Volume.

Along the way while I was losing all that weight this year, I kept picking up new diet books, mostly just to keep myself obsessing about it since that seemed to work so well.  (I'm obsessing less now -- and the rate of loss has slowed considerably.  I  stand at 112, a couple of weeks after standing at 113.)  I also hoped that some of them would contain some tips and tricks that I could adopt here and there.

One of those books was The Volumetrics Eating Plan.  There is not much extra wisdom to be gained from the diet advice.  It suggests eating fewer calories by consuming more vegetables and fiber and lowering fat content. (One nice difference: it recommends using enough fat in meals to help you feel happy and satisfied, and dropping the extra that you won't notice.  I appreciate that acknowledgment that going fat-free is not much fun and probably not worth the trouble for a lot of us.)  

 

Its new concept, though, I've been happy to add to my toolbox.  This is -- plump your recipes up with lots of veggies, so they get bigger and more filling on fewer calories.  It's kind of obvious, but some of the recipes and photos in the book helped me think of some new and easy ways to do it.  

Adding veggies to stuff to make it bigger is the easy part.  For example, yesterday Hannah brought noodles, beef, and some chopped vegetables to make lo mein for the kids' lunch.  We fed it to them as-is, but I also happened to have some raw-cabbage slaw in my fridge with only a vinegar-sugar dressing on it -- we diluted our lo mein with a couple of cups of that.  It was great.  

It also gave me the idea to replace things with green vegetables.  So, last week, I put my  chili on top of  cooked green beans instead of on top of a big old hunk of corn bread -- I did crumble some of the corn bread on the top, which did away with the poor-me-I-get-no-corn-bread feeling.

And you can do it backwards too -- add stuff to your veggies to turn it into a meal.   I had some leftover roast broccoli/carrots/summer squash from a potluck a couple of days ago, and I added a little bit of cooked pasta, salad dressing, and grated parm to turn it into a fantastic pasta salad (really more of a veg salad with a little pasta).

Anyway, it's maybe a better book to leaf through in the bookstore than to buy, but I did find it more than a little helpful.

Comments

[Kelly]

I get the Nutrition Action newsletter, and this was their top rated diet book. They said that studies had found that people who followed it were more likely to maintain their weight loss.

You seem to have already done a lot of her techniques, but we started adding a salad before the main part of the meal, and trying to add more veggies to the meal.

I also liked that she suggested adding snacks, so that you don't gorge at meals.

[mrsdarwin]

What is your weight goal, if you don't mind saying? I only ask because 112 is a weight I'll never see again, even if I were in the best shape ever. I know you've mentioned your height in a previous post, but I can't remember.

[bearing]

I'm 4'11".

My weight has been 156 for years (BMI of 31.5, obese).

I dropped to 148 last year doing low carb (BMI 29.9, just barely not obese anymore and merely overweight.)

Starting in May I began to drop from there to where I am now, 111 (BMI 22.4). I crossed into the "normal" BMI range at 123 pounds, some time ago.

My goal is 108 lbs and BMI of 22, the middle of the normal range.