Food for Life: How the New Four Food Groups Can Save Your Life (21 page)

Fake fats may be a shot in the arm for manufacturers, but they are no
answer to America’s weight problems. Not only is their safety in doubt, but these additives reinforce the taste for fatty foods rather than help you break the habit.

Alcohol’s reputation continues to decline in health circles. The findings that alcohol increases the risk of breast cancer and birth defects, and contributes to many other very serious health problems, has cast a long shadow over the idea that a glass or two of wine might be good for your heart.

For some people, at least, alcohol adds to the padding on the waistline. Six ounces of wine adds about 130 calories to your dinner. One beer contains about 150 calories, light brands about 100. A 1½-ounce jigger of typical 100-proof liquor has 124 calories. In addition, alcohol temporarily alters body chemistry to impair the body’s ability to burn off fat.
¹⁵
And for some people alcohol does not displace other calories. If you were to have a typical soda before dinner, the 155 calories it contains would cause you to eat slightly less at dinner, so that your overall calorie intake remains fairly constant. Some people use this same sort of compensatory mechanism with alcohol, but others do not. If they have a beer before dinner, the 150 calories it supplies are not compensated for by eating less later. Instead, the calories in alcohol
add
to their total.
¹⁶

For alcoholics, things are very different. Alcoholism often causes people to consume less food, because in this disease alcohol disrupts the normal cues that regulate eating patterns. Alcoholics tend to be deficient in a host of nutrients.

Jelly beans, gum drops, and hard candies are just chunks of simple sugars, with no fiber. They are the most concentrated form of calories that can be found in a carbohydrate food. If you have a sweet tooth, you may well get more calories than the body needs. Even so, sugars are not nearly as calorie-dense as fats, and many people mistakenly attribute their weight problems to sugar, when in fact the problem stems from fat.

Sugars often act as a Trojan Horse for fat. Coconut cream pie may be sweet, but most of the calories are not from sugar, they are from fat-57 percent, to be exact. Häagen-Dazs ice cream runs between 50 and 70 percent fat. A Mr. Goodbar is a Mr. Fatbar: 59 percent of its calories come from fat. And a Hershey’s Whatchamacallit bar is 50 percent you-know-what.

On the other hand, if your sweet food were a peach, it would be just 2 percent fat. An apple is 6 percent.

What about artificial sweeteners? NutraSweet and saccharin have been huge commercial successes. But chemical sweeteners are no substitute for genuine dietary change. Many people consume beef, chicken, and french fries, and then use a diet soda to try to compensate. But they cannot undo the damage of a fatty diet. Replacing a teaspoon of sugar with a chemical sweetener saves you 16 calories. But just 2 grams of fat hold more calories than that teaspoon of sugar. This is not to say that sugar is a health food. The point is that artificial sweeteners are no substitute for what has to be done if permanent weight control is your goal, and that is to throw out the fatty foods and bring in the grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes.

Normally, the body knows to stop eating when its nutrient needs are met. However, artificial sweeteners do not cue the body that it is time to stop eating. So an artificially sweetened food or beverage is likely to be followed with something else. Some scientific studies have shown that aspartame (the sweetener sold under the name NutraSweet) actually increases the appetite, although others have contradicted this finding.
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Chemical sweeteners also pose potential health risks. Cyclamates and saccharin have both been under suspicion for their cancer-causing potential. Some have suggested that NutraSweet may cause headaches and grand-mal seizures. There are also case reports of children whose behavior has become extraordinarily disturbed after drinking aspartame-flavored beverages. Others have concluded that, for most people, aspartame is safe. But while the toxicologists fight it out, there is little reason to be part of the experiment. This is particularly true for children and for pregnant women.

It is hard to find anything good to say about synthetic sweeteners. Their main benefit is to their stockholders, not to the consumer. People struggling with weight problems get no miracle cure from artificial sweeteners.

Most people with weight problems do not overeat. They are the victims of a high-fat diet coupled with a sedentary life-style. In fact, they may well eat less than do thin people. Nevertheless some people do overeat.

We already looked at one kind of overeating, the restrained-eater phenomenon. If you have been trying to stick to a very low calorie diet, you are set up for the restrained-eater phenomenon. It is your body’s attempt, in the midst of what it perceives as starvation, to take advantage of whatever food source becomes available. The result is a binge, often followed by enormous guilt. The answer is to avoid skimpy diets. There is no reason for such diets, anyway. The diet recommended in this book promotes natural and permanent weight control without calorie restriction.

A second form of overeating is carbohydrate craving, which has received a great deal of publicity from Judith Wurtman, who, along with her husband, Richard Wurtman, and other researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, broke new ground in showing how foods affect the brain.

Carbohydrate cravers can put away enormous amounts of carbohydrate-rich snacks. The foods can be sweet or starchy-taste is not the issue. The reason they consume these snacks is because, without them, they slump into depression. Carbohydrate cravers tend to become depressed in the winter months when the days are short, and foods may help normalize their brain chemistry.

Carbohydrates can increase a brain chemical called
serotonin
, which helps regulate moods, sleep, and other brain functions. The biological process involves several steps. During digestion, carbohydrates break down into simple sugars, which in turn stimulate the body to release insulin, which helps sugar pass from the bloodstream into the cells of the body. Insulin has the same effect on amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein, escorting them out of the bloodstream and into the cells. So after a carbohydrate-rich meal, insulin moves the sugar and the amino acids out of the blood and into the cells. As all this is happening, one particular amino acid is left behind in the bloodstream. It is called
tryptophan
. Without all the other amino acids around, tryptophan has less competition in getting into the brain, which is exactly what it then does. In the brain, tryptophan is
converted into serotonin, a brain chemical which plays a very important role in your moods. One way many antidepressants work is to increase the amount of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is also important in sleep, which is why you may have heard of people taking tryptophan supplements as a sleeping pill before they were withdrawn from the market, owing to what seems to have been a poisonous manufacturing contaminant. (The tryptophan found naturally in foods is safe.)

It turns out that carbohydrate-rich foods affect different people differently. Some people feel sleepy after they eat sugary foods. Others get grumpy. For particularly sensitive people, modest amounts of any sugar (even fruit sugars) can set off a depressed mood. Carbohydrate cravers, on the other hand, feel better when they have sugar or complex carbohydrates.

There is nothing wrong with eating carbohydrate-rich foods. Just the opposite, carbohydrates are essential for good health. But there are two keys for carbohydrate cravers: first, select foods rich in complex carbohydrates-such as rice and other grains, beans, and vegetables-rather than sugar candies. Second, steer clear of high-fat foods-pies, cakes, and cookies. These sugar-fat mixtures can add to weight problems.

Compulsive eating is as painful as any other addiction. While most people with weight problems are not compulsive eaters, some are, and there are ways they can help themselves. Author Victoria Moran knew this problem intimately. She was on the binge-diet merry-go-round for years before she found her way off. She wrote a book called
The Love-Powered Diet
.
²³
Of the various approaches to the problem, hers actually works. There are three key elements:

1. Recognize the problem
   . Look at how you handle eating. “Do you hide food?” Moran asks. “Do you sneak food? Do you eat one way when you’re by yourself, another way when you’re with other people?” Do you eat when you are not at all hungry? Do you eat in response to stress, anxiety, sadness, or anger? The biggest problem in recognizing compulsive eating is denial. Like any addiction, the victim can engage in nearly endless self-deception. However, once the problem is recognized, the solution is not so far away.
   

2. Stick to the New Four Food Groups
   . The New Four Food Groups allow people with weight problems to do something that they may never have been able to do before. “You can throw out the food scale, and throw out the calculator,” Moran said. “You don’t need to count anything anymore, because the food is low in fat and high in fiber.” That’s right. And throw out the calorie chart, too, because grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes are naturally modest in calories. Animal products and oils, on the other hand, tend to be fattening and lead to the stingy-portion diets that are now customary in weight-loss programs.
   

3. Try Overeaters Anonymous
   . Treat compulsive eating as you would any other addiction. Doctors learned long ago that there was no program for addictions that had anywhere near the power of Alcoholics Anonymous and the analogous programs that address other habits. For compulsive eaters, there is no program better than Overeaters Anonymous. O.A. does not spell out a particular diet. It helps its participants break their food addictions through a twelve-step program.
   

“I recommend Overeaters Anonymous very strongly,” Moran said. “Changing any habit is difficult, and it’s always good to have support, but when you’re dealing with an addiction, support is absolutely essential. You can call someone at any time of the day or night. There’s also no charge for O.A., so if a person goes for six or eight meetings and says, ‘This is not for me,’ there’s nothing to lose.

“The first step of the twelve steps that were originated by Alcoholics Anonymous is to admit powerlessness-over alcohol, food, unhealthy relationships, or whatever the problem is. That’s a very interesting step to take, because when I say that I am powerless over food, or the way that I deal with food, then I am at a fork in the road. I have to take one path or the other. One is to allow the addiction to kill me, physically or emotionally: I’m going to die early, or at least have a miserable life for as long as I do live.

“But there’s another road, and that is this: If I can’t help myself, then there has to be some other power that can come in and take over where my weary will power no longer works. If you are a food addict of long standing, or someone who doesn’t think it’s terribly serious but who just can’t change on his or her own, then you need a power that’s stronger than your will. So that’s the beginning: admit there’s a problem, and just toy with the idea that perhaps there is some help that doesn’t come from your own will power.”

Overeaters Anonymous is listed in the phone book. Or write to P.O. Box 92870, Los Angeles, California 90009, for information on a meeting near you.

The secret to beating compulsive eating is, first, to recognize the problem. Then, use the combination of dietary change, including the New Four Food Groups, plus inner change through the support of Overeaters Anonymous. For the compulsive eater, dietary change alone is not sufficient, and psychological growth without better dietary habits is not enough either, as Moran notes: “I’ve had someone come up to me after a talk I’d given and say, ‘I’m a registered dietitian, but I binge and throw up every night.’ And I thought, this person needs to know about inner change. But I have also known people who were in Overeaters Anonymous who were no longer eating for a fix, whose lives had really turned around, yet who would carry little food scales to restaurants.”

The combination of inner transformation and better food choices is the winning combination. “You can have freedom when it comes to food. You also get a happier, healthier life overall. It’s a real gift. The beauty of this is that, even recovering compulsive eaters who may think, ‘I’ll never be able to enjoy food again’ find out, ‘Maybe I never enjoyed food before.’”

A key to staying slim is physical activity. Unfortunately, our bodies are neglected. Many of us spend all day at a desk, all evening in front of the television, and we drive back and forth between the two. Does your body complain, “You never take me anywhere. When we were young, you used to take me out to tear up the town, but now we never do anything”? If you and your body have become a tired old couple, it is time to get to know each other again.

The physical activities that got our blood moving when we were younger tend to fall by the wayside as we grow older. And those who recognize a need to “burn off some calories” often feel daunted by the images it brings to mind: huffing and puffing down the road with other joggers, most of whom look totally miserable. I am not recommending jogging or weight-lifting or aerobic exercises to rock-and-roll music, unless you particularly
enjoy these activities. I am recommending something quite different from exercise. But first, let’s review what physical activity does that makes it so powerful for weight control.

First, all physical activity burns calories. Every movement of your body uses up some energy, and the more you move, the more calories you burn.