It’s no secret that busy Americans love prepackaged foods and fast foods. And weight-loss programs typically try to get us to dramatically change the type of food we eat. But now there’s an alternative.
“Instead of having your ingrained eating habits work against you, use them to your advantage,” says Charles Platkin, assistant professor at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College in New York City and author of "The Diet Detective’s All-American Diet: Lose Weight with the Foods You Already Love to Eat from Your Favorite Supermarket and Restaurant Choices."
Instead of prescribing drastic change, such as cooking so-called “slow foods” from scratch or buying expensive meal plans, Platkin’s approach is much like a martial art: You win by turning an opponent’s strength against him.
Convenience is the strength of supermarket and restaurant foods that are blamed for America’s expanding girth. But when carefully chosen, convenience foods become tools that help you lose weight.
With this approach, you don’t have to weigh or measure ingredients or follow recipes because packages and restaurant meals do the work for you. Your job becomes selecting the right ones to control portions and eat fewer calories. Many studies have found that compared to preparing meals according to diet instructions, people typically lose more weight by eating foods in single-serve packages that contain the right number of calories.
"The Diet Detective’s All-American Diet" offers two options: tortoise or hare. With the tortoise approach, you’ll lose 1-2 pounds per week, a healthy rate, but one that is too slow to keep many people motivated after the first week or two. With a more drastic initial drop in calories, the hare can lose 10-20 pounds in a month.
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Tortoise: Weigh yourself. If you walk or do other exercise for at least 30 minutes each day, multiply your weight by 15. If you are less active, multiply your weight by 12. From that number, subtract 500. This is your daily calorie quota.
For example, if you now weigh 200 pounds and are not physically active:
200 X 12 = 2,400
Subtract 500 = 1,900 calories, your daily quota
Hare: For 21 days, do the “Jump Start Plan” below, with 1,600 calories daily for a man or 1,200 calories for a woman. Then, weigh yourself and follow the tortoise formula.
• Regardless of your starting calorie level, the Jump Start Plans are a guide for planning your own menus. These are the basic rules:
• Know your daily calorie quota and stick with it. For the only exception, see “Still Hungry?” below.
• Each week, plan and follow daily menus.
• When shopping, always look at the calories in a whole package or container of food rather than one serving.
• For entrées, choose single-serving sizes of packaged or frozen meals with the allotted number of calories. Try different ones to find your favorites.
• Before going out to a restaurant, research the menu online, choose a dish in your calorie range and ignore the bread basket or other extras.
• In each meal, include one or more vegetables, raw or cooked, in a side dish, soup or salad, or some fruit.
• Aim for vegetables and fruit as snacks.
• Condiment calories count. To dress salads, spray on dressing such as Wish-Bone Salad Spritzers.
• Drink lots of water and aim for zero calories in other beverages, such as flavored waters, seltzer, or cold or hot tea, but always check calories on labels of specific products. Black coffee has only 5 calories per cup.
Platkin also recommends walking for at least 30 minutes daily or doing other exercise. And, he has found that by following his plan, people eventually seem to get interested in taking the time to cook some healthy meals from scratch. “It happens naturally,” he tells Newsmax, “as people lose weight and feel better.”
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‘Jump Start’ Plans
These Jump Start Plans should be followed for 21 days. You can vary specific meals, sides and snacks as you like but stay within the approximate per-meal calorie ranges and meet the daily calorie quota. If you choose the tortoise approach or have completed a 21-day plan, spread additional calories between meals and snacks. (Below, calories of individual foods are in parentheses.) If you now eat a low-sodium diet, continue to choose low-sodium versions of meals. Never eat less than 1,200 calories daily. And, if you have been diagnosed as morbidly obese or are being treated for a medical condition, check with your doctor before starting any weight-loss diet.
If you're a man, here are two daily menus that equal 1,600 calories:
• Breakfast: Choose a McDonald's Egg, Ham, & Cheese McMuffin and a pack of Sunsweet 70 Calorie Pack Dried Apricots, or a Jimmy Dean Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit Sandwich and a cup of blackberries. Both menus run about 375 calories.
• Snack: Enjoy an orange, or 20 red or green grapes, or 8 large strawberries for under 70 calories.
• Lunch: Pick one piece KFC Extra Crispy Thigh and half a can of Amy's Fat Free Chunky Vegetable Soup, or one package Healthy Choice Fresh Mixers Sweet and Sour Chicken and one stick Sargento Light String Cheese for around 425 calories.
• Snack: One medium banana or one can of Campbell's Select Harvest Light Italian-Style or Southwestern Style Vegetable Soup for 100 each.
• Dinner: Dine on a 1.5 ounces package of Taylor Organic Baby Spring Mix with 10 sprays Wish-Bone Salad Spritzers Ranch Vinaigrette Dressing and one Amy's Single Serve Cheese Pizza and half a package of Dole Sugar Snap Peas, or one package Fresh Express Baby Spinach with one medium green pepper and one medium tomato with 10 sprays Wish-Bone Salad Spritzers Ranch Vinaigrette Dressing along with one Stouffers Homestyle Classics Meatloaf meal and half a can of Amy's Low Fat Vegetable Barley Soup for about 525 calories each.
• Dessert: One package Hostess 100 Calorie Chocolate Cake with Creamy Filling or one Weight Watchers English Toffee Crunch Ice Cream Bar for 100 calories.
If you're a woman, here are two daily menus that equal 1,200 calories:
• Breakfast: One Dunkin' Donuts Sausage, Egg White & Cheese Wake-Up Wrap and one Dunkin' Donuts Medium Iced Coffee, or two-thirds cup Cascadian Farm Honey Nut O's with half a cup of skin milk and 25 blueberries for about 275 calories.
• Snack: Snack on a single-serve container of Mott's No-Sugar-Added Natural Apple Sauce or one kiwi fruit for a total of 50 calories.
• Lunch: Enjoy a bowl of Subway Roasted Chicken Soup or one McDonald's Grilled Chicken Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap and a 5.5 ounce can of Campbell's V8 Low Sodium Vegetable Juice for around 300 calories.
• Snack: Eat one container Dole Tropical Fruit or one container of Campbell's Chicken & Stars Soup at Hand for around 50 calories.
• Dinner: Dine on one container of Amy's Roasted Vegetable Lasagna and one bag Fresh Express 5-Lettuce Mix with 10 sprays of Wish-Bone Salad Spritzers Balsamic Breeze Vinaigrette Dressing and one container of Campbell's Vegetable Beef Soup at Hand, or half a can of Campbell's Select Harvest Light Vegetable and Pasta Soup with one Healthy Choice Café Steamers Sweet Sesame Chicken meal and one box of Green Giant Asparagus Cuts for around 475 calories.
• Dessert: Enjoy one bar of Dreyer's/Edy's Lime, Strawberry, Wild Berry Fruit Bar or one container of Jell-O Mouse Temptations Chocolate Indulgence for around 50 calories.
Still Hungry?
Vegetables are the best way to stop hunger and can be eaten any time, in addition to your daily calorie quota. When hungry, eat one bag (should contain no more than 70-100 calories) of fresh or frozen vegetables that can be microwave “steamed” in a few minutes, right in the bag. After steaming, spray with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and season with garlic powder, pepper, and other spices rather than salt.
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This article first appeared in Newsmax magazine. To read more, click here.