One of my favorite things to
do is to snuggle up on the couch with my wife and/or children and/or dog and
munch away on a heaping bowl of high-fat snacks while watching a weight loss
reality program on television. The irony is just too delicious.
Recently, in the aforesaid manner, I watched My Diet
Is Better Than Yours on ABC. The winner, a plucky young lady with
about 100 pounds to lose, followed the Superfood Swap diet. The diet
really sang to me. So, when my wife ordered the complete starter kit, Superfood
Swap by Dawn Jackson Blatner, RDN, I decided to read it. It is more of a magazine than a
book and about fifty pages in length.
Blatner boils down (pun
intended) her weight loss program into three steps, which one is required to go
through before preparing every meal.
Step one is to ask oneself,
"What do I need?" Last night, the answer was, "I need a
cheesy pizza."
Step two is
"balance." One tries to envision the coming meal as made up of
50% vegetables with a little healthy fat or dressing, 25% protein, and 25%
whole grain/high fiber carbohydrates. One must also remember portion
sizes. I envisioned a small cheesy pizza with no meat toppings.
Step three is the
"swap." Blatner stresses avoiding C.R.A.P., which I prefer to
think of as P.A.R.C.: preservatives, additives, refined sugar and starch,
and chemicals. I envisioned a bunch of little "pizzas" that I
would create using high fiber English muffins for the crust; a chunky, low-fat
tomato sauce kicked up with some dried oregano and drizzle of olive oil; and
two or three low-fat mozzarella balls per crust.
I ate five of my little
"pizzas" and did not gain weight! On days
that I make better swaps, I have lost weight--ten pounds in my first two weeks
so far! Another twenty-five pounds of loss will cut my risk for diabetes
in half. Take that, diabetes!
One fascinating aspect of
Blatner's advice is that she admits that exercise plays just about no role at
all in weight loss. She cites "tough love" statistics that show
that thirty minutes of exercise six times a week--about two to two and half
more hours of exercise than I usually do--is good for disease prevention only. Exercise
"only" that much, and you will continue to gain weight. That is
depressing! Double that amount of exercise to maintain a weight loss, and
triple--yes, triple--that amount of exercise to get a slight "weight loss
boost."
It is too early for me to
recommend Superfood Swap definitively, but I appear to be disappearing
at a good pace so far. One word of caution--the book is ridiculously
overpriced at $69.00 (my wife wisely did not tell me the price beforehand or you would not be reading this review). The book may be purchased at www.DawnJacksonBlatner.com.
However, I would advise waiting until the price goes down before doing
so.
