Eat More & Weigh Less Diet

Although seemingly impossible, when executed properly, you can eat more of the right foods and lose weight. This diet, based on Dr. Dean Ornish's book, "Eat More, Weigh Less," teaches you how to eat a low-fat diet and lose weight. Dr. Ornish, renowned for his research on heart disease and diet, brings principles of healthy eating and weight loss even to those who do not suffer from heart disease.

Rationale

Dr. Ornish explains that to lose weight, you should consider that obesity results from not eating too much food, but from eating too much high-calorie, high-fat, non-filling foods. Ornish asks you to put aside the idea that to lose weight you must feel deprived and hungry. Instead, embrace the concept of eating larger volumes of low-calorie, low-fat foods to stave off hunger, lose weight, eat a nutritionally balanced diet and improve your health. When you eat less unhealthy foods, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that you may see an improvement in your cholesterol levels, reduce your heart disease risk, lower your blood pressure and avoid developing diabetes.

Foods to Avoid

In his diet book, Ornish advises readers to consume less than 10 percent of calories from fat and eat a basically cholesterol-free diet. He advises that you should rarely eat meat, avoid high-fat foods such as avocados, nuts, full-fat cheese or dairy products, stay away from all refined sugars, avoid margarine, and rarely if ever consume alcohol. You should also limit your salt intake on this diet. Unlike proponents of eating a balance of healthy fats, such as the physicians at the Harvard School of Public Health, the "Eat More, Weigh Less" diet avoids healthy fats in olives, cold-water fish and nuts. Avoiding most fats and sugars eliminates the majority of processed foods such as crackers, chips, cookies, baked goods, some cereals, ice cream, fried foods, many frozen dinners and desserts.

Foods to Eat

The number of foods you can have may surprise you, especially considering the low-fat nature of the diet. Included on the recommended list are beans, peas, most fruits and vegetables, fat-free cheeses and milks and whole grains. The diet is close to a vegetarian diet. When you keep your fat intake below 10 percent, you must limit your fat grams to 17, if eating about 1,500 calories a day. Although Ornish generally recommends avoiding red meat, chicken and pork, you can have a very small amount of a lean choice such as skinless chicken, extra-lean ground beef or a small serving of fish on occasion.

Strategies

Reading the labels on your food is a primary strategy recommended by Ornish to learn which foods are healthy and which are not. The diet asks that you put back any food that contains more than 2 g of fat per serving to keep your fat consumption within recommended levels. A healthy breakfast on this diet includes skim milk and low-fat, whole grain cereals, fruit and fat-free yogurt. For lunch, you can have a vegetarian salad, whole-wheat roll with no butter or margarine and a serving of beans. Dinner can include whole-wheat pasta, vegetarian sauce, a large serving of steamed vegetables, fruit and fat-free parmesan cheese as a topping for the pasta. Eat fruits and vegetables for snacks, sugar-free flavored ice on a stick for dessert and exercise regularly to increase your weight-loss success.