Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World (3 page)

Another mechanism underlying the craving and overeating cycle is blood sugar and insulin imbalance. When we feed our bodies nutrient-dense, fiber-rich, whole foods, which are absorbed slowly and steadily, the craving-overeating cycle is again broken. Whole grains like brown rice, steel-cut oatmeal, and quinoa are ideal staples that will keep you feeling full and satisfied. When grains are processed, however, like the flour used in white bread and the white rice served in most restaurants, the fiber so necessary for the proper
slow
processing and digestion of food and the release of a steady supply of energy is stripped out, along with many other vital nutrients. The refined carbohydrates that are left (you know, the ones you get from most pastries, breads, and cereals) are released almost immediately into the bloodstream. Our bodies read these refined carbohydrates sort of like they do sugar, and we get a quick high followed by a crash, followed by a craving for another hit. When we say we’re addicted to cookies or chips, we’re not entirely wrong.

Unrefined complex carbohydrates from whole grains like brown rice or kasha (buckwheat groats), yams or sweet potatoes, lentils or chickpeas, on the other hand, are very important for healthy weight and should be a central part of your diet. They break down slowly during digestion and provide the body and brain with a steady and gradual source of energy.

This is where the low-carb brainwashing we’ve all been fed really led us wrong. We may not need white bread, but we do need unrefined carbohydrates from whole foods! Don’t drive yourself too crazy trying to be perfect. Just try to stick to foods that are still in their natural state, unrefined and un-processed, and you’ll find the weight simply melting off.

As Dr. Barnard advises: the key is to think about which carbohydrate foods are best.

Here’s a handy guide from PCRM:

Instead of sugar, have fruit. Yes, fruit is sweet, but it has little effect on blood sugar.

Instead of white breads, favor rye or pumpernickel. Yes, even whole wheat can cause problems of inflammation.

Instead of white baking potatoes, have yams and sweet potatoes.

Instead of typical cold cereals, have steel-cut oatmeal (the long-cooking kind) or bran cereal. Rice and pasta are fine. Although whole grain pastas are best, even white pasta has a low glycemic index. But make sure you skip the meat and cream sauces and stick to a low-fat tomato sauce.

Meat alternatives are also okay. They are naturally lower in fat and calories and, because they look and taste like the foods we grew up with—bacon, chicken, hot dogs—they can help wean you off meat.

And how about this interesting tidbit from Dr. Barnard: meat stimulates insulin release. Whereas it is common knowledge that refined carbohydrates cause the body to release a lot of insulin, recent studies show that meat also causes a “distinct, sometimes surprising, insulin spike. In fact, beef and cheese cause a bigger insulin release than pasta, and fish produces a bigger insulin release than popcorn.” Personally, I was thrilled to hear this, because I love nothing more than a bowl of whole grain pasta with veggie sausage, peppers, and onions!

Junk the Junk

Of course, just because a food is technically vegan doesn’t mean it’s good for you. If you want to lose weight, you have to stay away from junk food. You know what junk food is. I don’t have to explain it to you. Anything that’s really sweet or fatty or super-addictive is junk food. Period. Even if it’s vegan.

If you find yourself obsessed with some kind of munchy that you know isn’t good for you, simply stop bringing it into the house. Some foods just have a crazy power over us and we’re better off not exposing ourselves to their temptations.

In much the same way, before you consider having “just one piece of chicken” or “only one slice of cheese,” consider that these particular foods are quite literally addictive. In the case of dairy products, there are casomorphins to consider. These are compounds produced in your digestive tract after you eat cheese and other dairy products. That’s right, the root of the word
morphine
is in there and for good reason—cheese is really habit forming. Not only because the creamy, fatty texture is so comforting, but also because when the milk protein breaks down during digestion, it’s converted to something chemically similar to morphine and you just want more. In the same way an alcoholic can be set off by just one drink, someone who can’t give up cheese might want to consider dairy their trigger for out-of-control eating.

According to a 2009 study at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, fat from certain foods actually makes its way into the brain, where the fat molecules signal the body to overcome appetite-suppressing hormones. And also consider that you literally overstimulate the pleasure center in your brain with fatty, sweet, or salty food and just as with drugs you need increasingly more of these rich substances to feel satisfied. And in much the same way as a drug addict might feel, you get strung out by the constant craving and remain hopelessly unsatisfied. Just watch how your behavior unfolds after you eat certain foods; if it is out of control, ditch those foods. A moment of good flavors is not worth the roller-coaster ride it’s apt to put you on. It may be difficult for the first few days of withdrawal, but your taste buds will adjust if you give them half a chance.

Forget about Calorie Counting

Here’s some of the best news of all. When you eat a plant-based diet, you don’t need to obsess about calories or grams of protein; you need not weigh your food or eat according to your blood type. You need not worry about calculating carbs or food combining or making sure you have enough of certain amino acids. You need only move away from eating animals and their by-products in favor of a hearty, fiber-rich, and nutrient-dense plant-based diet. Such a diet will give you all that you need, and prevent you from getting the stuff that will drag you down. Fatty foods (e.g. meat and dairy) are calorie dense. A fat gram has 9 calories in it, as opposed to a carbohydrate, which has only 4 calories per gram. By avoiding fats, you avoid a lot of calories. Plant (vegan) foods are naturally low in fat.

There are better things to do with your time on earth than worry about calculating fat or protein grams. That will take care of itself when you steer clear of animal protein and all the trouble that goes with it. Think of the great sages and achievers throughout time: they certainly weren’t scientists at mealtime—they ate to live, and they had greater goals and pursuits than how much they could titillate their taste buds or how well they could analyze nutrition labels.

How Long Does It Take to Lose Weight and How Much Will You Lose?

When you’re in the process of losing weight, it’s important to remember that the extra weight didn’t just come about overnight, and in the same manner, it will take some time to lose it. Patience is important—hard, but important—because anything that happens super rapidly simply won’t last. Fortunately for some people starting a vegan diet, less patience may be required than for other diets. Some people find that when they start a vegan weight-loss regime, excess weight begins to drop off quite literally overnight.

Experts agree that safe weight loss generally occurs at the rate of 1 to 2 pounds per week. However, depending on how you were eating before switching to a whole foods, plant-based diet, weight loss can be more dramatic on a vegan diet, especially as your body goes through the introductory period, usually lasting anywhere from two weeks to a month, of ridding itself of toxins and substances that have built up and clogged the body over the years from eating a diet heavy in animal products and/or processed foods. In some instances, people initially lose as much as 3 to 4 pounds per week before leveling off.

One of the first things you’ll notice will of course be looser clothing. Within a few weeks, the weight loss will be visible both to you and to others. These noticeable results are great motivation, and the relatively rapid pace of loss will help you reinforce your commitment.

A 2005 study by Dr. Barnard and other researchers, which measured the effects of a low-fat vegan diet on body weight, found that people lost significant amounts of weight with no calorie counting. On average, the low-fat vegan diet adopters lost 13 pounds in 14 weeks. This phenomenon can be partly explained by the thermic effects of eating plant-based foods. Vegan diets are higher in complex carbohydrates which cause the body to release some calories as body heat during digestion (the thermic effect) rather than store it as fat. In fact a vegan diet includes a rich variety of foods that have a thermic effect (see list below). We sometimes get a thermic effect with animal protein, but we are also stuck with all the animal fat that comes with it.

A whole foods, plant-based diet causes you to burn calories 16 percent faster after meals for about three hours. This revving up of your metabolism causes gradual and healthy weight loss. The thermic effect alone does not
cause
the weight loss. What it does is help decrease the number of calories that are automatically converted into fat—stopping some fat before it starts. It’s a natural process that is aided significantly by choosing a plant-based diet and hampered by a diet high in animal fats.

In this same vein, when you eat a plant-based diet you dramatically boost (by an average of 60 percent) activity of the enzyme carnitine palmitoyltransferase, responsible for shoveling the fat we eat into the furnaces (mitochondria) in our cells to be burned for energy. This may help explain why those eating vegan are so much slimmer. Another reason for the easy weight loss that comes with a plant-based diet is that fiber naturally calms the appetite: it leaves the stomach slowly, making us feel full longer, so we end up eating fewer calories overall.

All vegetables, beans, and whole grains are good sources of both fiber and complex carbohydrates, while there isn’t an animal food on the planet that contains any fiber or complex carbohydrate at all. Zero. Zilch.

And Dr. Barnard explains the metabolism issue this way: Your body burns glucose—a natural and necessary sugar that comes from starchy foods like whole grains, vegetables, and beans—for fuel to power just about everything from your muscles to your brain. Here’s the problem: Fat from food forms little globules inside your cells which can obstruct the glucose from getting inside the cells to do the work it’s meant to do. We can’t burn the glucose if it can’t get into our cells, which results in a more sluggish metabolism. The trick is that if we boot the fat out of our cells (by not eating fatty foods), our energy—and metabolism—becomes supercharged.

Stop Buying the Protein Myth

A common myth that persists and persists is that it’s difficult to get enough protein from a vegan diet. Let’s just put that myth to rest. The fact is, people on the standard American diet (SAD) eat nearly
twice
the recommended daily amount of protein—which can actually be unhealthy. According to the U.S. Food and Nutrition Board, recommended protein intake should be calculated according to your weight and age; it recommends 0.8 grams of protein per kilo of body weight, meaning that the average woman requires approximately 50 grams of protein per day, 56 grams for the average man. These guidelines also indicate that the preferred form of protein is from nonanimal sources, such as beans, legumes, nuts, and seeds. These protein sources are also naturally lower in fat, too, again supporting your weight loss efforts. Most of the fats they do contain are unsaturated and they’re always cholesterol free.