The Maui Diet: Blog

If we went through your trash thoroughly, what would we find? Your garbage can be a treasure of dietary information.
I had a house guest recently. He’s overweight, the extra 15 pounds he’s carrying around on his gut bugs him. He threatens to do something about losing weight, but so far no action. That is, cleaning up his bad food habits and getting daily exercise. Know anyone like that? Perhaps someone very close to you?
In a bit of a strange circumstance, I had to transfer his household trash—by hand—from one container to another. And it was a revelation.
The contents of his trash receptacle showed why he is fat and will stay fat until he makes some real changes in his eating habits, along with getting exercise. The contents:
• A half dozen coffee cups, the standard size today, at least 16 ounces; I know he takes he takes cream and sugar. One such concoction daily has much more fattening results than most people realize. Like an extra 10 to 12 pounds over the course of a year.
• Lots of wrappers from pseudo healthy snack bars, and so-called “meal replacement bars.” My house guest likes to believe such food products are healthy, but they’re not. These things are no better than plain old fashioned candy bars, loaded with sugar, salt, fat, no matter what the labels claim—“All Natural” “Healthy” and all the rest. They’re high sugar, refined junk carbohydrate food, and have no place in a healthy diet of whole, fresh, natural foods.
• A number of meal bags from famous fast food places, including the most famous fast food place on Earth. Once a month a meal from these places is too much; he had two breakfasts and two other meals in a week. Along with of course the huge sodas that spell disaster for any weight loss or weight management program (and that includes diet sodas, which are worthless as far as weight loss goes—they don’t work).
Add all these things up and it’s not a pretty picture. And he’s not getting any exercise. Result? He’s like two-thirds of Americans, that is, overweight. He’s malnourished, not getting the beneficial phytochemicals, antioxidents and nutrients found in a healthy, natural diet.
He’s definitely not following the kind of health habits that ensure long-term excellent health. Being overweight increases the risk of heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), stroke, diabetes, arthritis and other health maladies. The absolute scariest of these is of course the big C, cancer. If you’re asking yourself, is this meant to be scary? Yes, it is. Cancer is as scary as it gets and overweight is being linked up with more and more forms of cancer.

For more go to www.themauidiet.com

Here’s a duh. If you’re overweight, you probably eat and drink too much.
If you’re at all like me—that is, you have a big appetite, you like to eat, you like to drink your favorite beverages—the chances are good you overeat and over-drink.

This sounds like a duh, especially to people who don’t have a weight problem. “Fat people eat too much,” they simply say. But things have gotten so extreme in this whole area that it’s easy to miss what’s obviously going on. It’s not that big a duh. It’s subtle.

The average person has no idea what a recommended serving size of food actually is. Our vision is warped—we’ve become used to super size meals and over-the-top servings in restaurants, family meals, oversize packages of food, beverages, etc. Overabundance is the norm.

That recommended serving size for many foods is one cup. If you have one, take out a measuring cup and check out much one cup is.

When I carefully explored this, I was surprised. An example was my usual pasta meal, without meat sauce, cheese or other high fats, just tomato sauce and veggies. I’d eat four, five, six cups—a platter, a big bowlful of that delicious pasta. I’m just talking an oversized serving size here, understand, not the fact that most pastas are a refined flour product, typically served with high-fat meat, cheese, etc.—in sum, a high-fat, true junk food—that’s a whole other article.

Same thing with beans, rice, breakfast cereals, potatoes, whole grains—one-half to one cup is the recommended size. Same thing with beverages—eight ounces is a cup.

It’s easy to overeat and over-drink. And be fat as a result.

You can connect the dots with other foods and many other factors in this whole area. Like the recommended few ounces of animal flesh versus six-eight ounces breaded, deep fired chicken nuggets dipped in a sugar-filled sauce. Washed down with 18 to 38 ounces of soda. One cup is eight ounces, not 18, or 38 or 48. Side of fries, anyone?

Now connect all these things up with our incredibly sedentary lifestyles, and it’s clear most of us overeat, big-time.

What to do? If you’re interested in losing weight and/or maintaining a healthy weight, here are five easy tactics.

1. Check how much you’re really eating. Take a real look. Check out a cup that measures just one cup.
2. Include in your survey “throwaway” mindless eating, like munching salty junk snacks. Bet you can’t eat just one.
3. Your drinking habits—if pure, filtered water isn’t your main beverage, start moving toward that now.
4. Without obsessing and counting every grape, start to cut back.
5. Get into the habit of only eating until you’re about three-quarters full. You can easily do these things.

It’s very easy to overeat, yet I hear repeatedly from folks who are overweight that they don’t eat that much. Chances are, they do. I know I do, unless I’m really watching my “feed limit.”
Print Page

For more go to TheMauiDiet.com

Sign-up for our instant notification service and get all my articles sent directly to your in-box as soon as their posted to the Internet