The only way eating more fruits and vegetables
will lower one’s weight,
is if this results
in a lowering of one’s overall calories.

It’s almost shameful that a point so obvious
needs to be made so repeatedly.

Obesity Presumption #3:
Eating More Fruit and Vegetables Will Lower Your Weight

                       by Dr Ayra Sharma, M.D.

The 3rd Obesity Presumption in the New England Journal of Medicine on obesity myths, presumptions and facts paper states that,

“Eating more fruits and vegetables will result in weight loss or lessweight gain,
regardless of whether one intentionally makes any other behavioral or environmental changes.”

The notion underlying this presumption is the common belief that,

“By eating more fruits and vegetables, a person presumably spontaneously eats less of other foods, and the resulting reduction in calories is greater than the increase in calories from the fruit and vegetables.

While this may well be the case for some people, unless those fruits and vegetables are being eaten raw, chances are that they may well be contributing a significant amount of calories to your diet (think Indian vegetarian curry or a vegetable stir-fry).

It is therefore by no means surprising that simply going vegetarian (or even vegan) will do much for your weight even if it may take longer to eat the same amount of calories.

Thus, the studies quoted in this paper failed to find any impact on body weight by simply increasing fruit and vegetable intake without making any other adjustments to your diet - in the end what counts with regard to body weight are calories - irrespective of whether these are derived from vegetables, fruit, fats, oils, carbs, meats, dairy or alcohol.

If anything, this presumption should serve to remind us that
eating healthier food is not the same as eating fewer calories.

                       Dr. Sharma’s Obesity Notes – www. drsharma.ca

By The Way .........
You might think I'm Twisted,
but Valentine’s Day is tomorrow.
Jewelry and Lingerie are lovely,
... and I do Hope I get some beautiful Flowers.
But
for someone (me) who didn’t receive Chocolates for years as a helpful gesture,  because she was too fat for them, I find there’s nothing that says to me: “I love you” on Valentine’s Day as well as a great big Heart-Shaped-Box-of-Sees-Chocolates.
  Even if I choose not to eat them,
I still want to receive that gift.

Below is an interesting video presentation by Paleo Guru,
J. Stanton of Gnolls.org, on his view of the way our mental and physical processes interact to produce Hunger, 

 

“Palability” and “reward” are not actual properties of food. Our likes and wants are subjective properties that we assign to food based on our past experiences and our current state of satiation and satiety." 
 

Bistro Shrimp Pasta (The Cheesecake Factory)
This dish might seem like a healthy choice because of the shrimp, mushrooms and arugula. However, at 3,120 calories it's the most caloric thing on the menu—yes, even more than the cheesecakes.

Crispy Chicken Costoletta (The Cheesecake Factory)
The meal sounds harmless with its "lightly breaded" chicken breasts, mashed potatoes and fresh asparagus, but the meal packs 2,610 calories. The dish has more calories than any steak, chop or burger meal on The Cheesecake Factory's menu

18-ounce Veal Porterhouse (Maggiano’s Little Italy)
Is it really necessary to eat six times the amount of a normal serving of veal in one sitting? Maggiano's thinks so: This colossally large portion of meat weighs in at 1,900 calories. And that's without any sides!

Little Italy Chocolate Zuccotto Cake (Maggiano's)
There's nothing like a little dessert to end a meal. But there's nothing ''little'' about this cake: It provides 1,820 calories.

Country Fried Steak & Eggs (IHOP)
This herculean meal includes 8 ounces of fried steak with country gravy, but it doesn't stop there! You also get to pile on two eggs, hash browns and two buttermilk pancakes. That filling feast comes with a nutritional cost of 1,760 calories.

Baby Back Ribs (Full Rack) with Shiner Bock BBQ Sauce (Chili's)
Eating this rack of ribs would supply you with the nutritional equivalent of two Chili's Classic Sirloin Steak dinners with mashed potatoes—plus another 10-ounce Classic Sirloin Steak on the side. This meal tips the scales at 1,660 calories. If you order the Homestyle Fries and Cinnamon Apples to complete your meal, you increase the damage to over 2,300 calories

 
Johnny Rockets' Bacon Cheddar Double
Johnny Rockets' Bacon Cheddar Double burger is served along with its Sweet Potato Fries and Big Apple Shake, which actually contains a slice of apple pie. That meal delivers a total of 3,500 calories.

Smoothie King's
Peanut Power Plus Grape Smoothie
Smoothie King combines peanut butter, banana, sugar, and grape juice in its Peanut Power Plus Grape Smoothie. A 40-oz. order of the smoothie contains 1,460 calories

Uno Chicago Grill's Deep Dish Macaroni & 3-Cheese
Uno's Deep Dish Macaroni is made up of four cups of pasta, cheddar, Parmesan and Romano cheeses along with Alfredo sauce and a Ritz Cracker topping. The meal contains 1,980 calories.

Eating Healthy and Weight-Loss
are two separate issues.

 Aligning Nutrition, Calories and Enjoyment 
           
                 by Dr. Arya Sharma, Obesity Management Professor

Healthy eating (at least in the conventional sense) and weight management are actually two different issues - related perhaps, but different!

We only need to remind ourselves of Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, who for 10 weeks sustained himself on a “convenience store diet” consisting largely of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Dorito chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, thereby losing 27 pounds and reducing his BMI from 28.8 to 24.9 - all of this, with no exercise (accompanied by a 40% reduction in triglycerides and a 20% increase in HDL cholesterol - go figure!).

Haub conducted this “experiment” to illustrate one simple point: when you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight - even on the “unhealthiest” diet imaginable (he limited himself to 1800 Cal, well below his estimated requirement of about 2400 Cal).

Conversely, although, I am not sure that anyone has done this, I am completely certain that you could eat the healthiest possible diet (orthorexic organic vegan if you chose) and yet gain weight by consuming more calories than you need.

Thus, the “healthiness” of your diet and the “caloric content” of your diet actually have little to do with each other.

“Healthiness” is a matter of nutrients - ensuring that your diet delivers the appropriate amount of macro and micronutrients to your body to ensure its “nutritional balance”.

However, whether or not you gain or lose weight on that nutritionally balanced “healthy” diet, ultimately depends on its caloric content.

In other words, it does not matter how healthy or unhealthy your diet is - if you don’t cut calories, your weight stays the same. (as 85% of weight management is about calories “in” - let’s not worry about physical activity in this discussion)

Ideally, a “healthy diet” would ensure both “nutritional” and “caloric” balance - i.e. give you all the nutrients you need to be healthy AND exactly the number of calories you need to maintain your weight.

There is, however, a third characteristic of a diet that plays into this discussion - the feeling of enjoyment (pleasure, happiness, excitement, satisfaction, comfort).

Enjoyment is elicited by features like taste, smell and texture, which together make up the palatability of foods. Enjoyment, also involves evocation of pleasant memories and experiences that may be related to certain foods or beverages.

Think of these properties of a “healthy” diet as a triple Venn diagram - the perfect situation would be when all three circles (nutritional balance, caloric balance and enjoyment) completely overlap.

The challenge we often face is of course the fact that, enjoyment (even if it lasts only a brief instant) will often trump both nutritional and caloric balance.

There are of course other factors that may influence dietary decisions including cost, convenience, environmental concerns, ethics, religious beliefs, traditions, etc. but in the end, the challenge is to find a diet that maximizes health and enjoyment while ensuring caloric balance.

                Dr. Sharma’s Obesity Notes at www. drsharma.ca

We each have to individually determine Rules
that get us to limit the food we eat in situations.

This can be achieved by adopting Rules from another Diet, a Non-diet, a Way-of-Eating, a Lifestyle; or by combining them; or by creating  new and specific Rules just for ourselves.

We need to finally ACCEPT that we are going to have to change our lives and consistently eat less if we want to be smaller and feel better.

 We are going to have to face down desires to eat sometimes when we're not supposed to … based on our individual Rules.

We're going to have to determine what foods work for us individually and just how much dense food we can live with or live without.

Doing this involves an absolute commitment to learning how much we really need to sustain ourselves, individually, -  for our health and for our true pleasure.