I don't calorie count

In my last post I said I was counting calories or doing some form of portion control to keep myself from overeating.   Well I'm not anymore.  I'm just eating LOTRL and letting everything else fall where it falls.  I think I explained what LOTRL is in my last post.

I count calories

I’ve learned a lot in my 14-year vegan food journey and I feel that I am in a good place now.  My weight is stable, my eating is stable, my health is good (knock on wood), and I’m focusing my efforts on my passion of body movement in the form of hiking foremost, but also biking, swimming, walking, stretching, yoga, etc.  I also enjoy reading.   Here is an update of where I’m am food wise.  I learned a lot from every group I joined.  I’m still in Bright Line Eating though I don’t participate there and may let my membership lapse next year.   I feel more at home with my friends in UWL (Chef AJ’s Ultimate Weight Loss Program) and I believe in Whole Food Plant-Based (WFPB), though I don’t agree with everything they say about weight loss and maintenance.  Here’s a summary of what I’ve learned from these programs.

I like UWL’s calorie density approach.  Chef AJ recommends eating “Left of the Red Line” which she defines as all foods having calorie density less than some amount.   I draw the line just above chickpeas so my “red line” is 750 calories/lb.   I try to eat only foods with calorie density less than this, or “left of the red line” (LOTRL).   That means I avoid foods with higher calorie density such as sugar (1750 calories/lb), bread (1100), dried fruit (1300), nuts and seeds (2800), chocolate (2600), oil (4000), any combo of sugar, flour and fat; and of course, animal products.   The high calorie-dense foods include a lot of WFPB foods such as air popped popcorn, whole grain breads, crackers, nuts and dried fruit.  The reason I like avoiding these foods is that they are all very stimulating for me and make me want to eat more.  I mean, really, nut butter and dates are sugar and fat.  As far as food addiction goes, LOTRL makes more sense to me than just saying no to sugar and flour, because fat is just as addictive for me, and the combinations of all three plus salt are super stimulating (at least for me now, since my brain has adapted to LOTRL foods).  Just one of those at a time, in small quantities, I can probably handle, but when you start combining them, watch out!  That’s why nuts and dates combined should be outlawed.  Haha, just kidding.  But I’m staying away from both of them.  Jeff Nelson (see Vegsource on Youtube) and Jeff Novick (See Dr. McDougall's discussion forums)  have convinced me that I don’t need nuts for health.  I get plenty of  nutrients and fat from my starches and veggies and fruit.  So, to summarize, I think limiting my foods to LOTRL works better for me than the BLE food plan which requires specific amounts of proteins, fat and carbs.  That plan may make more sense for meat eaters, but for vegans, all our foods are mixtures of proteins, fat, and carbs in perfectly reasonable amounts.

However, what UWL leaves off and BLE includes is food portioning.  The WFPB crowd loves to say that we can eat as much as we want and still lose weight.  And Dr. Lisle says we won’t overeat if we eat only whole natural foods of low calorie density.  I disagree.  I and many others will binge on LOTRL foods if told I can eat as much as I want.  Dr. Lisle says animals don’t overeat in their natural food environment and neither do we. Well, if I had a dog and I allowed him to eat unlimited roasted Japanese sweet potatoes (do dogs like that?)  I bet he would eat more than he needs. I’ve tried various methods to portion control with UWL and they all work fine.  These are 1) calorie counting.  Weigh your food and add it to your calorie counting app.  The apps make it easy by letting you enter recipes and copy your food from one day to the next.  Yes I am aware of all the inaccuracies of calorie counting, but when you eat similar foods from day to day and you are only comparing to yourself, it’s accurate enough as an estimator of how much to eat, and it’s more accurate than listening to the many voices in my head. 2) Weighing out quantities of food.  For me, 3 lbs of starch, 3-4 lbs of veggies, and 1 lb of fruit per day works well.   3) plate method. 1 large plate per meal:  half starches, half veggies, and 1 fruit.

I also weigh myself if I think I need an extra guide to quantities.  That helps me adjust how much I eat.  I use a Withings scale which is connected to the internet and automatically enters my weight into a website called trendweight.com.  This does a running average so I just follow the trend from the past few weeks rather than my day-to-day variation.  I actually only look at it occasionally. I pretty much just eat the same amount every day, adjusting for hunger.  But I like knowing that the data being collected can be used to adjust my amounts if need be.

I allow my quantities to vary day-to-day based on hunger.  I just like limits to keep me from binging so I avoid snacking between meals (1 or 2 snacks is fine but they are just that: small meals).  I've noticed when I calorie count that my calorie intake doesn't vary that much with activity level--just a few hundred calories usually.  If I do all-day intense hiking, I am more hungry, especially the following day, so I eat more.  But I have to avoid giving myself carte blanche to eat as much as I want every day.