Perfect Diet – ScottOwen.org

Don't be intimidated by the amount of text you see here. The diet is actually fairly easy to follow, but it works best if you understand more about how your body uses the energy in food.

Rule #1 To lose weight, you must eat fewer calories than you burn. If you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight. It is as simple as that.

Rule #2 To keep your metabolism going, you need to eat regularly and get regular exercise. Eat 5 to 6 times a day and exercise 3 times a week for at least an hour each time. If you starve yourself, or have long stretches of feeling hungry, your body will go into 'starvation mode' and lower your metabolism to preserve fat reserves.

Rule #3 During your diet, limit your carbohydrates especially around exercise time, and in the evening. Your body will convert fat into energy if your metabolism is working and it runs out of carbohydrates to burn. Don't eat for an hour after exercising so your body uses its fat reserves.

Rule #4 Always, always, always read the labels! Be suspicious of foods labelled "diet", "light", "low carbs", "low calorie", or "no fat" — if a food is low in one thing, it's often high in another. Don't consume foods containing gums (locust bean gum, guar gum, xanthum gum) or starches (cornstarch, tapioca starch). And never consume anything with high fructose corn syrup.

Rule #5 Don't take these rules to extremes. Don't starve yourself or nibble constantly, don't exercise every day, and don't try to eliminate carbohydrates or fats altogether. Have patience, pace yourself, and you can reasonably expect to lose about ½ to 1 kg (1 to 2 lbs) per week.

Background

When we returned from Canada in 2008, I set out to lose the weight I'd gained while there. I managed to lose all that weight, plus a few extra kilos that I'd collected over the years (for a total of 15.7 kg = 35 lbs), and I felt really healthy as a result. I created a diet-plan for myself by combining extensive reading with some common sense. This is the result.

Virtually every diet I've ever seen consists of foods I don't like to eat. But for a diet to be successful, you need to be able to maintain it, then maintain your weight after you reach your target. If you don't like to eat the food, then you're more likely to cheat, and even if you do finish your diet, you'll regain your lost weight because you revert to foods you like but haven't 'trained' for.

So you need to eat foods you like, but you also have to 'know' your food — understand what is in it and how your body breaks it down. When you buy food, read the label every time. Check out what you are eating, and look especially at calories, fillers/thickeners (like gums and starches), and sweeteners.

For example:

a glass of apple juice has about the same number of calories as a glass of Coke
a Croquette (Dutch ragout snack) has fewer calories and is more filling than a Mars bar or three Sultana crackers
hot-air popped popcorn with hot-sauce is a great high-fibre snack with a fraction of the calories of microwave popcorn
a Caesar Salad with Parmesan can contain more calories than a full main meal
putting one cream and one sugar in four cups of coffee amounts to more calories than a glass of beer

Introduction

Imagine a special vehicle with a fuel tank that can expand and contract. This vehicle also has a special converter which will convert different types of fuel into the type it needs, but the converter motor needs to burn some fuel to do the conversion.

If you keep putting more fuel into the vehicle than you use driving around, the fuel tank fills up and expands. If you drive around and burn more fuel than you put in, the fuel tank contracts. If you put a type of fuel which needs converting, the converter kicks in — you'll have put in more fuel, but your tank won't get as big.

This special vehicle is YOU! Your body acts as a fuel tank which stores energy in fat, expanding and contracting depending upon whether you burn less or more energy than you eat. If you keep your body's engine running and revving, even when parked on the couch, you continue to burn more energy. But if you eat too little and move too little, your engine is smart enough to rev very low — and ironically, if you don't eat often enough, you can actually gain weight.

Tools

One thing you absolutely must have is a digital kitchen scale. Weighing food is much more consistent and accurate than measuring volume. (I use Soehnle for their accuracy, style and affordability.)

The other essential tool is a calorie-counting application to help you calculate calories, plan meals and track progress. I've used various apps including MyFitnessPal.

Things to Know

Men typically burn about 2500 calories a day; women typically about 2000. Active people burn more, couch potatoes less.
A pound of fat is about 3500 calories / A kilo of fat is about 7000 calories.
A safe and achievable rate of weight loss is 1 kg per two weeks, requiring you to burn 500 more calories per day than you consume.
Not all food calories are equal — some foods cost more energy to digest. Meat is actually lower net calorie after digestion than sugar, despite similar label values.
Weight-loss will typically not be linear. Some weeks you'll lose quickly, some weeks you may plateau.
Muscle weighs more than fat: when you start exercising, you may weigh more for the first few weeks as you build muscle while burning fat. This is a good thing — your body-fat percentage is dropping even if the scale isn't.
BMI is a very poor indicator for active people. Measuring body-fat percentage is actually much more important.

Exercise

Sorry, but you must exercise in some form in order for your diet to be successful. If you don't, your body will just get used to eating less, lower your metabolism, and you won't lose weight. Exercising forces your body to raise its metabolism.

One of the best, easiest and cheapest forms of exercise is quick-walking. It burns almost as many calories as jogging over the same distance, it's much easier on the joints, and it is more effective at burning fat. Exercise at least 3 times a week, at least 60 minutes each time, working up a sweat for at least 40 minutes.

Key exercise tips:

Exercise at a constant, moderate pace — not too fast. Your body burns fat aerobically; if you go anaerobic (fast pace, high heart rate), you burn carbs or muscle instead.
Don't eat for an hour after exercising — your body continues burning fat for up to 1.5 hours after exercise.
If you smell ammonia after heavy exercise, your body ran out of carbs and started breaking down muscle. Slow your pace or eat a banana before exercising.
Energy and isotonic drinks are completely unnecessary, a waste of money, and they add calories. Drink water during exercise.
Don't reward yourself after exercise with a hamburger or chips — you could easily consume twice as many calories as you just burned.

Raise Your Metabolism

Ways to get your body to burn more calories:

Exercise
Eat hot spices (acts as a stimulant)
Drink ice-cold drinks (body burns energy to bring them up to temperature)
Drink coffee with caffeine, without cream & sugar (acts as a stimulant)
Eat more often (keeps the digestion process going)
Turn the heating down a couple of degrees — at 17°C/63°F your body burns up to an extra 300 calories per hour to keep warm

Don't Eat

Corn — seriously. Avoid corn, corn flour, corn starch, corn syrup/fructose. Read those labels — it's in a lot of food, and the rise of corn in our diet corresponds to the rise in obesity.
Foods containing cornstarch, tapioca starch, locust bean gum, guar gum or xanthum gum — junk fillers that add nothing nutritional and slow your metabolism.
Foods with highly-processed sugars, especially corn-syrup/fructose — these convert easily to fat and reduce the brain's feedback to stop eating.
Soy/soya-based products — contains a compound similar to oestrogen that negatively affects thyroid function.
Artificial sweeteners — besides cancer risks, many lower metabolism. No saccharine, aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame-K. Even natural stevia messes with your insulin. If you must sweeten, use honey or cane sugar.
Energy drinks and sports drinks — they're a sales gimmick.

Watch Out for Misleading Labels

Unreasonably small serving sizes — nutritional info given for 6 potato chips. Who stops at 6?
"0 trans fat per portion" — manufacturers can list "0" for anything less than 0.5 units per portion.
"No sugar added" — doesn't mean no sugar; often means artificial sweeteners have been added instead.
"Reduced fat" / "Less fat" — not "low fat", just less than the regular version. May actually be higher in calories.
"Light" / "Diet" — doesn't mean low-calorie, just fewer calories than the regular version. Often still high, or contains artificial sweeteners.
"No aspartame" — doesn't mean no artificial sweeteners, just not that one.
"Natural" — just because something is natural doesn't mean it's safe or healthy. Many mushrooms are natural but deadly.
"Organic" — often in big letters with "contains" in small letters. Doesn't mean it's all organic.
"Healthy" — does not mean low-calorie. You can still get fat eating healthy, natural, and organic foods.

Dieting Advice

Set a target weight. I used an online ideal body weight calculator based on the Divine and Robinson formulae, such as this one:

Sex
male x female

Units
kg & cm lbs & ft/in

Height (cm)
Give priority to keeping calories within your daily targets, eating five or six times a day, and avoiding "diet" and "light" labelled foods.
You are trying to lose fat, not weight. Exercise and drink plenty of water.
Plan your meals the day before so you can spread calories over the entire day.
A protein shake from natural whey isolate protein powder, milk, and frozen banana is fantastic as one of the meals, especially after exercise.
Enjoy tasty, good quality food. Eat slowly, give your stomach time to feel full.
When dieting, weigh yourself every day, but only record your weight when you lose.
Don't round-off or pack measurements — 500 calories is not a lot to lose or gain.
Do not "reward" yourself with food. Food should not be a reward for anything.
Have a sliced hard-boiled egg with a thin slice of cheese on toast (no butter) for breakfast — low calorie, high protein, filling.
Pureed water-based soups make you feel fuller up to twice as long as clear broth soups.
Don't be afraid of full-fat dairy products like yoghurt or quark — the calories aren't as high as you might expect, and they contain far more protein than low-fat varieties.
Avoid mayonnaise — about 100 calories per teaspoon. Try Dijon mustard or ketchup instead.
Eat unsalted butter (in modest amounts) rather than margarine.
Hot spices raise your metabolism — enjoy them.
Wine and beer are not bad per se — limit to one or two glasses a day, or save them for weekends.

The Trick in Summary

Eat a modest breakfast to kick-start your metabolism in the morning
Eat several meals a day to keep your metabolism going
Vary what you eat and when so you don't get into a routine
Exercise, so your body is forced to burn calories and not store them
Have a couple of 'no-diet days' on the weekend — eat your full daily maintenance amount

Crash Diet

Need to lose weight quickly? Here's my crash diet:

Eat a minimum of 5 small meals a day including: black coffee, boiled eggs, apples, tomato juice, tomato soup (water-based), lean chicken/turkey/beef (grilled), vegetables, and hot sauces
Tip: for breakfast, a sliced hard-boiled egg with a thin slice of cheese on toast, no butter
Exercise 3 to 4 times a week, e.g. quick-walking for about 5 km each day
Turn the heating down to 17°C/63°F

And whatever you do: no food for one hour before and after exercising; no food for one hour before bedtime; no fried foods; no fruit juices; no soft drinks with added sugar; no artificial sweeteners; no added starches or gums; no alcohol.