Lynne Morrissey is now thriving on a whole foods, plant-based diet.

Lynne Morrissey Sheds $300 of Monthly Medical Costs Along with 111 Pounds

Lynne Morrissey is a Facebook friend with an inspiring story of survival against heavy genetic odds. Lynne, who lives near St. Louis, Missouri, just turned 50 and has four adult children. She is sharing her achievements so she can show others to never give up. Health is just a forkful away.

Lynne has a frightening family history. She lost her Dad to a heart attack when he was only 33 and she was 3. Even as a normal-weight child, she had cholesterol levels over 200, as did both her brothers. The young siblings were put into a diet and cholesterol study. Her older brother was started on an experimental medication and told to eat margarine. Tragically, none of the medical interventions worked. He died of a massive heart attack at age 35. His cholesterol was over 600. Several other family members on her Dad’s side suffered severe heart disease.

Lynne was fatalistic. “I believed there was nothing I could do, that I was destined by genetics for premature death. I thought I might as well eat whatever I wanted because I was going to die young no matter what,” Lynne told me. She became a hospice nurse, so she was around people facing the end of their lives every day she worked.

When she did go to a cardiologist, Lynne got a demoralizing lecture that her cholesterol was 327. Amazingly, the cardiologist advised her to eat eggs! Lynne did not go back to this doctor, but did end up in the offices of her primary care physician and numerous specialists.

As her weight soared above 260 pounds (she is 5 feet, 11 inches tall), Lynne coped with a growing list of diagnoses. Among these were hypertension, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, low thyroid, fibroids, carpal tunnel syndrome, depression, anxiety, allergies, asthma, and disk disease. She needed a CPAP machine to

Lynne spent hundreds of dollars a month on medical costs when she was on a typical American diet.

breathe while sleeping, and the copays for the meds for her illnesses were hundreds of dollars each month.

Disabling back pain, which threatened her ability to work, brought Lynne to a medical rock bottom. But going to physical therapy also brought new hope. “I noticed I felt better, and it clicked that if I went to a gym and lost weight, it would make a difference.”

Lynne decided that swimming was the exercise to start with and found a gym with a pool. At the gym she began working with Adam, who is still her personal trainer. She stopped eating fast food, upped her daily consumption of fruits, vegetables, and water, and exercised four to five hours a week. (She is now up to exercising eight to ten hours a week.) Her weight plummeted and she was off

Lynne right before she began working with Adam, her personal trainer.

her blood pressure medications in two months.

When she reached 174 pounds, Lynne completed a triathlon. But she stopped losing weight, and in fact began to regain it. “I still ate meat and cheese, and it was a struggle to keep the pounds off. I was on antidepressants and several other meds. Soon I was 195 again and thought I worked too hard to let this happen. So I began pushing the weight loss to get back to 184. I knew I had to do something that would help me.”

That’s when Lynne met Julie, a cycling instructor who was healthy and brimming with energy. Lynne wanted what Julie had! Upon getting to know Julie better, she found out that Julie was vegan and was a plant-based nutrition educator. Julie also worked with individuals who were interested in changing to plant-based diets. At first Lynne thought that would be too difficult a diet for her. “I decided to give it a try because I hit a wall on exercise. I was going to be vegan for only a month,” Lynne reflected.

Lynne and Julie teamed up together and the journey began! Julie’s first recommendation was for Lynne to read The China Study; and on March 29, 2011, Lynne plunged into a whole food, plant-based vegan eating plan. She weighed 184 pounds. “The weight just fell off after that. It was no longer a struggle. I no longer had weight fluctuations. I could exercise harder and better than I ever had. At first I was detoxing and felt odd. Then I began to feel better than I ever had, even as a kid. By the end of the first month I had so much more energy, and the diet was easy. Before I was eating tiny meals. Now I could fill up, and there were so many choices of what to eat that sometimes I could hardly decided what to have for dinner. I went from eating steak and cheese to a whole foods, plant-based diet overnight and the transition was surprisingly simple. I also got off all my meds except for one thyroid pill. I don’t need them anymore,” Lynne happily relates. She is now 149 pounds.

Lynne continues to enjoy her plant-based diet and eats heartily. “I can’t believe how much food I can eat and still lose weight.” Her breakfast is always a huge shake made with almond milk, flaxseed, many kinds of fresh and frozen fruit, and some leafy green vegetables. “I have to decide if it’s a one banana or two banana day. If I have a particularly packed schedule visiting patients, I put two bananas in the shake to hold me to lunch.”

Lynne is on the road all day, and usually picks up a vegetable sandwich or salad for lunch. She snacks on fruit and fat free pretzels. She exercises most nights before going home for a dinner that might include more leafy green vegetables, hummus, potatoes, and soup. Lynne cooks on weekends, but is too busy during the week for elaborate meals. With simple foods, she enjoys eating more than

Lynne loves her whole foods, plant-based diet. Joy of eating is one of the rewards of this food choice.

she did before going plant-based.

“Animal foods repulse me when I smell them cooking now. But I was eating them less than a year ago,” Lynne observes. This repulsion is fed by her growing awareness of how animals suffer when they are raised for food. “The awful truth as moved me from focusing just on my own health to a wider motivation.”

Lynne and Julie are now close friends who have done presentations together on the power of whole foods, plant-based diets. Lynne is geared to reaching out to help others. “Every day I see people dying, often from what they eat. If I can touch even one person and keep this from happening, I would know I accomplished something important. And we have done that. I am looking for ways I can reach more and more people to help them,” Lynne shares.

With her determination and inspiring example, Lynne is sure to succeed in changing and saving lives. She has overcome her own genetic battle and now is poised to spread the news that genes are not destiny.

If you enjoyed this post, you might want to read successes of other formerly frustrated people who lost weight and gained health on a whole foods, plan-based diet. Here are stories of San’Dera Prude, Todd Rosenthal, Meridith Hayden, and Judi Menzel.

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on whole foods, plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet: How to Lose Weight and Get Healthy Now With Six Kinds of Whole Foods. This easy-to-follow eating plan is built on whole foods, plant-based diet that can prevent, and even reverse, most chronic disease as well as get you to your perfect weight. Janice was overweight most of her adult life until finding this Perfect Formula Diet.

Selecting a diet is an important decision. It's worth the time to think it through and get some facts first.

And Why the Best Diet Is No Diet At All

Going on a diet is a serious decision. The eating plan you choose will impact your health, appearance, quality of life, self-image, and self-confidence. With so many diet choices, it’s easy to just go ahead with whatever is trendy or to follow the lead of co-workers, family, or friends.

You can lose weight on just about any combination of foods as long as you keep calories in check. But if you are undermining your health and metabolism in the process, you are making yourself into a time bomb for illness and future stubborn weight. Getting thinner will do you little good if your health and energy deteriorate.

With so much at stake, you can maximize your success by doing a little probing before making your choice. Here are the eight key questions that will guide you to the effective answer.

ONE. How fast will I lose weight? The answer you want to hear is “a pound or two a week.” This may sound slow to you compared to brash promises of some programs. Actually this rate of weight loss is sustainable and can be geared to fat loss (rather than the temporary water loss that is often a hallmark of rapid weight decreases). Plus cutting food intake drastically slows your metabolism, making it progressively more difficult to continue weight loss.

What’s more, given the polluted state of our planet, there is a certainty that you have highly toxic persistent organic pollutants (such as dioxins, DDT, flame retardants, and many more) dissolved in your body fat. When you lose fat too fast, these substances will flood your liver quickly, with a potentially profound effect on your health. This is because these pollutants are fat soluble, not water soluble. The liver is your organ to detoxify these dangerous chemicals and send them out of your body.

TWO. How much weight will I lose? BMI (Body Mass Index) is a measure of how your weight relates to your height The best answer is that you will lose enough weight to get to the ideal BMI of between 20 and 23. Research indicates that this BMI is the most protective against disease, and would be considered to be a trim weight without being skeletal.

Beware of diets that don’t give an answer, or hold up a set number of pounds or percent of your current weight. The amount you need to lose is based on your height and where you are starting.

THREE. How likely is it that I will regain the weight I’ve lost? Ask for success rates a year or two out, and you might just get an evasive response. However, if you lose weight just to regain it, you are likely to wind up in a worse place than you started. All weight loss results in the reduction of both fat cells and learn muscle mass. There is no way around this. A 2011 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutritionstudy shows that when you regain lost weight, the extra pounds come back mainly as fat,

You want to celebrate long-term success, year after year

with the lean muscle in scarce supply. So you definitely want to avoid the yo-yo diet effect.

FOUR. What foods will I eat? You might be primed to select a diet that emphasizes foods you already eat and like. However your tastes can change in three weeks with little stress, either physical or psychological. Given this fact, the oft-stated promise of being able to eat “the foods you love” on a diet becomes less persuasive.

Are you going to be eating animal products every day? These foods have been shown to increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis, some cancers, and other chronic illnesses. Or are you going to build your meals and snacks around whole plant foods – vegetables, fruits, beans, grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices? These are the foods that thousands of research studies prove to enhance health and reduce the risk of chronic illness. Not to mention keeping your skin youthful.

FIVE. Will I be hungry on this diet? If the diet works through portion control, the answer is almost certainly “yes.” You may have been told that hunger is an inevitable part of dieting. However, portion control is a failed strategy for the vast majority of people.

Portion control is a failed strategy for most people, especially in the long-term.

Hunger is a basic survival instinct, similar to the need to breathe. You can deny it for only a relatively short amount of time. For some people this might be hours, for others it might be months. Either way, you are destined to eat until you are full sooner or later.

Your body has exquisitely sensitive sensors for both nutrients and calories, plus there are stretch receptors in your stomach telling you when it is full. You will lose weight permanently when you discover the eating plan that lets you satisfy all three sets of sensors at once. Such a food strategy will not leave you feeling hungry or deprived.

SIX. What is the effect of this diet on my health? Even if you care only about appearance, health should still be a major consideration. Why is this? You can’t look your best when you are low energy and plagued with chronic illness. You will not be vibrant and glowing when you are sick. And the pharmacy and doctors’ waiting rooms are not ideal places to meet a life partner or show off new clothes.

SEVEN. What peer-reviewed, published studies are there on this diet and what do they say?

There are surprisingly few studies on “name brand” diets. Weight Watchers has been the subject of more research than most. Published studies show a typical dieter on this eating plan, if the person starts out (for example) weighing 200 pounds, will weigh about 189 at the end of one year and about 193 at the end of two years. Is this the level of success you crave? In looking into this question, beware of studies funded by the company that stands to profit or studies that were never published in respected scientific

Dieting should not leave you poor.

journals.

EIGHT. How much does this weight loss program cost? It’s reasonable to pay some money for information on how to attain and maintain a healthy weight. But the cost of prepared food and ongoing monthly fees can be a major budget hit.

The eating plan that gives the right answers to all eight questions is not a diet at all. Instead, it’s a decision to thrive on whole foods, plant-based food choices. This eating plan is based on vegetables, fruit, beans, potatoes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices. This eating plan does not include animal foods or processed foods (including oil, margarine, soda, and other manufactured foods). It’s really a life choice, not a diet.

People who consistently follow this eating plan do generally lose a pound or two a week if they are overweight to start with. If you eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full, your eventual BMI should fall into the healthy range of 20 to 23.

On a whole foods, plant-based diet, you will enjoy the best food nature has to offer.

As long as you continue this way of eating, the weight will stay off indefinitely and you will be eating nature’s finest foods. There is no need for arbitrary portion control and you will do best if you do eat until you are satisfied. Peer-reviewed published research shows a whole foods, plant-based diet can prevent and reverse chronic illness, including heart disease and diabetes. Dozens of studies show plant-eaters are, on average, leaner than those who eat animal foods.

Finally, a whole foods, plant-based diet can be quite affordable. Whole grains, beans, and potatoes are among the lowest-cost foods. The price of vegetables and fruit can be minimized through smart shopping. You might end up financially way ahead if you can work with your doctor to discontinue prescription drugs with expensive copays.

The next time you, a friend, or a family member is searching for a diet that works, use these questions as your guide. You will be spared disappointment and be rewarded with achievement.

If you enjoyed this post, you might want to read successes of formerly frustrated people who lost weight and gained health on a whole foods, plan-based diet. Here are stories of San’Dera Prude, Todd Rosenthal, Meridith Hayden, and Judi Menzel.

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on whole foods, plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet: How to Lose Weight and Get Healthy Now With Six Kinds of Whole Foods. This easy-to-follow eating plan is built on a whole foods, plant-based diet that can prevent, and even reverse, most chronic disease as well as get you to your perfect weight. Janice was overweight most of her adult life until finding this Perfect Formula Diet.

Can your doctor really help you lose weight? How does physician treatment compare to a commercial weight loss program?

Is the Glass 6 Pounds Full or 42 Pounds Empty?

The media have been overflowing with a recent British study that compared weight loss results of visits to a doctor vs. the Weight Watchers program. A Google search for the common headline “Weight Watchers Doubles Weight Loss” got me 2.7 million results.

This research, published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, is based on a year-long study of 772 overweight and obese adults in the UK, Germany, and Australia. About half were randomly assigned to see their doctor regularly to help them lose weight (called “standard care”), while the other half attended Weight Watchers meetings for free.

The laudatory reporting makes it sound like Weight Watchers has a path to health and a trim body. A review of the actual data, as opposed to the overblown stories, shows just the opposite. The study results indicate this commercial program will disappoint in term of both health and weight. These common programs will keep you from the true weight loss secret: a whole foods, plant-based diet.

Here’s what the routine media won’t tell you. Before the study started, the average participant in The Lancet research was about 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighed 191 pounds, and had an obese BMI of 31.5 for the Weight Watchers group. BMI (Body Mass Index) is a measure of the relationship of your weight to your height, and is commonly used to determine if you are normal weight, overweight, or obese.

Over the course of the year-long study, the participants who received standard care from a doctor lost, on average, about 5 pounds.

If you are overweight, you may dread weighing yourself.

This does not include the people who dropped out of the study. These people probably lost even less, as unsuccessful results will discourage participants from continuing.

The participants who went to Weight Watchers over the year of the study, with the time spent on meetings, counseling, portioning out food, counting points, setting goals, and all the other program activities lost, on average, 11 pounds. Again, this does not include the results of the drop-outs. In other words, Weight Watchers was good, on average, for an additional 6 pounds of lost weight (compared to just going to a doctor) over the course of an entire year!

To get to a BMI of 23, a truly healthy weight as supported by numerous research studies, the participants needed to drop to 138 pounds. In other words, they had to lose 53 pounds, not the 11 they actually experienced. So maybe a year was not enough to lose that much weight? Actually at a safe pound a week, you can easily lose 53 pounds in a year. This study’s published data show that, for the Weight Watchers group, weight loss leveled off after 9 months. The data did not indicate any further weight reduction was happening or that the participants would lose more than 11 pounds over time.

So here’s the data summary for the average Weight Watchers’ participant:

• Beginning of study: 5’5” tall and 191 pounds – classified as obese
• One year later: 5’5” tall and 180 pounds – still in the obese range
• Still to go for a truly healthy weight – another 42 pounds to get to 138
• Rate at which weight was being lost at the end of the year – zero

Health should be the driving reason to lose weight, not cosmetic appearance.

The researchers in The Lancet study advocate weight loss as a powerful method to reduce the risk of chronic illness, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Did this happen for the Weight Watchers participants to any greater extent than it did for the “standard care” patients? Here’s a summary of the published data:

• The Weight Watchers participants did not fare any better than the standard care participants in lowering blood pressure, glucose, triglycerides, total cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol.
• The Weight Watchers group did have small additional improvements in insulin and the ratio of total to HDL cholesterol. Although these changes were statistically significant, their clinical significance in preventing and reversing disease is likely to be marginal.

The results of The Lancet study (which, by the way, was actually funded by Weight Watchers International) are consistent with an earlier review of long-term weight loss for a number of commercial programs. This prior review, published in the prestigious medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine, cited research that Weight Watchers participants (those who did not drop out) lost 5.3% of their initial weight at one year and maintained a loss of 3.2% of their initial weight at two years. In The Lancet study, the Weight Watchers participants lost 11 pounds or 5.8% of their initial weight, which is virtually identical to the 5.3% reported previously in the earlier research.

Yet women who join a weight loss program yearn to lose 32% of their original weight. Most are going to be left disappointed. In fact, their wallets may be left lighter than their scales are. A search of current Weight Watchers charges in San Diego (this may vary in other locations) showed an annual program cost of between $479 and $728, depending on payment method.

These facts are not intended to in any way put down the efforts of anyone seeking trim weight and better health with a commercial weight loss program. Any success – in fact, any sincere effort – should be congratulated and acknowledged. Commitment and persistence are laudatory qualities. But they can be put to better use. In fact, unsuccessful weight loss programs can be dangerous if

You really can lose weight - and without hunger, deprivation, or portion control - on a whole foods, plant-based diet.

they discourage you from starting the eating plan that really works.

The path to permanent, hunger-free weight loss and drug-free good health is a whole foods, plant-based diet. The story of San’Dera Prude (the reality star San’Dera Nation in the film Forks over Knives) shows the contrast between commercial program results and feasting on nature’s finest offerings.

Just before she began a whole foods, plant-based diet, San’Dera had lost 30 pounds on Weight Watchers, but her diabetes was still not controlled. Now she consumes a delicious, varied diet of vegetables, fruits, beans, potatoes, and whole grains. San’Dera is free of her diabetes and eats whenever she is hungry without having to worry about portion size, calories, or points.

The same spectacular results can be waiting for you on a whole foods, plant-based diet. You can experience more weight loss than you would have dared hope for without counting calories or points, without deprivation, without disappointment.

If you want to learn more about a whole foods, plant-based diet for weight loss and meaningful health improvement, you might enjoy these success stories: Judi Menzel (30 pounds), Todd Rosenthal (50 pounds), Meridith Hayden (80 pounds), Mike Vee (90 pounds). You may also want to check out the post Weight Loss – Success At Last and the film Forks over Knives.

You may also want to check out Six Reasons Portion Control Will Make You Overweight.

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet: How to Lose Weight and Get Healthy Now With Six Kinds of Whole Foods. This easy-to-follow eating plan is built on whole foods, plant-based diet that can prevent, and even reverse, most chronic disease as well as get you to your perfect weight.

Meridith Hayden now, trim and in vibrant health.

Meridith Hayden Shares Her Journey To Size 6 And Healthy Iron Levels – All On a Diet She Rates Off-the-Scale Wonderful

Meridith Hayden always had thoughtful comments on my Facebook posts. We “met” on this networking site, and Meridith shared her odyssey of losing 80 pounds and numerous health problems simply through an enjoyable change in her diet. In her twenties, she had already experienced chest pains, shortness of breath, and low iron levels when she was consuming a typical American diet. But that all changed for her in 2007.

Meridith’s story exemplifies how wonderful whole foods, plant-based diets are and how pervasive food myths keep people eating dangerous foods. This young woman lives in Indianapolis, where she works as a librarian and serves as an enthusiastic spokeswoman for health through better food choices. Here she answers some questions I sent her so everyone can benefit from her success.

What kinds of foods did you grow up eating?

Lots of fast food and meals from boxes. My mom was a working single parent and she did cook regularly but there was a lot of convenience food.  Much to my disdain, my mom would try to get me to eat fruits and vegetables at every meal. I was a picky eater and never developed a taste for things like eggs or steak but I also didn’t eat a lot of sugary foods and I never drank soda.

What kinds of foods do you eat now?

I eat a whole foods, plant-based (vegan) diet. I love vegetables! And fruits, grains, nuts and beans. I do enjoy an occasional sweet treat, usually something involving dark chocolate and/or peanut butter.

When did you change your diet?

I transitioned to a vegan diet in the summer of 2007 and gradually eliminated many processed foods a year or so later.

Meridith before she started her whole foods, plant-based diet. Although it's a joyful occasion for her in the photo, she does not look very happy.

What made you change your diet?

I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.  My weight (and stress levels) had steadily increased since I left high school and continued to rise through my undergrad and grad school years. Fast food and packaged foods were my go-to because I had little time to cook. I believe stress led me to frequently overindulge in sugary and salty snacks.

I would frequently wake up throughout the night with chest pains and shortness of breath. I got sick often. I stopped looking at the scale once it passed 210 pounds. My blood pressure and triglyceride levels were consistently high, which was frightening because I have a family history of stroke and heart disease. During my final semester of graduate school I came down with tonsillitis, leaving me out of commission for a little over a week. It was during that time that I decided I needed to make a change.

I had dabbled in vegetarianism off and on since high school and got interested in Community Supported Agriculture and local foods around 2005-06. Around that time I met someone who was vegan for “ethical reasons” and not knowing about the distinction I started to read anything I could find at the library to get a better understanding. Books like Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman and Gail Eisnitz’s book Slaughterhouse were very influential.

Browsing vegan cookbooks inspired and encouraged me to give this new way of eating a try. I went vegan after viewing the documentary Earthlings. That was the final straw. Fortunately, doing that research and having supportive friends made the transition relatively pain-free.

I admit early on I had a couple of slip-ups, or moments of weakness, and bought a fast food burger and chicken “nuggets” but when I thought about why I bought them  — it was cheap, quick and familiar — I couldn’t finish them.

What changes have you seen in your health and weight after you changed your diet?

I am lactose intolerant and before going vegan continued to eat dairy, despite the stomach discomfort and headaches. Fortunately, those days are long gone.

My seasonal allergies that used to require medication barely bother me. My blood pressure, triglyceride and cholesterol levels are within the normal range. My iron levels are good so I can donate blood; prior to going vegan my levels were often below the required minimum.

Most noticeable is my weight loss: Since going vegan I gradually lost 80 pounds and size-wise, I went from a size 16 to a 6, depending on the brand. And according to my boyfriend, my personality has become more positive. I used to have a very negative attitude, and while I still have cranky days, I feel I’m better able to see the good in people.

How much do you enjoy a diet based on whole plant foods?

Meridith's success exemplifies the results you can achieve on a whole foods, plant-based diet.

I absolutely love this way of eating! On a scale of one to ten I’d say 11.

What keeps you going with your current food choices?

First, I love this way of eating and I enjoy cooking — something I rarely did previously, so despite those early slip-ups there has been no temptation to “cheat.” Second, if I resumed my old way of eating the discomforts from dairy, bloating from overeating, and the silent creeping of cholesterol and blood pressure would return. Hardly any incentive to go back.

Finally, after learning about the awful conditions animals raised for food endure and the physical and emotional traumas slaughterhouse workers are put through there’s no way I can erase that information and resume eating animal products.

Why is it important for people to eat a diet based on whole plant foods?

Plant-based whole foods diets can be healthful, delicious, and economical. People often assume “vegan food” is tasteless, and I have had some kitchen disasters and eaten less than desirable meals at restaurants, but the problem is the person’s familiarity and interest in cooking, not the food itself.

Additionally, I’ve found that my food bill isn’t ridiculously expensive. I went vegan during a time where I didn’t (and still don’t) have much expendable income, but I’ve found that buying in bulk, and sticking to the perimeter of a traditional grocery store where most of the fresh foods are located have been helpful. I also don’t eat out that often, mainly because the vegan food options are very limited where I live.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Experiment with cooking. There are so many vegan food blogs, websites, zines and cookbooks that range from cooking with minimal equipment to fancy affairs. Try out a few recipes and share the tasty results with friends, family and co-workers.

Finally, I want to mention that I came to this way of eating initially through an ethical perspective and have viewed my subsequent weight loss and improvements in aspects of my health as a wonderful perk.

At the same time I’ve come to understand that I used food to stifle or repress emotions. In a weird way I feel fortunate to have had these experiences relatively early on in my life and gradually losing weight has been a soul-searching process.

All I can advise is to love yourself at any size and surround yourself with people who love you for who you are and project positive, loving energy. Additionally, turn off the television and stop reading those insidious health and lifestyle magazines!

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D.  Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet: How to Lose Weight and Get Healthy Now With Six Kinds of Whole Foods. This easy-to-follow eating plan is built on sustainable food choices that can prevent, and even reverse, most chronic disease.

Meals limited by portion control can feel so skimpy.

Run-of-the-mill diets focus on controlling the amount you eat by limiting portions. This is an attempt to fit a manmade, arbitrary concept (“serving size”) into a natural biological system (your body). While this strategy may work for some people for a short time, the long-term outcome is often counter to health and weight goals.

The USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 is typical. Some of the serving sizes this report lists include:

• Bread: one slice

• Cooked rice: half a cup

• Cut up vegetables: half a cup

• Fruit: one medium piece

• Cooked beans: half a cup

• Milk: one cup

• Cooked meat, poultry, or fish: one ounce

• Soft margarine: one teaspoon

• Sugar: one tablespoon

Here are six reasons that portion control ultimately will not succeed in getting you to a trim weight and perfect health.

Calories from a serving of fruit-flavored candy are in no way equivalent to caloris from a serving of fruit

ONE. It’s too complicated. The USDA Guidelines, for example, first have you determine your daily caloric needs. Then there is a complex system to determine how much you need of various foods, either by the day or week. These Guidelines assume you measure, weigh, and track all your food and beverages. How realistic is this? How many people have the time to precisely measure and record every sip or bite they consume?

TWO. Your metabolism slows when you do follow portion control guidelines that artificially limit calories. You are not eating enough. Your body believes you are starving and slows down to conserve energy. Your digestive tract becomes ultra-skilled at absorbing all the calories you do consume. When you finally start eating more, your weight bounces back very quickly.

THREE. Portion control strategies may indiscriminately includes all foods – even empty calorie junk foods – as long as they fit the serving size guidelines. A

The USDA Guidelines allow for servings of white bread despite the scarcity of nutrients and fiber.

calorie from candy or white bread is regarded the same as a calorie from black beans or apples.

Your body is finely tuned for survival. You have intricate sensors that activate your hunger when you need nutrients or energy. Vegetables, fruits, potatoes, beans, and whole grains are dense with nutrients that satisfy your body’s nutrient sensors.

Manufactured foods and animal foods can’t compete. Nutrient-poor junk food, in any serving size, will not turn off your hunger. Moreover, even small amounts of animal and highly processed foods can spark the inflammation that leads to so many chronic diseases. Examples include cardiovascular disease, arthritis, sinusitis, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune disorders, and even cancer.

FOUR. Your stomach holds about a liter of food at any one time. This is about 34 ounces – a bit over a quart. When your stomach is full, stretch receptors kill hunger until the stomach empties. Tiny portions do not satisfy your stomach’s stretch receptors, even if you are consuming nutrient dense whole foods.

The problem is compounded if some of your tiny servings are nutrient-poor manufactured or animal foods. You will feel hungry, then eventually famished. Food cravings will take over your brain. You will eventually give in to your body’s hunger, its demand for survival necessities. Holding out against hunger is like holding your breath. You can do it for only so long.

FIVE. You feel weak and don’t want to exercise when you are eating less than your body needs. The lack of exercise cuts your calorie expenditure, making it harder to lose weight and stay active. Your muscles can shrivel, which lowers your resting metabolism and further reduces the amount of calories you burn each day.

SIX. Your self-confidence is undercut every time you eat more than the designated portions of each food. The scale does not budge. Or even worse, you are thrilled to lose weight but disappointed to gain it back. You feel like a failure and conclude you just can’t stay trim. Soon you are chowing down on cookies and candy bars to ease the pain. The portion size game is over. Expensive drugs with dangerous side effects substitute for healthy foods. The drugs disguise the risk factors for poor health and symptoms of disease. Chronic inflammation continues though, unchecked, as you struggle with pain and deteriorating health.

On a whole foods, plant-based diet you can enjoy a plateful of satisfying foods and still permanently lose weight. Not to mention regain your health.

A rejection of artificial serving sizes does not mean you should eat unlimited amounts. Instead, you should rely on your built-in, natural portion controller – also called hunger.

On a whole foods, plant-based diet, you can eat until you are satisfied and still lose weight. The trick is to eat generously of all the kinds of whole foods – vegetables, fruits, potatoes, beans, and whole grains. Eat flavorful foods with mouthwatering amounts of herbs and spices. These tasty, fragrant additions are dense with beneficial phytochemicals (powerful nutrients found only in plants) and will help keep your appetite in check. Add an occasional handful of nuts or seeds a few times a week and two tablespoons a day of ground flax seeds.

This eating plan – the Perfect Formula Diet – allows you to eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satisfied. When you are moderately hungry, it’s time to eat again.

You don’t need to worry if you get hungry between meals, because mealtimes are as artificial as portion sizes are. Instead, focus on your body’s own reliable hunger signals, which have evolved over hundreds of millions of years of life on earth. Enjoy not-meals. Break out of the serving size prison. You’ve been liberated by a strategy that works.

If you liked this post, you may want to find out why Weight Watchers sets you up for disappointment if you just look at the hype about a recent study.

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet: How to Lose Weight and Get Healthy Now With Six Kinds of Whole Foods. This easy-to-follow eating plan is built on sustainable food choices that can prevent, or even reverse, most chronic disease.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) causes over one third of deaths in the US, killing an American every 37 seconds. Want to live an extra seven years? That would be the average increase in life expectancy if CVD was totally vanquished.

The American Heart Association wants physicians to be able to recognize and recommend effective ways to lose weight and exercise more.

To combat CVD, the American Heart Association (AHA) put dozens of researchers to work reviewing hundreds of studies on lifestyle change programs. The goal of this project was to identify the interventions that help people exercise more, lose weight, and eat healthier. The AHA summarized their findings in a 37 page scientific statement published July 12, 2010.

The AHA reinforced the role of activity, weight, and eating in preventing CVD. Their statement points out that black and Hispanic immigrants are initially at lower risk for this condition than US-born citizens in the same ethnic groups. However, as the immigrants adopt an American diet and sedentary lifestyle, CVD becomes a harsh reality for them. Since cardiovascular disease is so closely related to lifestyle and obesity, better habits could help prevent illness and death for everyone.

The AHA statement distilled ten strategies that can effectively change the way people think, act, and feel. These changes, in turn, then lead to different choices about food and exercise. Briefly, here are the ten keys to programs that work.

1. Goal setting. Specific goals maximize success. Goals are most effective when they are set early in the program and are specific, attainable in a reasonable amount of time, realistic, and focused on controllable behaviors. Goals should be easy enough to reach but not so slam-dunk that achieving them provides no sense of satisfaction. An example of this kind of goal would be to eat an extra serving of whole grains at every meal.
2. Self-monitoring. If you are trying to change, you need to watch and measure how you are doing. Examples of this strategy include weighing yourself frequently or keeping a food or exercise log.
3. Frequent and prolonged contact. Effective programs keep in touch with their participants frequently and over a period of several months or more. While face-to-face is nice, programs can also stay in touch through phone, email, or the Internet.
4. Feedback and reinforcement. Information from the program helps you figure out how much you can benefit from changing health habits. As the program progresses, such feedback helps you stay on target to reach goals and determine how to do better.
5. Building self-confidence. If you don’t think you can reach a goal, you might not even try. Effective programs boost a can-do attitude. Small successes build confidence in achieving long-term success. Even watching someone else achieve a goal, such as cooking a healthy meal, can lead you to realize that you can do it too.
6. Incentives. Employers may provide rewards for employees to make specific health-related choices or achieve certain goals.
7. Modeling. Lifestyle programs can use tools such as videos or exercise classes to teach you how to carry out better choices. These models enhance both skills and self-confidence.
8. Problem solving. In making a change in diet or exercise, you are bound to run into problems and barriers. Effective programs teach skills to overcoming these issues and moving ahead.
9. Relapse prevention. Perfection is a scarce commodity, and it’s normal to sometimes go back to previous, undesirable food and exercise habits. Relapse prevention teaches you to recognize when this is most a risk, and to move back to better choices after a lapse.
10. Motivational interviewing. You may be ambivalent about making a change, even if you know it will make you healthier and add years to your life. Motivational interviewing is a style of counseling that works with your ambivalence to help you decide what you really want to do.

The best programs use several of the above strategies. Change is difficult, and each tool reinforces the effect of the others.

You may associate losing weight and getting healthy with deprivation. But it does not have to be that way. On a whole foods, plant-based diet you will permanently lose weight without hunger.

If you are selecting a program to help you lose weight, eat healthier, or exercise, you can use the ten strategies the AHA identified to pick out the best ones. If you are making the change on your own, with some help from family and friends, you can incorporate these strategies into your plans. For example, set specific goals and write them down. Periodically revise your goals to keep them challenging. Find others who have achieved success and find out how they did it. Learn problem-solving techniques to deal with barriers to success.

The AHA does sadly conclude, along with their hopeful take on effective programs, that long-term success with weight loss and exercise is elusive. Interventions that initially achieve impressive results often fail to change weight, behavior, and risk in the long-run. Even those that do help people change behavior may not measurably impact the progress of cardiovascular disease.

The neglected element in the AHA statement is the actual content of their recommended diet. The AHA eating plan contains generous amounts of animal food, focusing on “lean protein” that is lower in saturated fat. This diet is only a marginal change that will not reverse CVD or even much slow it down. This is because CVD is caused by an ongoing inflammatory process related to animal protein, not simply clogging arteries with fat.

The path to permanent, hunger-free weight loss and freedom from chronic illness is a whole foods, plant-based diet. Here’s the best strategy. Set a whole foods, plant-based diet as a long-term goal. Establish a series of short-term goals to get there. For example, week one may include eating an extra cup of vegetables every day. Week two may include an extra cup of fruit daily. Then double those amounts. Go meat-free one day a week, and then two. Start planning not-meals instead of meals. Use all the AHA strategies to stay on track until your goal is a daily pleasure and cardiovascular disease is a distant memory.

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, a nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.

The obesity epidemic in the US remains a puzzle to researchers and policymakers. A widely publicized report issued in June 2010

Yes, you can enjoy pasta and still lose weight. Just choose whole grain pasta. It will take about 3 weeks for your tastebuds to adjust to its heartier flavor.

concluded obesity “threatens America’s future.” Both the health and financial costs are staggering and unsustainable.

In just the past year, the adult obesity rate rose in 28 states, falling only in the District of Columbia. If everyone were a healthy weight, Medicare costs would be 8.5% lower and Medicaid would be 11.8% lower.

There’s only one problem. The mainstream nutrition guidelines the report describes to get everyone thin don’t work. These dietary recommendations had the Federal stamp of approval for the last five years, yet obesity rates have skyrocketed in that time.

A complete change in how Americans eat is the answer. Half measures are basically useless and give only the illusion of getting anywhere. This illusion is dangerous because it prevents meaningful action.

A whole foods, plant-based diet is the solution to permanent, hunger-free weight loss. Studies consistently find that people on a plant-based diet are significantly thinner than followers of a meat and dairy diet. For example, one comprehensive review of medical journal articles concluded 38 out of 40 studies found those who avoid meat weigh substantially less than those who eat meat. (See references to Chapter Two of The Perfect Formula Diet for many more studies looking at the relative weight of those on animal-free diets.)

Of course, there are plant-based eaters who still weigh too much. This time, whole foods rather than manufactured foods are the answer. Most importantly, Americans consumed an average 640 calories of added fats per person every day in 2008. That equates to almost 67 pounds of fat on your body just in one year. Think margarine, olive oil, and every other vegetable oil as the likely culprits here, if you are overweight on a plant-based diet. Of course, if you consume oil but are not overweight, you might be short-changing yourself the vital nutrients found only in whole foods (by eating fewer whole foods to keep your calorie count in check).

So what is it about a whole foods diet that will get you to a healthy weight without deprivation or a growling stomach?  Six key

Preparing whole foods can be simple and fun.

mechanisms drive success.

1. Your body has exquisitely tuned sensors for both calories and nutrients. When it gets enough of both, your appetite automatically turns off. A meat and dairy diet has loads of calories, but lacks sufficient nutrients. Your body keeps sending you out to get more food in the quest to survive. Natural appetite controls are disabled in the futile mission of getting optimal nutrition from animal and manufactured foods.

2. Animal and manufactured foods have addictive properties. You may eat when not really hungry just for a “food high.” Irresistible food cravings drive eating binges. Whole plants do not have this addictive quality, so it’s way easier to consume them only when you are actually hungry.

3. Whole plant foods are dense with fiber, which is not digestible by humans. Fiber makes you feel full but adds zero effective calories. This is not true for ruminants like cows, deer, and moose, who actually can digest fiber. You would need three more stomachs to be able to equal this feat.

4. Caloric density is the amount of calories in a spoonful or forkful of food. Vegetables and fruits have the lowest caloric density of all foods. In fact, you would have trouble getting enough calories from

You'll have so much more energy on a whole foods diet. You won't be able to wait to take a walk. Make it fun!

just fruits and veggies. Potatoes, beans, and whole grains round out the whole foods menu, allowing you to feel full and satisfied. Animal and manufactured foods, on the other hand, tend to have higher caloric density than whole plant foods. This means you have to eat more calories to fill your stomach.

5. High energy is a great side effect of a whole foods, plant-based diet. With all that vigor, you will naturally want to exercise more. The activity burns calories and can even rev up your metabolism so you burn more calories all day long.

6. The excess proteins in animal foods push up levels of a hormone called insulin-like growth factor-1, or IGF-1 for short. In addition to being a cancer-promoter, IGF-1 spurs growth. In fact, factory farms feed animal protein to naturally vegetarian animals, such as cows, to speed maturation and make the animal gain weight faster. Animal protein has the same effect on people. IGF-1 may be one mechanism for this outcome.

Here’s the bottom line. Choose a variety of whole plant foods: vegetables, fruits, beans, potatoes, and whole grains. Eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full. Take a walk with your new-found energy. Then go shopping for some smaller size clothes.

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, a nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.

Meal plans are a hallmark of most diets. You are expected to get hungry on cue, and wait until a specific time to eat again. If you

Soup is ideal for not-meals. You can eat a cup or a bowl, depending on how hungry you are.

are famished between meals, you might be allowed a small snack – probably not enough food to satisfy.

Meals are a human invention. These prescribed times to eat serve to carve up the day, leaving long stretches to be devoted to work. Everyone gets synchronized on pretty much the same rhythm. This may be good for societal functioning, but is not so good for your body.

Hunger is a fundamental instinct and need. Your ancestors, foraging in nature, undoubtedly ate when they were hungry and food was available. Wild animals, living as nature intended, will eat off and on the entire time they are awake.

Your naturally perfect body knows when you need fuel and nutrients. Our understanding of nutrition and physiological

functioning is still far from complete. To second guess your body’s signals to eat is a recipe for failure in the long-run, and often even in the short-run.

The Perfect Formula Diet eating plan urges you to eat when you are moderately hungry and stop when you are full. If you wait until you are famished to eat, you are far more likely to let your appetite get out of control. The end result is that you stuff yourself with too much food instead of exactly the amount your body wants.

Some people may conveniently get hungry at meal times and only at those times. If you fall into that pattern, go for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Certainly there is no problem if you are following your body’s signals.

If you get hungry on your own schedule, then feel free to snack or graze throughout the day, or eat a series of mini-meals. As long as you are sticking to a balance of fruits, vegetables, beans, potatoes, and whole grains (cooked without added oils) you can eat all you want throughout the day and still be at an ideal weight. You need never be hungry.

My friends and co-workers are always surprised at the frequency of my not-meals. They may conclude my trim figure is due to a high metabolism or lucky genes. Not the case. I was overweight most of my adult life, and obese in college.

I did not permanently lose weight until I discovered a whole foods, plant-based eating plan. I love my current diet, which is profoundly liberating, fun, and delicious. Here is a typical day of not-meals for me.

6:30-7:00 am: Whole grain cereal (with low or no added sugar) topped with two tablespoons ground flax seed, lots of fresh or thawed frozen fruit, maybe some cinnamon, and chocolate or vanilla soy milk. On weekends, oatmeal instead of cold cereal.

9:30-10 am: Sandwich on whole grain bread (organic, without preservatives and other chemicals). Filling may be hummus, avocado, nut butter and jelly, black bean spread, tofurky slices, or whatever else is handy.

12:30-1:30: Leftovers from dinner the night before. Wide variety of choices, such as whole grain pasta with tomato-based sauce and veggies, ravioli, lentils with corn and/or brown rice, bean and veggie burrito, quinoa salad, soups of all kinds, baked or roasted potatoes, corn on the cob, etc. I almost always have a cup or two of cut up vegetables at the same time. This might include carrots, celery, cucumbers, red or green peppers, snap peas, green beans, red cabbage, or leftover steamed broccoli, cauliflower, or asparagus.

All afternoon: two to four pieces of fresh fruit, depending on what’s in season and how hungry I am.

5:30-7: Pretty much the same kind of food I had from 12:30 to 1:30. I might cook something fresh or continue the leftover theme. During the week, I often quickly assemble miso soup (so thick with veggies and beans that it’s more like stew), lentils,

That's me enjoying some shade on a hike in Anza Borrego State Park this spring. Clearly all the food I enjoy is not making me fat - and it is not because of lucky genes!

frozen ravioli, or another easy option.

Later at night. I seldom am hungry, but will eat an orange or another fruit if I am. If dinner was small, I might want a piece of toast with tea.

For beverages, I stick to water, sparkling water, and green and herbal tea. Occasionally I have a decaf latte made with soy milk.

Mondays are dark chocolate days. This treat makes the start of the week fun.

Do you think you’ll be satisfied with this amount of food? See if this is your ticket to permanent, hunger-free weight loss success.

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, a nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.

At age 65, Kathy Keller is more active than many people half her age. Although recently retired, she rarely takes time to pause. Her pursuits include chasing after her energetic 3 year old granddaughter, overseeing a major remodeling project, frequent travel, and almost daily volunteer commitments.

Kathy describes the typical foods she grew up with as “the standard American diet of the Midwest.” Her childhood staples included white bread, whole milk, meat, fried chicken, eggs, Velveeta, canned fish, ice cream, and pies. She also developed a taste for some

Kathy is an inspiration for the power of commitment

healthy foods, though, in peanut butter, home grown vegetables, and salad.

In the late 1980s, Kathy’s teenage son became vegetarian, and she decided that was the food path for her to follow as well. Six years ago, she discovered macrobiotics and became “more rigorous” about a whole foods diet based on organic, locally grown food and including miso, umeboshi plums, and sea vegetables. Here, in Kathy’s words, is how lifestyle choices impacted her health and weight.

“My health has been generally good since becoming vegetarian 22 years ago. However, having a sedentary/high stress lifestyle while I worked (retired 2007), over-indulging my sweet tooth, continuing to eat fish and dairy foods, not getting enough exercise, and aging all contributed to a 30 to 35 pound weight gain over the last five years. The Perfect Formula Diet has been instrumental in reversing this negative trend. I lost 10 pounds in my first three weeks of following this diet scrupulously… With The Perfect Formula Diet, I’ve lost weight that I needed to lose; I enjoy what I eat and am more satisfied after eating; I no longer get ravenously hungry between meals; I take pleasure in cooking for myself and others; and I feel good about the food choices that I make.”

Commitment has been absolutely critical to Kathy’s success. She makes sure she always has whole plant foods available and charts her success to maintain her resolve.

Kathy’s caring for others shows up in her food choices as much as in her service in a soup kitchen for the homeless. “Our small planet is burdened in so many ways: lower yield per acre than is optimal to feed an ever-growing population; environmental damage from livestock production; and despoliation of whole plant foods by contamination from Monsanto-ized products. For individuals, whole plant foods promote optimal health (physically and psychologically), energy and vitality, productivity, and protection of the planet for future generations.”

Kathy ended by thanking me for my book, and I am highly honored. Kathy, you are the one I need to thank for showing that change is not only possible but enjoyable. You’ll have all the energy you need for grandchild number two.

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, a nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.

A whole foods diet is the vehicle that will deliver permanent, hunger-free weight loss. Commitment is the engine that makes this vehicle move. Knowledge of the weight and health benefits of unprocessed plant foods will make you comfortable with this top-of-the line diet. But facts alone are static and are not likely to get you to your goals.

Commitment is a drive that you consciously build. At first, this can require much effort. Later, commitment becomes more of a habit and worldview, reinforcing itself every time you make a positive choice.

Willpower is different, and necessarily short term. When you rely on willpower, you force yourself to do something you really don’t want to do. For example, if you don’t like your job, it takes enormous willpower to show up every day. Taking the unwanted, even

Commitment makes choosing whole foods this easy and fun

dreaded, action becomes harder each time you do it.

In contrast, commitment becomes easier over time. Eventually your choices are as effortless as floating in a refreshing pool on a hot summer day.

Commitment will keep you consistently on track to take actions you desire, but which may be drowned out by other choices if you don’t stay focused. Consider moving toward a whole foods diet as one example. You actually want to eat healthy food and learn to build your taste for crunchy vegetables, sweet fruits, and whole grain breads. To get there, you need to break old habits, overcome lazy inertia, and retrain your appetite. So commitment moves you from longing to success.

Many strategies enhance the dedication that real commitment requires. One of the most effective methods is to focus on a cause outside your own self-centered concerns. The power of caring is enormous. If weight loss is your goal and a whole foods diet is your method, choose the cause that has the most emotional impact to keep you on track. You can focus on slowing climate change through a sustainable diet, ending animal suffering, or feeding hungry people with grain otherwise destined to become animal feed.

The more methods you use to foster commitment, the sooner and more completely you will succeed. Visualization is a readily available tool to reinforce choices you want to make, but maybe have sidelined. This method is most effective when you use all your senses to imagine, in detail, where you want to go and how you want to get there. Frequent and intense visualization can put you on the road to success.

Visualization, like all skills, takes practice. To get yourself going, try creating a physical image of yourself looking the way you want to after sticking to your whole foods eating plan.

If you can draw this picture yourself, or even put up an old photo of the fit you, go for it. If you need some help, the site empowermephoto.com can create a motivating image for less than the charge for a typical doctor visit or prescription. When you think of the cost of illness, the expense of being healthy becomes manageable.

Don’t expect commitment to increase in a straight line. Your dedication will be stronger some days than others. If your commitment is moving up more often that down, be confident that you will succeed. You will make the choices you want and break free of limiting habits. Commitment then becomes a passionate liberation, straight from your heart.

Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!

Blog by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, a nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.