The Petite Advantage Diet (24 page)

I am always shocked when I am on a plane, or at a party, or just people-watching and observe the staggering amount of soda people consume. I know women in their forties and fifties who drink over 100 ounces of real soda a day. Given that one sixty-four-ounce bottle of soda equals 960 calories, it’s the equivalent of 100 pounds of fat, consumed by liquid–a year. Wow! Years ago, we had the wife of a major Chicago CEO as a client. She was a struggling, overweight Petite who was once a knockout. She became virtually unrecognizable as a result of her love affair with Pepsi, which she had no intention of breaking. Her flawed belief system led her to
believe
that Pepsi was not an issue. We finally had to just throw in the towel, which, FYI, is what her husband did a few years later. (She and Pepsi were recently seen vacationing together in Barbados.)

By now, you must be asking yourself: “What about diet soda?” Well, that’s also not a great choice, as Lyn M. Steffen, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota found that the risk of metabolic syndrome–defined as the “triple threat” of high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high cholesterol–increased by 34 percent in those who consumed just one diet soda each day compared to those who didn’t drink any.

In another bit of similar researcher, Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center studied 1500 people between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four and found that drinking real soda (not diet) contributes to weight gain.
⁵
But, they also found that for each can of
diet
soda consumed, the risk of obesity went up by 41 percent.

The question remains: Is it something in the soda or it is more about the behaviors of those who choose to drink soda?

There is a body of research that points to the fact that the artificial sweeteners in diet soda may be playing with our cravings for sweets. Professors Terry Davidson and Susan Swithers from Purdue University found that rats that were fed artificial sweeteners “consistently ate more than the group fed high-calorie sweeteners.”
⁶

There is also a theory that, by consuming diet soda, we feel entitled to “treat” ourselves with other foods. You will hear a similar argument in chapter 8 when we talk about the damaging effects of cardiovascular exercise. I guess we can safely say that anyone drinking diet soda should:

1.
Examine why they are drinking it, as they shouldn’t be, especially if you are a Petite.

2.
Look at what they could be drinking instead.

3.
Determine if choosing diet soda is resulting in more sweet calories consumed in other areas.

Juice

Juice, in my opinion, is the worst possible liquid calorie you can consume. If you can believe it, juice is fifteen calories an ounce. That’s 25 percent
more
calories than soda and almost twice the calories of sports drinks. People think that juice is “healthy.” Almost every commercial juice is pasteurized to extend its shelf life and is generally chemically engineered to taste fresh. The pasteurization process heats up the juice and kills many of the valuable nutrients and vitamins. In addition, most fruit juices are only 10 percent juice; the rest is sugar. Eliminate juice. Ditto for your children or any children that you come across, for that matter, who have it in their little hands. Did you know that a tiny juice box with a straw possesses ninety calories? Take it away and replace it with water–not calorie water, but just water-water. That’s what our kids need.

And just to finish this point, I don’t even want you juicing at home. Eat the whole fruit. Not only will it tip satiety, it will also save you calories, as an average medium-size orange possesses sixty calories while an eight-ounce glass of orange juice has 120 calories. That’s a 100 percent increase and your body doesn’t even know it! Don’t do it.

Calorie-Laden Coffee and Tea

Later in this chapter, you will learn that I am pro coffee and tea. For the record, that’s plain coffee and tea, with nothing added but maybe a little sugar or a very small amount of artificial sweetener. But milkshakes masquerading as coffee or tea are not an approved beverage for Petites or anyone else for that matter. I have to say that, for Petites, even cream in coffee can be an issue if you are putting a lot of it into each cup and/or drinking a lot of coffee throughout the day. Be careful. Cream, even half-and-half (thirty-nine calories an ounce, and you may easily be using three ounces in each cup, which is 117 calories!) clearly falls in the Addies category and just adds up quickly.

Mixed Drinks–Especially Margaritas

In the next few pages, I am going to talk about alcohol, specifically wine. But this is about good old mixed drinks–gin and tonic, vodka and cranberry juice, margaritas, and cosmopolitans. These translate to
big
numbers when it comes to calories.

Mixed drinks are so calorically potent because you have to add the calories of the hard liquor–generally between 60 to 150 calories an ounce, depending on the proof–to the mixer, easily twelve to fifteen calories an ounce. Very quickly, your little “drink” adds up to hundreds of calories. Those big, frozen, albeit yummy, margaritas can add up to 500 calories each. That could be close to half your daily caloric intake. Think before you drink. No, better yet, think before you even order anything to drink that isn’t water, or unsweetened tea or coffee. Say to yourself: “Do I really want to drink this, or am I just succumbing to peer pressure? Everyone else is drinking something. What should I do?” The answer to that last question is to decide what you really want, plug it into your daily caloric intake, and enjoy. I’m not a big fan of the old recommendation to drink a wine spritzer. To me, and to many Petites, that’s like drinking Kool-Aid, because you can drink it so quickly and then want more.

Energy Drinks

Oy, the energy drinks and weight! Ladies, these drinks are lethal. They are packed with sugar and caffeine and cause all sorts of negative responses in the body. Once you “juice up” on them, your very smart brain says, “Wow, what’s going on? You’re on fire. We need to calm you down.” Then it goes about doing so by releasing hormones and enabling you to slow down and not be so chemically “pumped.” That will lead to a sugar
and
a caffeine crash and you will feel worse than you did before the drink.

Besides, these drinks, like the others I mentioned earlier, are calorie-packed. Petites just don’t have that margin for error in their daily caloric intake. Don’t drink them, buy them, or have them around the house, as
no one
needs to be drinking them! And, just like diet soda, I would be very leery of sugar-free energy drinks, as the same brain response may occur.

I’ve spent the first part of this chapter telling you what
not
to drink. Now, it’s time to get to what you can have.

Water

First and foremost is water. I know this must sound boring, but it’s essential to your success. Look, this is
not
a new bit of advice, but so many Petites I know don’t drink enough water. Plus, there is quite a bit of controversy as to how much water you should drink and what other liquids count toward your water balance. Let’s examine the issues.

To determine how much water you should be drinking, I want you to get up tomorrow morning and weigh yourself. Then, I want you to drink half your body weight in water and, the very next morning, weigh yourself again. If the scale has gone down, then that indicates that you were holding on to water. The amount the scale has gone down indicates the amount of water you were holding, since you weren’t drinking enough. Remember, I want to eradicate all water bloat, as that is part of what is keeping the scale up.

You see, the very smart human body holds water and you bloat when it is dehydrated. It does that as it senses there is not a readily available source of water, causing the brain to instruct the body to hold on to all available reserves. You can see the puff in your hands and feet, around your eyes and midsection, possibly everywhere. That is why staying in proper water balance is so very important–and especially important for those of you with a shorter stature. What looks like a little bloat on a taller woman looks like a
lot
of bloat on you. It’s just like body fat. You don’t have as much height to distribute it across. Therefore, you have to be that much more vigilant about your water balance.

Just remember, bloat equals dehydration and should be your signal to start pumping down water immediately. You want to manage thirst. The only time you should feel thirsty is at the same time you feel hunger–first thing in the morning. I never want you to feel thirsty, because, at that point, you are already dehydrated. Clear urine is also a good indicator that you are in proper water balance.

The human body is made up of 60 to 75 percent water, and the brain is made up of even more than that. You
must
drink it, as it:

• Fills you up. I know you have heard it before, but it does. You want a feeling of fullness and water will help you to accomplish that.

• Burns calories. Researchers in Berlin found that drinking one half-liter of water (approximately a pint) burns an additional twenty-five calories a day.
⁷
While that may not seem like much, it clearly is going to add up over time. And remember, for Petites, every extra calorie burned counts. Plus, other research shows that cold water burns even more calories, since the body has to work harder to warm it up. I recommend that people drink virtually everything (and by everything, I mean water, unsweetened tea and coffee, and everything else) on ice. Not only will the ice add to your water intake, but cool liquids cause your body to burn more calories warming them up.

• Keeps you from drinking other lethal liquid calories. Instead of reaching for something packed with calories, reach for the gold standard–water. Just make sure, as I told you earlier, that it’s not “water bearing calories.”

• Keeps you from eating other calories. It has been found that some misinterpret hunger for thirst. The next time you are feeling hungry, try drinking a big glass of water instead of eating. That’s what my leanest Petites do all the time. And then they do it as a routine that helps to ward off the hunger in the first place.

Tea

Tea is the second most consumed liquid in the world. I think that’s great. Tea is an amazingly potent liquid as it helps to:

• Promote weight loss. Tea contains certain extracts, called catechins, that appear to increase metabolism. In a ten-year Taiwanese study, drinking black, green, or oolong tea just a few times a week resulted in 20 percent less body fat than in those who consumed a placebo beverage.
⁸
Catechins happen to be antioxidants, which promote health and slow the aging process, in addition to having many other properties that are beneficial to the body (I will talk about them shortly).

• Keep the weight off. A Dutch study found that drinking green tea helped people keep the weight off. Those in the study who drank a placebo regained as much as 40 percent of their lost weight, whereas the tea drinkers kept theirs off.
⁹

• Boost exercise performance. A research study in Japan found that endurance doubled when mice were given green-tea extract as opposed to a placebo.
¹⁰
That’s extremely important, as exercise intensity is critically important for Petites. Remember: