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LenDentonThrive Letter #18
Eating Smarter
This week, we’re talking about how to lose weight by eating smarter, and not merely eating less. See why dieting doesn’t work, but eating smarter is your ticket to a lifelong, healthy lifestyle.
But first, here’s a quick preview of what’s in the LenDentonThrive Letter #18:
The Big Idea - This week, we’ll explore how to lose weight and get fit by Eating Smarter!
Tip of the Week - A quick tip or strategy to help you improve your health, fitness, and life.
News You Can Use - I’ll share two or three useful items from my reading stack for you to check out later.
I’m glad that you’re here! We have a lot to cover in ten minutes or less, so let’s get started!
1. The Big Idea - Building Your Fit Lifestyle
In a recent edition of this newsletter, I wrote about the benefits of following a Food-First approach to weight loss and fitness. I told readers that the key to losing weight was not to merely eat less but rather to eat smarter. Today, I’ll show you a simple and effective way to eat smarter and accelerate your weight loss.
Diet or Exercise? Nope!
We already know that carrying around a lot of extra weight is a serious problem for us!
Here in America, we’re experiencing an obesity epidemic! Today, nearly 70% of adults in the US are either overweight or obese (with BMIs greater than 25). That number has tripled since the early 1960s. (1)
This explosion of obesity is driving record levels of cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes, and at least 13 different types of cancer. (2)
So, if we want to lose 20, 30, or more pounds, what should we do?
The two most common answers to that question that Over-50 Guys hear are:
Go on a diet… or
Go to the gym.
I say NO to both!
Dieting is all about restricting your eating for a specific period of time. But, restrictive diet programs are usually only effective in the short term. Research shows that most dieters regain most of the weight they’ve lost within 2 years or sooner.
Also, our brains hate deprivation. Over time, the brain’s ancient internal programming will sabotage your caloric restrictions by slowing down your metabolism to protect you. Because it thinks we’re starving. And, we have little to no control over this!
So, dieting is a non-starter for most of us.
So, what about going to the gym? The gym is a great place to build strength and muscle mass. (Both are important things for Over-50 Guys.)
But, there are faster and more effective ways to lose weight. That’s because of the way our bodies actually burn the calories that we consume.
Our bodies burn calories in four significant ways:
Base Metabolic Rate (BMR): Basically, this is our internal biological processes (breathing, blood pumping, digestion, tissue generation, thinking, etc.). It’s the majority of your daily calorie burn.
Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): The energy required to digest the foods we consume.
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): (ooh, that sounds so sciencey!) The calories burned in routine, non-exercise movements like walking, balancing, fidgeting, etc.
Exercise Energy Thermogenesis (EET): calories burned in purposeful exercise (like at the gym).
Figure 1 below shows how all of these factors add up to what nutrition scientists refer to as our TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure).
Figure 1 - Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE)
Note that the EET component, which includes working out at the gym, only accounts for 5 to 15% of your daily calorie burn.
We also know that we need to develop a calorie deficit in order to lose weight. From the TDEE analysis, we have only three basic controls that can affect our calorie deficit. Those are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 - 3 Weight Loss Factors
So, here’s the giant takeaway from the TDEE analysis:
Working out has less impact on your weight loss than making good choices with your diet.
Significantly less impact! Another way to say this is:
It’s more effective to avoid calories than it is to work them off!
Eating Smarter
So, if avoiding calories is more effective than working them off, what’s the best way to avoid calories? The answer is eating smarter!
Eating Smarter is built on three simple principles:
Eliminate bad calories
Replace bad calories with good calories
Avoid deprivation
(It’s important to note that eating less is not mentioned here!)
First, we want to eat foods that fuel our bodies properly without causing us to store excess amounts of energy as excess body fat. This means that we will eliminate foods that have high concentrations of sugar, simple carbohydrates, and unhealthy compounds.
Second, we want to replace those bad calories with whole, nutrient-dense foods that fuel our bodies without causing excess fat stores. This means fewer sugars and simple carbs in our daily diet, and more calories from lean meats, vegetables, and natural oils such as olive oil.
We aren’t reducing or restricting calories. We are reconfiguring our food choices to replace the bad calories with the good calories.
(In some cases, we might actually see a small increase in overall calorie intake and still be able to lose weight).
Third, avoiding calorie restriction prevents the brain’s deprivation defenses from kicking in to sabotage our efforts. Whole, nutrient-dense foods have higher TEFs, meaning that they burn more calories as their nutrients are released into the body. This also helps to prevent hunger, which is an added benefit.
The Eat Smarter Food Zones
A key question in any diet or nutrition plan is: “What can I eat?”
To answer that question, we divide all food choices into one of three specific food zones: Green, Yellow, and Red.
To do this, we’ll evaluate the food’s glycemic index, dividing it into low, medium, and high ranges. The glycemic index is the measure of the food’s tendency to spike our blood glucose levels, which leads the body to store energy as fat. Foods with high sugar content have higher GIs than more nutrient-dense foods. The food zones are shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3 - Eat Smarter Food Zones
The three food zones show us the healthiest food choices to make in order to have healthy meals that promote weight loss. Each of the 3 food zones offers its own specific recommendation:
Green Zone - Eat This!
Yellow Zone - Check This!
Red Zone - Avoid This!
In practice, the best way to structure your nutritional plan is to eat a diet composed of 80% Green Zone foods, no more than 20% Yellow Zone foods, and 0% Red Zone Foods.
(Note: I have been successful in following my own 80/20/0 Plan for the last 9 years.)
A Special Note About the Yellow Food Zone - The Yellow Food Zone is the “check it before you eat it” - zone. This is where all of the question-mark foods hang out.
For instance, any food that has a commercial brand or comes in a box is assumed to be a highly processed food. It’s important to check the label before consuming. If you determine that the food item doesn’t contain excessive sugars or other bad ingredients, then you can move it to your Green Zone and enjoy. If it does contain bad ingredients, mark it Red and avoid it. That also applies to all restaurant meals. Check them in a similar way before you eat them.
(Note: I wrote about dining out in a previous edition of the newsletter here.)
One more thing about Yellow Zone foods - you can feel free to eat them. Just remember that they are foods with medium-range GIs, so try to limit them to 20% of your overall food intake.
Now, let’s answer the question “What can I eat?”
The simple answer is: You can eat anything and everything that is not in your Red Zone!
Building Your Own Customized Eat Smarter Plan
Here’s a simple step-by-step method to create your own Eat Smarter Plan. This plan will be custom-tuned to your own food choices. To do this, we’re going to restructure our food choices based on these 3 food zones.
Step #1 - Get out of the Red Zone! This means you should systematically eliminate all Red Zone foods from your diet. This might take 2-3 weeks to accomplish. As you exit the Red Zone, you should start to see your weight go down and your energy go up.
Step #2 - Load up on the Green Zone! Replace Red Zone choices with Green Zone choices. Don’t purposely cut calories. Avoid hunger. Find Green Zone restaurant meals.
Step #3 - Work out your Yellow Zone! - Find usable foods that are hiding in the Yellow Zone that you can move to your Green Zone. For example, basmati rice has a GI of 55, making it a great Green Zone choice!
Step #4 - Make it a lifestyle! We know that dieting doesn’t work. Eating Smarter can become a permanent change that will last for life.
Enjoy the journey to your ThriveLife!
And, rest assured that there is plenty of good food in your future!
Footnotes:
Want to Go Deeper?
Do you want to dive deeper into ThriveAge and what it can do in your life? If that sounds like a smart move for you, then consider subscribing to the LenDentonThrive Letter. It’s totally free!
As a bonus, new subscribers will receive a free .pdf version of Chapter 1 of my upcoming new book, The ThriveAge Way (The Over-50 Way To Lose Weight, Get Fit & Stay Fit For Life).
ThriveAge is the roadmap to your custom-built ThriveLife!
2. Tip of the Week: 2 Practical Nutrition Tips
There are two major reasons why so many American Over-50 Guys are overweight these days. Reason #1 is what I call the Standard American Diet or SAD. This diet, which is largely based on highly processed foods from Corporate America, is filled with hidden sweeteners and sugars. Reason #2 is the fact that the average portion size for Americans has increased by 2-3x in the last 20 years.
Tip #1 - To beat the SAD, simply Eat Smarter as we’ve discussed in this edition of the newsletter.
Tip #2 - To manage portion sizes, use an 8 to 9-inch salad plate instead of the typical dinner plate. This will hold up to 4 portions of food. Give it a try!
3. News You Can Use
Here is some “news you can use” from my research and socials:
Do you ever become frustrated when comparing yourself to others? Give this a try instead:
This Japanese 80% diet rule can help you live a longer life, says longevity researcher and author of The Blue Zones, Dan Buettner:
Follow me on the socials for daily tips and strategies for living your ThriveLife:
I’m Writing A Book!
I’m a busy Over-50 Guy who has spent the past ten years building a practice of personal health and fitness that relies on real food and smart exercise instead of crazy diets and killer workouts. This process, called ThriveAge, helped me to lose 70 pounds and keep it off for going on ten years. Now, I want to share what I have learned with other Over-50 Guys. So, I wrote the book!
In The ThriveAge Way (The Over-50 Way To Lose Weight, Get Fit & Stay Fit For Life), I share everything I’ve learned about the principles and practices necessary to create and sustain a healthy lifestyle. I call it my ThriveLife.
New subscribers to the LenDentonThrive Letter will receive Chapter 1 of my new book for free. To get your free copy of Chapter 1, just subscribe to the LenDentonThrive Letter.
Thanks for your time and attention. Have a great weekend. See you next Saturday!
Thrive & Prosper,
Len
Hey, Before You Go…
First, are you a subscriber to the LenDentonThrive Letter? Please share this with someone you know who might benefit from it. I’d appreciate that! And, I bet the guy you forward it to will too!
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See you next week!
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