Fat
General rule: Whenever possible, avoid consuming carbohydrates (whether whole-grain or refined) without added protein and fat.
Any source of fat will do. This means that butter, olive oil, flaxseed oil, canola oil, cheese, and nuts are fine. Make an okay sign with your thumb and index finger, and choose an amount of fat about the size of the circle made by your index finger/thumb.
The Helping Hand approach to eating considers both the quality and the quantity of every meal and snack-and the best part is that it requires zero counting of calories, fat grams, or carb grams. Why? Because the calorie control is already built in, based on the size of your hands (Mother Nature's automatic portion control). So a person with average-sized hands (and likely an average-sized body and metabolism) will consume about 500 calories from each meal planned using the balance-factor hand approach. Smaller individuals (with smaller hands and lower metabolic rates) will eat slightly smaller meals, amounting to approximately 400 calories each, while larger people (with larger hands and higher metabolic rates) will eat slightly larger meals, amounting to closer to 600 calories each. Eat this way at breakfast, lunch, and dinner and you'll consume about 1,200 to 1,800 calories each day-precisely the same range of calories associated with the very best long-term weight-loss success.
Timing: When to Eat
The last aspect of eating "SENSE-ibly" that we need to discuss is timing, or when to eat-and the SENSE approach represents a subtle but important departure from many popular diets. Like many existing programs, SENSE encourages you to eat several small meals and snacks throughout the day. This approach to eating can do wonders for helping to modulate your blood sugar and cortisol responses to food, thereby helping to control appetite, boost energy levels, and encourage fat burning throughout the day.
SENSE optimizes this approach by spacing three meals and three snacks throughout the day in the following pattern:
9 a.m.: Breakfast (at work)
Noon: Snack (plus exercise if you can fit it in)
2 p.m.: Lunch (postexercise)
5 p.m.: Snack (before leaving work or on the way home)
7 p.m.: Dinner (with a small cocktail or a small dessert as your optional fourth "snack" of the day)
A "snack" consists of one appropriately sized serving from the fruit/veggie group, plus one appropriately sized serving of fat (for example, an apple and a piece of cheese). A "meal" consists of one appropriately sized serving from each of the carb/starch, protein, and fat groups, plus one or two appropriately sized servings from the fruit/veggie group.
Note: From a weight-loss perspective, a snack can consist of one serving from any of the groups, but from an overall health perspective, it is better if the snack consists of one serving from the fruit/veggie group plus one serving of fat. This combination delivers more fiber and important phytonutrients that are less likely to be found in a protein or starch serving (though whole-grain starches would not be a bad second choice, because they also contain phytonutrients such as lignans).
You'll notice that each snack "lasts" for two hours, until it is time for a meal that "lasts" for three hours. The snacks and meals are spaced out in this manner because I have found this to work best for the majority of the busy professionals who come to me for nutrition consultation and diet design. Not many of us are able to sit down to a relaxing breakfast before heading out the door for work; breakfast is usually something obtained at a drive-through and gulped down on the way to rush-hour traffic. Likewise, most of us aren't able to make it home from work with enough time to watch the evening news, prepare dinner, and enjoy a meal anytime before seven at night. This schedule also works very well for the participants in our research studies of the SENSE Lifestyle Program. It leads many participants to remark that they feel like they are "always" eating and "never" hungry, and yet they still lose fat and inches. In this scenario, your snacks act as "bridges" between meals and as significant controllers of cortisol, blood sugar, and overall metabolic rate. Do not neglect them!
That's it-and it is hard to get any simpler than the Helping Hand approach to eating. At this point, you can see how this method can be easy to follow, practical to use in your everyday life, and effective as a way to control the key aspects of metabolism that are keeping many of us from losing those last ten to twenty pounds.
If there was one thing in the world that caused Marta a high level of stress, it was her distress at her inability to lose those "last ten pounds" of body fat from around her hips and buttocks. Marta was a veteran of just about every fad diet in existence, but nothing seemed to work. As a self-described "stress monster," Marta was attracted to the SENSE program because it combined both physical and mental aspects of health. Marta felt that she needed help to balance her eating habits with her exercise regimen (don't we all), but she was intimidated by the "no pain, no gain" mentality that she encountered at her local gym. As someone who was also prone to anxiety attacks, the last thing that Type C Marta needed was a Type A fitness trainer pushing her through an aggressive exercise regimen. Instead, Marta opted for an approach to exercise that helped her to feel more relaxed, less stressed, and more focused.
Marta's approach to the exercise problem was to largely "forget about it" and focus on simply getting in as many miles of walking as possible in a given week. Marta bought a small pedometer to record the number of steps she took each day-and she made it her goal to record as many steps as possible. Taking the "forget about it" approach to exercising, Marta removed a primary source of stress (and excess cortisol) from her life. Marta's newfound cortisol control allowed her body to readjust its metabolic profile, and tighter blood-sugar control, controlled appetite, and accelerated fat metabolism were the primary outcomes that inched Marta toward her ultimate goal of saying good-bye to those "last ten pounds" for good.
Instead of focusing on the exercise portion of the SENSE program, Marta chose to focus her efforts on the nutrition (N), supplement (S), and evaluation (E) aspects of the plan. In terms of nutrition, Marta went on an aggressive regimen of meal replacements (plus a daily multivitamin/multimineral supplement). Shakes and bars replaced breakfast, lunch, and two snacks for four weeks; a healthy dinner was the only "real" meal that Marta prepared for the entire month. Following that initial four-week period, Marta reevaluated her efforts and her goals. She had lost a little more than five pounds of body weight-and a body-fat analysis indicated that 80 percent of her weight loss was from fat-so Marta was about halfway to her goal and certainly on the right track.
The only complaint she noted during her first four weeks was a craving for sweets in the late afternoon and in the evening before bed, so she felt that perhaps she needed to increase her total calorie consumption by just a bit in the next phase (six weeks). This slight increase in calorie consumption came from incorporating more "real" foods into her diet. Dinner remained the same balanced meal of one fist-sized piece of protein (such as salmon), one fist-sized serving of carbohydrates (such as rice), and two fist-sized servings of salad or steamed vegetables. But Marta now followed the same balancing guidelines (while cutting the fist-sized portions in half) when she made her lunchtime sandwich (whole-grain roll, turkey, lettuce, tomato, sprouts, and low-fat mayo).
During this six-week period, Marta noted that her cravings for sweets had vanished. But even more important was her continued weight loss, which topped out at twelve pounds lost (90 percent of it from body fat) in just ten weeks. Marta had exceeded her weight-loss goals-an objective she had failed to achieve on numerous occasions in the past-and the primary difference between then and now was the more relaxed and balanced approach she'd followed.
Now came another evaluation period. This time Marta needed to decide whether to try to continue with additional weight loss or simply attempt to maintain what she had already accomplished. Knowing that weight maintenance can be much more difficult for many people than the initial weight loss, Marta was feeling a bit apprehensive about the possibility that she might gain back all of her lost weight. As a way to counteract her growing anxiety (which could increase her cortisol levels and set the stage for weight regain), she continued with a daily nutrition program that looked like this:
Breakfast: Meal-replacement shake plus multivitamin/mineral supplement (250 calories)
Morning snack: Energy bar (160 calories)
Lunch: Turkey sandwich (380 calories)
Afternoon snack: Handful of nuts and glass of water (180 calories)
Dinner: Grilled chicken with steamed rice and vegetables (520 calories)
Evening snack: Chocolate milk with piece of fruit (240 calories)
Total calories: 1,730In addition to her balanced nutrition regimen, Marta added a twice-daily supplement of magnolia bark extract to her morning and evening snacks. The mild antianxiety effects of magnolia helped Marta to stay focused and remain calm about her switch to a slightly higher-calorie weight-maintenance regimen-so she didn't get stressed out and her cortisol levels stayed in their normal ranges.
To many of her friends, Marta is now one of those "lucky" people who is able to "effortlessly" maintain her new, slimmer figure without much attention to diet or exercise. More than once she has been told that she must have "good genes" to be able to eat the way she does (to some, it looks as if she eats all the time), take a laissez-faire attitude toward high-intensity exercise, and generally seem unconcerned and relaxed about the whole public furor over body weight
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Sample Menu Plan for Meals and Snacks
Remember that we need to space our meals and snacks throughout the day to help regulate cortisol metabolism. Follow the general plan outlined in the table below and in the "Further Guidelines" section, but substitute foods that you prefer (e.g., turkey for roast beef on your sandwich, or sushi instead of salmon at dinner), or foods that you have ready access to (such as when eating away from home).
Further Guidelines
Number of portions: A snack consists of one appropriately sized serving from the fruit/veggie group, plus one appropriately sized serving of fat. A meal consists of one appropriately sized serving from each of the starch, protein, and fat groups, plus one or two appropriately sized servings from the fruit/veggie group.
Fluids: An eight-ounce glass of water is suggested at each meal and snack. (Eight fluid ounces = one cup.)
Sleep prescription: 10:30 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.-i.e., get at least 7.5 hours nightly for optimal cortisol control.
Exercise prescription: Thirty to sixty minutes of activity, three to five times per week, for optimal control of cortisol, testosterone, and growth hormone.
Fruit/veggie guideline: Remember, "Choose it if it's bright, and forget it if it's white." This will guide you toward brightly colored choices that are better sources of antioxidants and essential phytonutrients.
Starch (concentrated carbohydrate) guideline: Select dark, thick, course, chewy, and minimally processed forms of grains over their highly refined counterparts (white, light, smooth, puffed, and fluffy).
Protein guideline: Choose lean cuts of meat, poultry, pork, and fish.
Fat guideline: Don't skip fat to save a few calories; instead, add it to meals and snacks as a metabolic regulator. Avoid trans-fats in the form of hydrogenated oils in processed foods.
Dessert guideline (bonus!): If you have exercised for thirty to sixty minutes on a particular day, then as your optional fourth snack of the day, add either a cocktail or a glass of wine or beer with dinner, or a fist-sized dessert after dinner. If you have not exercised, then skip the alcohol and end dinner with a piece of fresh fruit instead.
Following the Helping Hand approach helps you balance the quality of your food choices with the quantity of those choices, so you regulate calories to approximately 1,500 per day (typical range = 1,200-1,800 calories), which are obtained from a balanced intake of about 55 percent carbohydrates, 20 percent protein, and 25 percent fat. Remember that these are exactly the levels associated with the most dramatic weight loss and longest-lasting weight maintenance in the largest research studies.
by Shawn M Talbott, PhD