Trim Healthy Mama Plan (5 page)

You see, finding your trim doesn't happen by eating only more healthy food and less junk food. Even healthy food can make you gain weight. Many women come to Trim Healthy Mama from food purist backgrounds, just like Farm Fresh Tess. They don't understand why their bodies hold on to pounds despite eating all organic foods and spending hours in the kitchen cooking from scratch. Once they learn to use the
THM power tools of knowledge, though, it clicks! Both mind and body get it and they can still be as “from scratchy” as they want. A little bit of knowledge on how their blood sugar reacts to different foods makes all the difference.

As a Trim Healthy Mama you'll balance your blood sugar with protein, fats, veggies, and slow-burning carbs instead of gigantic mounds of fast carbs that are dangerous to your insulin levels.

You'll balance your food fuels by juggling fats and healthy carbs throughout your week, never getting into a fuel rut.

You'll balance your rest times with wise, safe exercise sessions that you only do when you feel ready; and they will not be so long or brutal that they'll mess up the balance of your hormones.

You'll naturally balance your calories, no counting needed, by enjoying both rich, indulgent foods and refreshing lighter fare.

You'll balance weight-loss goals and the desire for restored health with the enjoyable journey of the here and now with all its imperfections.

You'll balance determination to stay on
plan with an ease of spirit that shoves away all shame when you mess up.

There is even a handshake, common-turf, respectful balance between the vastly different approaches of Drive Thru Sue and her purist friends like Farm Fresh Tess.

So let's get to it.

That's the number-one question we hear! So, in a nutshell, here's the gist of it:

On Trim Healthy Mama you won't focus on restricting food groups or calories. You will focus on
fueling your body every three to four hours.

We'll go into more details later but basically here's how fueling works:

The food choices will be endless. Unless you have an allergy, all food groups are in. Meats? Yep. Fruit? Sure. Gentle grains, veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds, eggs, and butter and oils? Yes, all are on board—and let's not forget the very important “food group” of chocolate. Big Yes Indeedy to that one!

We can hear some of you asking, “Can I do the plan as a vegetarian?” Or “What if I am allergic to eggs, to grains, to coconuts?” Don't fret over these things. You'll learn the basic principles of the plan and can then make it your own. None of us does the plan exactly the same way and if we did, it would just be another boring diet. No matter your challenges, you can customize Trim Healthy Mama to fit your needs, your preferences, your challenges, and your unique family. This won't stick unless you learn to make it your own.

There are two primary fuel sources that your body uses:

Your body needs both of these primary fuels to keep chugging along. But let's make it even easier and call this dynamic duo CARBS and FATS. (It is crucial that protein be included in every meal but it is not a primary fuel for the body.) Something incredible happens when you focus on these two fuels individually rather than combined: Natural weight loss happens. Woo-hoo! For some it starts slowly; for others it whooshes off quickly and then zigzags in a gentler downward fashion; and for certain others it happens only at a turtle's pace.

The goal is better health by eating yummy, indulgent food for life. Weight loss is merely icing on the cake. Please don't get fixated on the scale, or compare your journey with anyone else's. Your trim will happen when your body considers itself ready. Allowing your body the time it needs to heal rather than obsessively cajoling it toward a certain number on the scale will help you keep your joy, your sanity, and your vitality.

Pregnant and nursing women can do a combination of both separating and combining fuels to ensure adequate weight gain for pregnancy and a great milk supply for nursing. (Read
Chapter 23
, “Heads Up: Pregnant and Nursing Mamas!,” for more info about how to do the plan while pregnant or nursing.)

Children can also be taught from early ages to fuel their bodies wisely and not spike their blood sugar. Children have higher
metabolic needs so most of their meals will have to be tandem-fueled, where fats and carbs are combined, unless they have a severe weight problem. Including both of these fuels in most meals supplies what their rapid growth demands. Children usually have less insulin resistance so they can handle more frequent carb and fat combos on their plates than most of us adults can. This does not mean children get a free pass to eat carbs all day. It is best to ditch processed and empty carbs and starches in your children's diets—but obviously we're not shooting for perfection here. Kids can still enjoy pizza and ice cream at birthday parties. Obesity, however, is a growing problem even among children. Those with weight issues can enjoy some single-fueled meals along with tandem fueling and find healthier weights.

This premise of fueling rather than restricting works because you constantly need fuel to survive. Your body will be a continual consumer of fuel as long as it is alive. If you diet restrictively and barely give yourself enough fuel for basic function (lowering calories or pulling out food groups), your body will end up opposing your efforts with adamant defiance. That results in a messed-up metabolism, imprisoned fat stores, and hormones underfed into imbalance and depletion.

Not enough fuel leads to a dead end, but so does stuffing fuel into your mouth any ol' how, any ol' time. Just because we can doesn't mean we should. If you focus on one primary fuel at a time, rather than squishing both together at every meal, you will burn through the fuel provided. After that your body must look around for something else to burn. It is given no choice but to switch directly to the task of burning your own adipose tissue. In other words your body chows down on its own body fat.

“Mmm…that scrumptious muffin top hanging over my jeans looks appetizing. I'll chomp on that for a while, then those jigglies on my thighs will hit the spot. Later on tonight my double chin will come in handy when I need more fuel!”

Sounds silly, but it is a reasonably accurate picture of what happens. You've got to burn something and with this new knowledge you can guide your body to burn its own body fat. You'll trim down because your body is finally using its padding as energy without you starving!

This idea of using fuels individually rather than combined is nothing weird or mysterious. Your body does it naturally on its own. The Trim Healthy Mama Plan just helps that natural process along a bit. Your body does not burn both fats and carbs at the same time. When you eat a meal, you must always burn the carbs in that meal first. This is so you can stay alive! Your body cannot handle a state of high blood sugar. The fat in your meal goes into storage to wait its turn to be used as fuel until blood sugar is cleared to safe zones. Remember in
Chapter 1
, “Getting to Know You,” how we described insulin as your friendly neighborhood delivery truck? After a meal, insulin is released to clear the blood sugar from your bloodstream and feed it to your muscle cells. Only once it has completed that task will your body get on to burning any fat from your meal.

Sadly, actual fat burning does not happen very frequently these days. The standard high-carb meals of our modern diet make burning through all that blood sugar an almost
impossible task. Fat moves in for good rather than being the temporary tenant it was supposed to be.

Picture the fat from your meal, bags still packed, eagerly awaiting the journey out of its temporary storehouse—hoping to be able to shine as the fuel it was designed to be. But time passes, and your body is so busy spending all its efforts getting rid of excess blood sugar that the fat is forgotten. It unpacks its bags, turns on the TV. Resigned, it sets up house and orders drapes for the windows. You can almost hear it sigh in a dreary Eeyore voice, “Here to stay.” Jeans get that slightest bit tighter.

Let's give this tragic story a much happier ending! Fat can and should be a superstar fuel for your body. You just need to give it a chance. And you're
about to with THM.

The two all-important parent
meals on plan are known as Satisfying (S) and Energizing (E). They utilize those primary fuels of both fats and carbs and allow each of them to shine as fuel stars for your body. We Trim Healthy Mamas love to shorten everything to acronyms. While at first this might seem like a new language, you'll quickly get the hang of it.

Both of these meal types are centered solidly around protein.

Baby Step 1: Memorize these two main meal types (S and E) and understand that S meals focus on fats while E meals focus on carbs.

Picture S and E meals as your primary caregivers: They are Mommy and Daddy, providing you with all the nutrients you need. As different as they are, both are weight-loss meals
(for the majority of people who do not have extremely broken
metabolism issues). These parent meals will always take care of you and even once you've reached goal weight they will still be enjoyed often to allow you to keep your trim for life.

You'll soon learn the details and the differences between S and E meals and how and when to implement them. The most
important thing to know about them for now is that both are necessary. You don't eat only one or the other. The way you incorporate these meals into your life will be unique. You don't have to switch automatically from S to E, then S to E—boring! You'll find your own groove and soon (but don't skip there yet) we'll give you lots of examples on how to change up between them. You'll enjoy a wonderful variety of foods each and every week.

Both S and E meals are centered solidly around balanced sources of protein. E meals always contain lean protein sources. S meals can contain either lean or fatty protein sources (if an S meal contains a lean protein source like chicken breast, it will need to contain fat in some other form like butter, oils, or high-fat dairy). Protein repairs your body, steadies your blood sugar, and, blessedly, helps fill you up. Without sufficient protein, our bodies start to age at a faster rate. Our muscles, organs, bones, cartilage, skin, and the antibodies that guard against disease are all made of protein. Without enough protein, none of these can repair themselves and they decline into cellular breakdown.

If you need to lose weight, protein is the samurai sword in your weaponry against obesity. Eating protein, especially animal protein, can boost the metabolism by 25 percent. A 2011 study cited in the
Journal of Nutrition
reveals the body expends twenty-five times more energy digesting protein than it does digesting carbs, or even fat. According to this study, women on a protein-rich plan lose up to 21 percent more weight and 21 percent more belly fat than women on higher-carb plans.

Protein is crucial on the THM Plan because it causes your body to release a hormone called
glucagon. This hormone has a balancing effect on
insulin. Insulin is a hormone that can cause your body to go into fat-storing mode, while glucagon causes your body to go into fat-burning mode. It literally helps release fat from your cells. The perfect hormonal balance is achieved when protein anchors the meal.

Even with protein we must stress balance. We just told you that
animal protein is wonderful. Is there a catch? No catch; but when many of us think of protein we immediately visualize chicken breasts, steak strips, cottage cheese, canned tuna, and egg whites. Those foods are a blessing and are absolutely on plan, but if they are your only protein sources you're still missing out.

There are some other protein-rich food sources you desperately need and you're probably missing. The amino acids they contain are the most effective at causing your body to release
glucagon, which, as we mentioned, is the way your cells let go of fat. These foods have fallen out of vogue, and by shunning them we've shot ourselves in the foot. With obesity a murdering epidemic, we need to bring them back.

What are these snubbed protein sources? Chicken on the bone and chicken with skin; roast beef bone in; BPA-free canned fish with skin and
bones included; and soups, stews, and chilis made from rich bone stock. All these foods are rich in the amino acids
glycine and
proline, but with today's prettily packaged, everything-perfect, skin-and-bones-removed meat from the grocery store, many of us are dangerously deficient in these amino acids.

Don't want to eat meat at every meal? You can supplement with clean sources of
gelatin and
collagen to receive a great, glucagon-releasing protein boost. Throw a scoop or two into simmering sauces, soups, coffee, tea, smoothies, and treats.

Don't get caught up in a set
daily number for protein requirements. Once you start implementing the plan, your body will receive plenty of protein but in a beautiful balance with other food groups. Some meals and snacks will be extremely protein rich, others will have less, but never—NEVER—will you have any main meals devoid of protein. That is a blood-sugar-spiking and hormone-disrupting scenario.

Unless you have kidney disease, it is considered safe to consume one gram of protein per day per pound of body weight. Many studies have shown that even higher amounts are not damaging to healthy
kidneys. You don't have to start to obsessively count to see if your meals add up to that number. On the plan you'll eat naturally from varied protein sources and won't have to do math equations in your head at every meal.
You'll simply pick a protein and have fats with it for an S meal or pick a protein and have healthy carbs with it for an E meal. Easy.

Baby Step 2: At every meal always ask yourself, “Where's my protein?”

You're not going to put only carbs or fats with hunks of protein on your dinner plate. Fill that plate with foods that match both S and E fuels. We call these Fuel Pull (FP) foods and you can think of them as your khaki skirt or pants: They match both S and E meals without causing an awful clash of too much fuel for your body to burn through. We call these foods Fuel Pulls because they don't offer your body ample amounts of fats or carbs but they're fantastic fillers and have incredible health benefits.

Even though Fuel Pulls are not primary sources of fuel, they are extremely important on the plan. They supply vital nutrients but also offer a natural difference in caloric load. On the Trim Healthy Mama Plan we don't have to count calories, but neither should we abuse them. Some S meals like cheese-topped steak followed by plan-approved cheesecake with a nut crust and whipped cream on top are super-dense in calories. This is not a bad thing. A meal like this has its place but if these dense foods are your constant, your balance is off kilter. Fuel Pulls ensure that your meals are not constantly heavy in calories—and they ensure you eat your veggies.