After reading this book in February of 2020, I wrote,

 

"Without good health, other things don't matter. A clear and compelling guide to a life of vitality..." 

 

Actually this is what I wrote about the book "How Not to Die" by the same author. But it applies double for this book.

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The following 20 pages (as counted in 12-point type in Microsoft Word) are the clippings I took of all the major actionable information from Dr. Greger’s 570-page book (not counting the citations and index). I read this book twice to make sure I absorbed all the important points. You will notice many 3-4 digit numbers scattered throughout the extracted text below. In the Kindle version of the book, these numbers will link you to the citations that support his assertions. The book has about 5000 citations.

 

Although the focus of the book is creating and maintaining a healthy weight, more fundamentally and importantly, the book is about eating for vibrant health.

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See all my book recommendations.  

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Here are the selections I made:

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I’m not interested in offering dueling anecdotes, nor am I interested in dietary dogma, beliefs, or opinions. What I am interested in is the science. When it comes to making life-and-death decisions that concern something as important as your own health and that of your family, as far as I’m concerned, there’s only one question: What does the best available balance of evidence say right now? That’s what I’ve tried to encapsulate in this book.

 

In the References section, I’ve included a website address and a QR code for the full list of the nearly five thousand citations referenced throughout this book.

 

A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered “ideal weight.”

 

Calculating your BMI is relatively easy: You can visit one of the scores of online BMI calculators, or you can grab a calculator and calculate it on your own. To do so, multiply your weight in pounds by 703. Then divide that twice by your height in inches. For example, if you weigh 200 pounds and are 71 inches tall (five foot eleven), that would be (200 × 703) ÷ 71 ÷ 71 = 27.9, a BMI indicating that you would be, unfortunately, significantly overweight.

 

The largest studies in the United States 394 [in the original Kindle book, numbers like this link to citations] and around the world395 found that having a normal body mass index, a BMI of 20–25, is associated with the longest life span.

 

Putting together all the best available studies with the longest follow-up, that can be narrowed down even further to a BMI of 20–22.

 

So even within a “normal” BMI, the risk of developing chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and several types of cancer, starts to rise toward the upper end, starting as low as a BMI of 21. BMIs of 18.5 and 24.5 are both considered within the normal range, but a BMI of 24.5 may be associated with twice the heart disease risk compared to 18.5.397 The ideal BMI appears to be between 20 and 22, confirmed in a study of an “unusually slim cohort” from the Oxford Vegetarian Study.398

 

What’s the healthy waistline cutoff? 499 Increased risk of metabolic complications starts at an abdominal circumference of 31.5 inches in women and 37 inches in most men, but closer to 35.5 inches for Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian men.

 

the halfway point between the top of the hip bones and bottom of the rib cage appears to be the most effective at tracking changes in visceral fat over time.505

 

Unlike waist circumference, body mass index has the advantage of taking height into account. Waist-to-height ratio may offer the best of both worlds, and the cutoff value is the simplest to remember: Keep your waist less than half your height.506 The goal for adults and children six years or older is to get a waist-to-height ratio under 0.5.507

 

I’m such a stickler for veracity that I hired nine fact-checkers to go through every citation of the How Not to Die manuscript, and I committed to the same rigor with this book.

 

decided upon a more timeless, proactive approach: build an optimal weight-loss diet from the ground up. Based on the most compelling evidence my research team and I could find, I sought to generate a list of dietary attributes and components most effectual for weight loss. The best ingredients, if you will.

 

 

Take Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS) is a nonprofit, peer-led weight-loss program that has been publishing its results for more than fifty years.923 Not having to siphon off money for shareholders, TOPS is five times cheaper than Weight Watchers and may be fifty times less expensive than other leading programs such as Nutrisystem or Jenny

 

As a physician, my priority is getting (and keeping) people healthy, but when people are surveyed about their motivation for dieting, disturbingly, “health” may come in last.927 Dieters want results—they want weight to come off.

 

One of the most important medical discoveries in recent years was the realization that inflammation appears to play a role in many of our chronic diseases, including at least eight of our top ten leading causes of death.

 

C-reactive protein levels in the blood are ideally under 1 mg/L,

 

Now that we have highly sensitive C-reactive protein blood tests that can measure levels to a fraction of a point, the medical community has realized that walking around with baseline levels of even just 2 or 3 mg/L appears to set us up for increased risk of catastrophes like heart attacks and strokes.933 Having a C-reactive protein level under 1 mg/L denotes low risk, yet the levels of most middle-aged Americans exceed this,934 suggesting most suffer from chronic inflammation. This

 

Broadly speaking, components of processed foods and animal products, such as saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol, were found to be pro-inflammatory, while constituents of whole plant foods, such as fiber and phytonutrients, were strongly anti-inflammatory.938 No surprise, then, that the Standard American Diet rates as pro-inflammatory and has the elevated disease rates to show for it. Higher Dietary Inflammatory Index scores are linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease939 and lower kidney,940 lung,941 and liver function.942 Those eating diets rated as more inflammatory also experienced faster cellular aging.943,944 In the elderly, pro-inflammatory diets are associated with impaired memory945 and increased frailty.946 Inflammatory diets are also associated with worse mental health, including higher rates of depression, anxiety, and impaired well-being.947 Additionally, eating more pro-inflammatory foods has been tied to higher prostate cancer risk in men948,949,950 and higher risks of breast cancer,951,952 endometrial cancer,953 ovarian cancer,954 and miscarriages in women. Higher Dietary Inflammatory Index scores are also associated with more risk of esophageal,955 stomach,956 liver,957 pancreatic,958 colorectal,959 kidney,960 and bladder961 cancers, as well as non-Hodgkin lymphoma.962 Overall, eating a more inflammatory diet was associated with 75 percent increased odds of having cancer and 67 percent increased risk of dying from cancer.963 Not surprisingly, those eating more anti-inflammatory diets appear to live longer lives.964,965,966,967 But how does the Dietary Inflammatory Index impact body weight? Obesity and Inflammation:

 

In the Dietary Inflammatory Index, the single most anti-inflammatory food is the spice turmeric, followed by ginger and garlic, and the most anti-inflammatory beverage is green or black tea. The two most anti-inflammatory food components are fiber and flavones.1021 Dietary fiber is found in all whole plant foods, but it is most concentrated in legumes, such as beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils.1022 Flavones are plant compounds concentrated in herbs, vegetables, and fruits,

 

and the leading sources in the U.S. diet are parsley, bell peppers, celery, apples, and oranges.1024 The most flavone-filled beverage is chamomile tea.

 

The most pro-inflammatory food components are saturated fat and trans fat. Essentially, the top five sources of saturated fat in the United States are cheese, desserts like cake and ice cream, chicken, pork, and then burgers.

 

The additional consumption of fourteen grams of fiber a day led to an average weight loss of 1.9 kilograms over 3.8 months.

 

Those on a Standard American Diet lose about 5 percent of the calories they eat in their waste,1198 but a higher-fiber diet can double that.

 

Fewer than 3 percent of Americans reach even the recommended minimum daily adequate intake of fiber.

 

Nearly everyone is suffering from a fiber-deficient diet, and that’s just based on the wimpy federal recommendations of fourteen grams per thousand calories, which comes out to be about twenty-five grams per day for women and thirty-eight daily grams for men.1273 That’s a far cry from the hundred grams our bodies were designed to get,1274 based on the diets of modern-day, isolated, hunter-gatherer tribes

 

Ninety-six percent of Americans don’t eat the minimum recommended daily amount of beans, 96 percent don’t eat the measly minimum for greens, and 99 percent don’t get enough whole grains.1285 Nearly the entire U.S. population fails to eat enough whole plant foods—the only place fiber is naturally found in abundance.

 

For millions of years, we may have evolved getting approximately 10 percent of our calories from fat.

 

The flesh of some wild game, like moose and elk, is less than 2 percent fat by weight and less than 15 percent calories from fat.

 

It’s been argued that for about 99.8 percent of our time on Earth, it was virtually impossible for us to regularly consume more than 15 percent of calories as fat.

 

At rest, we burn about one calorie a minute, which is comparable to the heat produced by a seventy-five-watt light bulb.

 

To store one hundred calories of dietary fat as body fat, it only takes three calories of energy, but converting one hundred calories of dietary carbs into fat for storage takes twenty-three calories.

 

The study found that 90 percent of the subjects inexplicably ramped up their exercise when they were unwittingly eating the low-saturated-fat diet, increasing their activity levels 12–15 percent on average. The researchers concluded that a high intake of saturated fat “might dampen motivation for physical activity.”

 

As I noted in the Causes section, more than 90 percent of adults and greater than two-thirds of the children in the United States are estimated to be “overfat”—that is, having excess body fat sufficient to impair health. This can occur even in people of normal weight (often due to excess abdominal fat).

 

At the time of the American Revolution, we consumed about an estimated four pounds of sugar per person per year.1575 Now, we may each average more than fifty pounds annually.1576 That’s the equivalent of about seventeen teaspoons of added sugars every day.

 

Note that none of these recommendations to cut down on added sugars applies to fruit. As you’ll read in the Rich in Fruits and Vegetables section, fruit can actually facilitate weight loss. If you randomize people to a diet low in all sugars, even the naturally occurring sugars in fruit, they do worse than those randomized to just cut down added sugars. Those who retained fruit in their diets lost nearly 50 percent more weight.

 

As I detail in the conclusion of How Not to Die, you can actually change your taste buds and end up with the best of both worlds: tastes great and more filling.

 

A single stomach full of strawberry ice cream, about two pints, could max out our caloric intake for an entire day.1698 What if you wanted to get those same two thousand or so calories from strawberries themselves? You’d have to eat forty-four cups of berries.1699 That’s eleven stomach fulls. As delicious as strawberries are, I don’t think I could fill my stomach to bursting eleven times in a day. Some foods are just impossible to overeat. They are so low in calorie density that you just couldn’t physically eat a big enough quantity to maintain your weight.

 

Zucchini is even less calorie dense than broccoli. You could eat 100 cups of sliced zucchini a day and still lose weight.1700 The calories in cucumbers are so dilute you’d have to eat more than 150 cups a day to gain weight1701 and more than 250 cups of chopped kale.

 

On average, those who eat low-energy-density diets consume hundreds of fewer calories, yet they eat significantly more food, about three-quarters of a pound more a day.

 

Fast food averages about 1,200 calories per pound,1709 whereas traditional African diets, which more closely represent the likely diet of our ancient ancestors, average fewer than 500 calories per pound.

 

How much food does it take to reach 2,000 calories at different caloric densities? As you can see in the graph below, you would need to eat eight pounds of food a day on a low-calorie-density diet of 250 calories per pound, whereas on a high-calorie-density diet, you’d have to restrict yourself to eating four times less food.

 

As a high-calorie-density food, the admonition to “eat sparingly” still applies, but that’s all one may need. While the optimum benefits of fruits and vegetables may require cups a day, nuts appear so potent that the mortality benefits may be had for mere ounces a week. FOOD

 

They aren’t smaller in general, though: Vegetarian boys and girls measure up to be about an inch taller than their “omnivorous classmates.”1798 They just aren’t as wide.

 

 

Where does TMAO come from? Just as short-chain fatty acids are produced by good bacteria in our gut when we eat fiber, TMAO originates from bad bacteria in our gut when we eat lots of choline (concentrated in eggs, but also lecithin supplements) or carnitine (concentrated in meat, but also some energy drinks).

 

Take chicken, for example. In 1896, the USDA determined chicken was about 23 percent protein and less than 2 percent fat by weight,1857 which is even leaner than some wild game like venison.1858 Today, with ten times the fat, chicken has 1,000 percent more fat than it did just over a century ago.1859 These days, more than 70 percent of the calories in chicken may come from fat.

 

To remove refined grains from your diet is to remove America’s number one source of calories. Switching to whole grains may help reduce body fat, but there’s an even better swap. See the Wall Off Your Calories section for taking your grain game up a notch and graduate from mere whole grains to intact whole grains, such as oat groats (also known as hull-less or hulled oats).

 

For most of human existence, we were only getting the pinch of salt a day naturally found in whole foods.1902 Now, thanks mostly to processed foods, we’re exposed to ten times more than our bodies were meant to handle.

 

The recommended dietary allowance for protein is about 50 grams a day (46 for women, 56 for men).

 

Traditional societies tend to have more diverse gut flora in general, and the key is thought to be their extraordinary fiber intakes, which can reach 120 grams a day,2104 nearly eight times the American average.

 

I mentioned earlier in which people lost weight after adding three apples or pears to their daily diets.2223 Certain other fruits were not as successful, though. Adding three grapefruit halves, around three kiwifruits, or half a mango a day didn’t result in significant weight loss (although it didn’t result in weight gain either).

 

In the Harvard cohorts, the categories of berries and apples/pears appeared to stand out on the fruit side in terms of foods associated with the most weight loss, and cauliflower and tofu/soy did so on the vegetable side.

 

One such study tried giving people with metabolic syndrome placebo or actual garlic tablets adding up to a half teaspoon of garlic powder a day. And it worked, resulting in a drop in both weight and waistlines within six weeks.2285 A half teaspoon of garlic powder costs less than four cents. What about trying garlic supplements, like the fancy aged garlic extract ones you may have seen advertised. No weight-loss benefits were found.2286

 

In the Harvard studies, the food category most associated with weight loss over time was soy food products, with nearly ten times the weight reduction associated with vegetable consumption.2313 But how many people are eating bacon double-cheese tofu burgers? Indeed, bean consumption is associated with less saturated fat and cholesterol intake,2314 so it may just be a marker for a healthier diet in general. Nevertheless, the Harvard studies controlled for a whole array of dietary and lifestyle factors yet still found a significant link between beans and better health.

 

What do you think happened when people were given a cup of chickpeas or the same number of calories of white bread and butter? Those who had eaten the chickpeas ate nearly two hundred fewer calories of a meal served a few hours later.2323 Navy beans may work even better than chickpeas, and lentils best of all.2324 How do legumes fare compared to something a little more substantial than Wonder Bread, though?

 

Researchers compared patties made with fava beans and split peas to protein-matched patties made out of meat. The title of the study gives it away: “Meals Based on Vegetable Protein Sources (Beans and Peas) Are More Satiating Than Meals Based on Animal Protein Sources (Veal and Pork).” Even lower-protein patties in which most of the mashed beans and peas were replaced with potato held their own against the meat.

 

Legumes have been found to be perhaps “the most important dietary predictor of survival in older people” around the world.

 

But feed people four servings a week of beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils, and you can get a whopping 40 percent drop in C-reactive protein,2368 a leading indicator of systemic inflammation. More beans equals less inflammation. Greater consumption

Split red or orange lentils are even easier. They’re ready in five minutes, quicker than boiling pasta.2372 Once they’ve softened, rinse them to cool, then mix with herbs and lemon juice for a basic legume salad. Another favorite of mine is to cook lentils a little longer so they thicken into almost a purée before adding spices like curry, turmeric, cumin, and garam masala for a thick, savory, and healthy Indian-inspired sauce.

 

Anyone can lose weight eating less food. Anyone can be starved thin. Starvation diets are rarely sustainable, though, since hunger pangs drive us to eat. We feel unsatisfied on low-calorie diets. Unsatiated. We do have some level of voluntary control, but our deep-seated instinctual drives may win out in the end. For

 

The four largest calorie contributors in the American diet are (1) refined grains, (2) added fats, (3) meat, and (4) added sugars.

 

Vegetarians and vegans are recommended to take supplements containing at least 50 mcg of cyanocobalamin (the most stable form2452) a day or at least 2,000 mcg once a week2453 (or brush twice daily with a B12-fortified toothpaste

 

As I explored in How Not to Die, these are the very same foods that in some cases may help prevent each of our top fifteen killers: (1) heart disease, (2) lung diseases, (3) iatrogenic (“death by doctor”) causes, (4) brain diseases, (5) digestive cancers, (6) infections, (7) diabetes, (8) high blood pressure, (9) liver diseases, (10) blood cancers, (11) kidney disease, (12) breast cancer, (13) suicidal depression, (14) prostate cancer, and (15) Parkinson’s disease.

 

There was a crossover study in which women were instructed to eat plant-based foods for a few months to see how it would affect their menstrual cycles. But then they were to switch back to their baseline diets to note the contrast, a so-called A-B-A study design where you reverse the experimental variable. The problem is that some participants felt so good eating healthfully—they were losing weight without any calorie counting or portion control, they had more energy, their periods got better, and they experienced better digestion and better sleep—that some refused to go back to their regular diets, which kind of messes up the study.2462

 

A key difference between plant-based nutrition and more traditional approaches to weight loss is that people are encouraged to eat ad libitum, which is, as I’ve noted, Latin for at one’s pleasure. In other words, people on a healthy enough plant-based diet can eat as much as they want.

 

In the ninety-thousand-person study, the average BMI of nonvegetarians was 28.8, bordering on obesity.2467 Semi-vegetarians or flexitarians, those who ate meat a few times a month but not every week, were at a BMI of 27.3. Those who ate no meat except fish came in at 26.3, and vegetarians were at 25.7. Vegetarian diet may seem a contradiction in terms, since how many vegetarians are on diets? But in the United States, even the average vegetarian is overweight. Only those eating purely plant-based diets were, on average, at an ideal weight with an average BMI of 23.6.

 

CHIP doesn’t provide meals—just advice and encouragement, empowering people with knowledge.2505 Within a month on the program, blood sugars, cholesterol, and blood pressures dropped enough for many participants to drop their antidiabetic, cholesterol-lowering, and blood pressure–lowering medications. Better numbers on fewer drugs, along with an average six-pound weight loss.

 

CHIP’s name was changed from the Coronary Health Improvement Project to the Complete Health Improvement Program.

 

A whole food, plant-based diet achieved the greatest weight loss ever recorded at six and twelve months compared to any other such intervention published in the medical literature.2527 The record-breaking study can be read in full for free at www.nature.com/articles/nutd20173.

 

Millions of years before we learned how to sharpen spears, mill grains, or boil sugarcane, our entire physiology is presumed to have evolved in the context of eating what the rest of our great ape cousins eat—leaves, stems, and shoots (in other words, vegetables), fruits, seeds, and nuts.

 

So for the first 90 percent of our hominoid existence, our bodies evolved on mostly plants.

 

The Trevose Behavior Modification Program.2545 Named after a town in Pennsylvania, the program has been running all-volunteer, self-help support groups since 1970, offering lifetime treatment at no cost. The most demonstrably successful weight-loss program in history is free? Why haven’t more people heard about it? Probably because it is free and doesn’t have a massive promotional budget like billion-dollar corporation Weight Watchers, which spends hundreds of millions on advertising every year.2546 After

 

One study found that twice daily—upon waking and again right before bed—appeared superior to once a day (about six pounds versus two pounds of weight loss over twelve weeks).2578

 

Was the weight loss simply statistically significant or actually significant? That’s for you to decide. During the three-month trial, compared to the placebo group, the group taking one daily tablespoon of vinegar steadily lost about a pound a month and the group taking two daily tablespoons were down a total of about five pounds. Five pounds may not sound like a lot, but that weight loss was achieved for just pennies a day without removing anything from their diets.

 

In a study refreshingly not funded by a vinegar company, two daily tablespoons of apple cider vinegar mixed into a drink reduced fasting blood sugars in prediabetics an average of sixteen points within one week, which is better than what you’d tend to see with antidiabetic drugs like Glucophage or Avandia.2650 The vinegar was found to be safer, cheaper, and more effective. No wonder vinegar has been used medicinally since antiquity.

 

I’d recommend sticking with more common culinary-type doses, like two tablespoons a day, which is considered safe.

 

Obese individuals randomized to just about four teaspoons of yacon syrup a day for 120 days lost nearly four inches off their waists and more than thirty pounds, whereas those on the placebo syrup gained weight.2674

 

To amp AMPK, I recommend trying two teaspoons of vinegar with each meal. You might be thinking, Wait—vinegar for breakfast? Those aghast at the thought of drizzling vinegar on their oatmeal may have never heard of chocolate vinegar, strawberry vinegar, or any of the dozens of other exotic flavors out there.

 

Overweight women were randomized to eat calorie-restricted weight-loss diets with or without a teaspoon of added cumin a day (half a teaspoon at both lunch and dinner). Over the three-month study, those in the cumin group lost about four more pounds and nearly an extra inch off their waists, in addition to significantly dropping their triglycerides and cholesterol.2727 Since cumin can be purchased in bulk for less than a dollar an ounce, a teaspoon would cost less than ten cents a day.

 

A recent systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized, controlled weight-loss trials found that about a quarter teaspoon of black cumin powder every day appears to reduce body mass index within a span of a couple of months.

 

Even weight loss of just a few pounds is pretty remarkable given the tiny doses utilized, about 100 mg, which is equivalent to around an eighth of a teaspoon of the spice. The problem is that saffron is the most expensive spice in the world. It’s composed of delicate threads poking out of the saffron crocus. Each flower produces only a few threads, such that you need fifty thousand flowers—enough flowers to fill a football field—to make a single pound of spice, so that pinch of saffron could cost up to a dollar a day.

 

A meal eaten at 7:00 a.m. can cause 37 percent lower blood sugars than an identical meal taken at 1:00 p.m.

 

So consuming more calories in the morning relative to the evening may actually have the triple benefit of more weight loss, better blood sugar control, and lower heart disease risk.

 

Night-shift workers have higher rates of obesity, as well as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer2884—graveyard shift indeed!

 

Regardless of the mechanism, bright morning daylight exposure could present a novel weight-loss strategy straight out of the clear blue sky.

 

Pistachios are not just the most melatonin-rich nut, they are off the charts as the most melatonin-rich food ever recorded.2957 To get a physiological dose of melatonin, all you have to eat is two. Two cups? Two handfuls? No, just two pistachios. Pistachio nuts were found to contain 0.2 mg of melatonin per gram.2958 It only takes 0.3 mg of melatonin to cause the normal daily spike our brains give us, so just two nuts would presumably do the trick.2959

 

Sleep during the night and be active during the day Sleep enough (seven to eight hours a night) Early to bed, early to rise Avoid bright light exposure at night Sleep in total darkness when possible Eat dinner at least two and a half hours before going to bed Avoid eating at night I

 

Their bodies didn’t seem to fully recognize the extra calories when they were in liquid form and, therefore, didn’t compensate by reducing their appetites for the rest of the day.

 

Those who chewed thirty-five times per bite ended up eating about a third of a cup less pasta than those who had only chewed ten times per bite.

 

People were given soup, but half were given small spoons and told to eat slowly, and the other half were given big spoons and told to eat quickly, and an amazing thing happened: The slow-eating group not only ended up feeling more satiated, but they did so after eating less soup.2977 They felt fuller eating less food.

 

As Harvard’s Healthy Weight Checklist puts it: “Slowing down at meals … can help avoid overeating by giving the brain time to tell the stomach when it’s had enough food.”

 

Preload studies, where people are fed a first course one, five, fifteen, twenty, thirty, or sixty minutes before the main meal, show that this fullness feedback loop may take about twenty minutes to fully tamp down our appetites.

 

In smoothie form, you can drink fruits and vegetables at about two cups a minute—ten times faster than it might take to eat fruits and vegetables in solid form.

 

study when chewing a bite thirty-five times was shown to beat out chewing only ten times and resulted in 12 percent fewer calories eaten at a meal.

 

If you ask people to double their baseline number of chews per bite, they end up eating about 15 percent less pizza, feeling just as full eating more than one hundred fewer calories.2996 Even just asking them to chew 50 percent more times than normal may cut their consumption by nearly 10 percent.2997

 

Experiments simultaneously varying bite size and oral exposure time with solid food found the same phenomenon: It’s better to nibble and savor than chomp and gulp.

 

demonstrated that regardless of how we boost the amount of time food is in our mouths, it can result in lower caloric intake.

 

When people were put on a diet packed with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans and allowed to eat all they wanted, they ended up eating 48 percent fewer calories than they might have otherwise.

 

Part of that was due to the lower calorie density of the plant-heavy diet, but people also spent about 40 percent more time chewing, for seventeen minutes per meal compared to twelve minutes.

 

researchers recognized that nearly any diet can cause weight loss at least short term, but the ends don’t always justify the means. Their challenge was to design a “nutritionally sound” diet “conducive to a lifelong pattern of healthful eating.”3074 To that end, the diet encourages people to eat more high-bulk, calorie-dilute foods (vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and beans) and fewer energy-dense foods (meats, cheeses, sugars, and fats).

 

So choose foods that take longer to eat, and eat them in a way that prolongs the time they stay in your mouth. Think bulkier, harder, chewier foods, such as apples, carrots, or intact grains, eaten in smaller, thoroughly chewed bites. Snack on raw veggies, and fall in love with soup. If possible, extend meal duration so it lasts at least twenty minutes to allow your natural satiety signals to take full effect.

 

Try eating with chopsticks. Even in experienced hands, they tend to slow eating rate.

 

The Exercise “Myth” When trying to lose weight, which is more important: diet or exercise? A national survey found that a “vast majority” of Americans, seven out of ten, believe that food and beverage consumption and physical activity are equally important when it comes to weight loss. About two out of ten favored exercise, and only about one in ten chose diet.3080 The vast majority of Americans are wrong.

 

In contrast, even most “active” people exercise less than two hours a week, which may average out to fewer than one hundred calories burned off daily.

 

Though most people believe exercise is a “very effective” way to lose weight,3085 that has been referred to as a “myth” in the scientific literature.3086 In fact, it’s been labeled as one of the most common misconceptions in the field of obesity,

 

Can You Outrun a Bad Diet? Dozens of randomized controlled trials involving thousands of participants have been published on the effects of exercise on weight loss.3090 How did exercise fare? Surprisingly, physical activity was not found to be an effective strategy.3091 Think of it this way: A moderately obese person doing moderate-intensity physical activity, like biking or very brisk walking, would burn off approximately 350 calories an hour.3092 Most drinks, snacks, and other processed junk are consumed at a rate of about 70 calories a minute. Therefore, it only takes five minutes of snacking for someone to wipe out a whole hour of exercise.3093

 

When people are randomized into diet-and-exercise interventions versus diet alone, the diet-and-exercise groups do better, but the difference in weight loss only averages about two pounds.3095 The studies lasted between three and twelve months, and all that extra prescribed exercise seemed to translate into only a few pounds lost.

 

The longer-term trials performed even worse. In a meta-analysis of eighteen randomized controlled studies lasting a minimum of six months, the diet-plus-exercise group failed to beat out the diet-only group at all.

 

To walk off the calories found in a single pat of butter, we’d have to add an extra seven hundred yards to our stroll that evening. What about a Snickers bar? We’d need to jog a quarter mile for every single bite.

 

Studies show obese individuals tend to remain seated for about two and a half hours longer each day than the average, inactive yet lean, shoestring couch potato.3174 Normal-weight individuals just tend to get up and move around more.