choices in the grocery store, at your favorite restaurants, even in your own kitchen. But for the first time, we’re putting it all together in a way that allows you to plan a full day of healthy eating, packing in all the nutrients your body craves while cutting calories and shedding unwanted pounds, effortlessly.
 
The premise of this food plan is simple: You need to eat a lot, and you need to eat often. We’ve based this plan on the ideal of eating three meals, two snacks, and even dessert, each and every day. Each of these meals and snacks has an ideal ratio of fats, carbs, and protein—but don’t sweat it, they’re just guidelines! And each meal or snack is designed to pack in the most nutrients (and flavor) possible, for a sensible number of calories.
 
And what makes this plan really unique is that no matter where you are, or what you crave, or what your stress level might be, we’ve given you a plan for high-nutrition, low-calorie eating. We’ve assessed every food in the supermarket, we’ve analyzed every item on every chain restaurant’s menu, and we’ve broken down the nutritional content of every whole food in your fridge. If you can put it in your mouth, we’ve ranked it and rated it. And we’ve used these rankings to create complete meals that will make weight loss effortless, no matter where you are.
 
For example, studies show that eating a calorie-dense, high-protein meal to start your day is one of the hallmarks of weight loss. And adding high-fiber carbohydrates such as whole grains and fruits to your morning meal will help keep hunger at bay for hours. In a 2008 study, researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University found that people who regularly ate a protein-rich, 600-calorie breakfast lost significantly more weight in 8 months than those who consumed only 300 calories and a quarter of the protein. Thebig-breakfast eaters lost an average of 40 pounds and had an easier time sticking with the diet, even though both groups were prescribed about the same number of total daily calories.
 
Pretty convincing, right? So with that in mind, to reap the maximum benefits of the latest nutritional science we’re recommending a breakfast of between 400 and 600 calories, at least 25 grams of protein, and as much fiber as you can pile on.
 
But of course, you don’t always have the time to study the labels, measure the portions, and ensure that you’re getting the exact right kind of food at the exact right time. And life doesn’t always conspire to give us control of our breakfast plans. Fortunately, we’ve done the work for you. Consider these four Monday morning breakfast scenarios to see how The Eat This, Not That! No-Diet Diet has you covered, no matter what your day looks like.