Calorie Density Weight Loss Secrets Revealed!

[Music] hi everyone and welcome to nut make notebook I'm Tammy and I am the creator of the blog and this YouTube channel called nut make notebook where I share all about our whole food plant-based lifestyle so today I'm super excited to share with you about the things that I learned that helped me lose weight and maintain my weight loss since 2015 that's my husband Tom he went on and he's just helping just doing my sound checks he's helping get everything set up here last minute so uh I went plant-based in 2013 and um was doing great until I became hypothyroid and even after I went on medication Leo thyroxin for that I was having difficulty even though I was using a whole food plant-based diet I was having difficulty losing the weight that I gained when my thyroid was malfunctioning and then I met Chef AJ and all of that changed because she taught me all about the pleasure trap and calorie density and how to sequence my meals so that I could actually eat like twice as much food for half the amount of calories and that's how I ended up being able to get back to a healthy weight that I have maintained since 2015 I have a history of yo-yo dieting for my entire adult life I do want to show you uh a couple of my before pictures so this is what I look like at my highest weight I weighed about 17475 lbs then and um that I was not a happy camper because I I'm a bit of a perfectionist and so I really did not enjoy the fact that I could not control my weight and my my appetite just felt like it was completely out of control I could not eat a lot of things in moderation and you know like sweets and high-fat foods and I would eat those things and then that would just like be a huge trigger for me to want to binge on them which I did because you know I was obviously eating a lot of calories um to get to this size so I am much happier uh being the size I am today and I ended up losing 49 lbs so I'm first going to talk to you all about uh calorie density and if how many of you have Chef AJ's book the secrets to Ultimate weight loss in her book she talks all about calorie density and she explains to you what it is and how to use it to your advantage so I'm going to be talking a lot about the calorie density chart um you may want to get a pen and paper because you might want want to take notes if you have her book you might want to pull it out and look at the calorie density chart or you can Google calorie density chart online and you can find one and you even hers can be found like on Pinterest so um just so you can kind of follow along and then we do we did print one that um I can show you on camera that would be uh bigger here we go this is the calorie density chart I wanted Tom to be able to put one in the show notes but it doesn't allow you to put pictures in the show notes so her book I highly recommend if you're struggling to lose weight or maintain your weight or you just have those last five or 10 pounds to lose this is a great resource and her entire program is outlined in the book and it's fantastic also she introduced me to Dr Doug ly and this book the pleasure trap oh my gosh if I had known this stuff you guys when I was 17 it would have saved me over 40 years of yo-yo dieting so the pleasure trap I highly recommend it's an awesome book Tom has linked to the book for our Amazon store down below in the show notes so these two books are my little kitchen Bibles and also Dr McDougall uh in his maximum weight loss program book he also talks about calorie density in this and it's also the principles that they teach at the True North Health Center in Santa Rosa and a number of the plant-based doctors recommend following calorie density so I hope you guys are ready to um learn about this so calorie density is um it's science-based so this is not like a fad diet type thing and Dr Barbara rolls is credited to really bringing it to the Forefront she is a a scientific researcher and doctor from Penn State and she has a laboratory at Penn State that's like it's like a kitchen laboratory where they study eating habits of human beings which is pretty fantastic so she discovered that everyone eats approximately between three and five lounds of food every day on average so one day you might eat a little more when day you might eat a little less but on average we eat the same amount of food now that varies from person to person now I know when I post my food on Instagram what I eat in a day either on Instagram or on my Facebook page you know some people will say I could never eat that amount of food that's okay because the amount of food that I need is going to be different than the amount of food that you need and the amount of food that I eat versus the amount of food that Tom eats is different um you know he's a man he has a higher metabolism always has than I do and he eats more food in a day than I do but I eat a pretty fair amount I would say that I probably eat about three to four pounds of food depending on the day because my lunch salad is that big one pound of salad and after I chop it I add a ton more things to it and so it ends up weighing about two 2 and 1 12 PBS cuz we did weigh them one time just to find out and then I have my dinner which I'm sure is like another pound of food so and that is about what I eat per day and some days a little more some days a little less so what Dr RS found out is that people eat the same amount of pounds of food on average per day regardless of the calorie count so isn't that interesting so um um calorie density is merely the amount of calories for a set amount of food so today I'm going to be talking to you about calorie density for one pound of food and we're going to talk about different food groups and what their calorie density is so Dr rolls also discovered that the feeling of fullness that we call satiety is not simply based on calorie content which you know people used to say a calorie is a calorie is a calorie well guess what when it comes to weight loss and feeling full that is not true um it's it's also based on the volume and the weight of food and how much room it takes up in our stomach so that's where calorie density is going to start coming into play and she also discovered that when you have water combined with the food that it makes it more filling you get more satiety from it now that doesn't mean that you can take you know a bunch of air fried food and then drink water with it it doesn't work that way uh it has to the the food and the water have to be combined either in a broth-based soup or in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables will also help it allows you to eat more food for less Cal calories which is really great if you're a volume eater like I am now food varies in caloric density from 100 calories all the way up to 4,000 calories so there's a 40 fold difference so what we choose to eat for that 3 to five pounds of food we want to eat every day has a huge impact on our ability to either lose weight or maintain our weight loss okay so once you understand this you guys are going to see that you can eat a lot more food for weight loss than you probably ever have before so the first category on the calorie density food chart is 100 calories per pound and that is for non starchy vegetables and so that is going to be like this bowl of beautiful vegetables that I have here so and this is the non-starchy vegetables so you can Google non-starchy vegetables and you can see that there will be literally hundreds of vegetables that you can choose from and this will be the lowest calorie density food that we can eat and these are full of water and they're also full of fiber and one of the things that Barbara R's team discovered is that we get more satisfaction from food that we have to chew and of course because this is so full of fiber and has tons of water it takes a lot of time to chew this and so just the act of chewing will slow down how fast you can consume your calories that in itself helps with you eating glass and you get a lot of Satisfaction Just from the act of chewing plus we know from different studies that it takes about 20 minutes from the time you start eating before your brain says oh my gosh you know maybe we're full and so this helps because it's going to really help you slow down now there are certain things that uh botanically are actually fruits but they often times will show up on the non-starchy vegetable charts and that's going to be things like tomatoes and cucumbers eggplant okra bell peppers and zucchini now those actually have about 67 calories per pound but we're doing averages so because you know some other things are higher a little bit higher calorie so we're just doing an average non-starchy vegetables 100 calories per pound then the next category is fruit and that is the 300 calorie per pound now here again there's some variation in the calories per pound of fruit because those Botanical uh fruits that I just talked about are 67 calories per pound berries are also lower calorie density than something like pineapple or bananas the tropical fruits are sweeter and they have more calories per pound but we're just doing an average and so because we're not going to get hung up on every little fruit or every little vegetable we are just going to learn about the categories and so for fruit we're going to say on average they're about 300 calories per pound they offer natural sweetness so if you want if you have a sweet tooth then let let your dessert be fruit because it's naturally sweet it's full of fiber it's full of water so the absorption of the glucose into your bloodstream is really slowed down because of the fiber and the water and so you won't have that Big Sugar Rush that you would from eating a brownie let's say and it's very satisfying and it's very filling now if you're just coming to A Whole Food plant-based diet from the standard American diet and you're used to eating a lot of high calorie density foods and a lot of processed sugar and high fat uh desserts is the fruit going to satisfy you initially probably not because you have to give yourself some time to neuro adapt and then you'll get to the point where sometimes even pineapple will be too sweet I know you're laughing you don't think that's possible but it really does happen we are moving to the 400 to 600 calorie per pound category and this is going to be our unrefined complex carbohydrate and this is what Dr mcdouall calls our starch so a whole food plant-based diet is great fruits and vegetables are fantastic but they are so low calorie density that they are not going to stick with you for hours and hours and keep you full so you have to include starch starch and and unrefined carbohydrates have gotten a bad wrap but that's not because of what they are to begin with it's because of what people put on them so you know potato are the most eaten food that Americans eat as far as vegetables go but they don't eat them in a healthy way they eat them Deep Fat fried as french fries and so it's not that the potato is bad but all that oil that they're fried in is bad or they're slathering butter and sour cream and cheese and bacon bits on them that makes them bad so we need to have the starch because the starch is what gives us energy and it's what gives us satiety it's what's going to hold us to the next meal so you need to have a little bit of starch at every meal or a whole lot of starch if that's what you prefer and it will fill you up I was so excited in 2015 that first week because I got to have potatoes and I almost cried the first time I sat down with a big old potato stuffed with beans corn salsa and fresh cilantro because it was so satisfying I actually got to have like this huge meal that was so filling and I love starch I love potatoes we just need to do it in an unrefined way so the categories within that because I was saying it's a 400 to 600 calorie range so and and we're just again we're just learning about food groups we're not all the little individual exactly how much is everything okay so at 500 calories per pound we have the whole grains so that's going to be things like these are oat grows and you know I have a video all about how to make oat Groats this is what oatmeal comes from is oat Groats and to make the rolled oats you know they take and steam these and cut them and roll them out but this is the whole oat Groat and I just made a pot of these today I absolutely love them I like them more than brown rice even but you know whatever you choose it could be quinoa which is technically a seed but everybody puts it in um in the starch category or it could be Millet or um I'm glutenfree but if you do gluten you know it could be barley it could be you know all different kinds of um grains whatever you like and the less refined they are the more whole they are the better for you because they're more filling you know brown rice versus white rice brown rice is a has a little more fiber it's a little more filling but you know if you like white rice don't feel bad about eating white rice okay in the 600 calories per pound are going to be lay legumes so all kinds of legumes so it can be split peas it can be lentils it can be beans whatever you like these are super filling and here's the thing about these we cook them in water right and so they soak up the water and they expand and so then they become even more filling because they have a lot of water you put them in a soup in a bro broth-based Sou soup with some vegetables and you've reduce the calorie density of your meal even greater and it's so satisfying I don't know about you guys but I love soup and we eat soups all summer long because I still love some chili over a baked potato or some lentil um soup I love Indian food and I'll eat those hot dishes all summer long and then of course winter squash that's a wonderful uh this is my favorite that's a wonderful starch to have this is a caboa squash and it's totally amazing butternut squash hubard whatever you have that you can get sweet potatoes we love our sweet potatoes I eat a Japanese sweet potato every day um these we just bought and I didn't even have time to wash them look how filthy they are but these are so delicious Tom's laughing at me and they're so satisfying so include a wide variety y of starches in your diet because they're very satisfying very filling take your one pound of salad or much you make or your steamed vegetables and add a little bit of starch to it whether it's in the form of um some squash some potatoes a grain or some legumes so the all of these Foods here are in the 600 calorie and under categories on on the calorie density chart and if you look at Chef AJ's calorie density chart she has drawn a red line there and what she says is eat to your heart's desire to the left of the red line of all of these foods and if you keep your calories to 600 calories per pound or less you should be able to eat at limonum which means you just eat until you feel satisfied eat to sa satiation not like Thanksgiving dinner where you're stuffed you just eat until you are comfortably full and you should be able to lose weight and once you get to your healthy weight you should be able to maintain that weight eating these Foods now we're going to talk about the foods that go to the right of that red line as well so in the first one in the first category to the right is avocado and avocados are wonderful and they're a healthy food they are about 300 calories for an average average avocado and about 30 gram of fat and a serving of an avocado is 1 F have you ever been able to cut open an avocado and eat one fifth of an avocado well I can say that my granddaughter does that um but I don't know that I have the ability to do that at home I don't generally eat avocado at home but when we eat out I'll have some because it's in a controlled setting and I'm getting a small quantity um maybe on a salad or on some tacos at a vegan restaurant so it's very calorically dense compared to the other Foods it is is a very healthy food but if you are trying to lose weight it's a good idea to just not have avocado for a while and see if that makes a difference for you so uh Dr Ola Chef AJ has interviewed her about fat and women trying to lose weight and um I I highly recommend that you look up those two videos that she did with Chef AJ because she t talks all about how women who have yo-yo dieted have to eat about 25% fewer calories in order to maintain their weight compared to someone else who's the same age same height and same weight who has never yo-yo dieted so and I know for me that that is very true and so um I really limit the higher fat foods and the higher calorie density Foods because now that I'm a smaller size I actually need fewer calories just to do my basic things every day and so I don't have room in my calories my daily calories for a lot of high fat foods because 1th of this or I could have you know a large quantity of fruits or vegetables and I would rather have the larger quantity of food because I find it more satisfying so avocados health healthy yes if you can eat it and still lose weight more power to you that's great um and if you can eat it and maintain your weight and I know a lot of people can and Tom's one of those people that's fantastic and and I say you know go for it um so then so that's avocado the next category is the 1,200 to 1,800 calorie um density and that is is refined complex carbohydrates and in that category we're going to have ice cream and that is vegan ice cream or regular ice cream that is we're not talking about the homemade in the Vitamix or your Yonanas we're talking about the purchased um processed that's full of unhealthy ingredients and it's just too calorically dense to um to eat if you're trying to lose weight or for some of us who are trying to maintain our weight so the um that's at 1,00 calories the 14 to 1500 calories per pound is bread and flour products now first of all when you take a whole grain let's say like oat grows and you process it and turn turn it into a flower you completely change the caloric density of it and it increases substantially it also has a much bigger impact on your brain and on the dopamine hit that you get when you eat something that's highly processed and then it hijacks your brain and your brain says oh that was really good let's have more of that because I got a real big dopamine hit from that and I want more that's where it comes into play of having difficulty eating certain foods in moderation and I know for myself that that is very true it's very hard for me to moderate things that are made with flour plus bread has usually a very high sodium content and a lot of times it has oil added to it which helps increases the calorie density of it so if you're trying to lose weight you might if you're having difficulty you might want to avoid bread and flour products at 1,600 calories per pound is cheese now if you're watching me you probably are not eating the standard American diet and you're probably not eating cheese but when you look at the packages of the vegan cheese and see what's in those and what the fat content is you can calculate how much calories per pound the cheese is and guess what it's going to be right up there right with the dairy cheese because they usually add a lot of oil or they're using cashews or almonds to make the cheese and it also has a lot of sodium in it then at 1,800 calories in the refined carbohydrates we have sugar so you know they'll take something that's super healthy like beets but they'll take and process it and turn it into a processed sugar beet sugar and they've taken out all the fiber and all the water and then all you're left with is calories and no nutrition so we also avoid processed sugar again if you want something sweet go for the fruit because the fruit has all the fiber and the water intact and it's going to fill you up it's not going to fill you out and it's not going to to make you crave eating more and more and more so well the next category is 2500 calories per pound and it's a favorite item of a lot of women but some men too and that happens to be chocolate and so the problem with chocolate is that it is usually served up with sugar and fat and that combo you know is something that people really love and they crave and it's just really not friendly for losing weight so if you want to have the flavor you know you can make my brownies which use a little bit of cacao powder and I use dates to sweeten them and so with the dates although they are very high calorie they at least have the fiber and the water and all the nutrients intact so um chocolate is not great for weight loss and it's not great for some of us for um maintenance either but you have to know yourself and know what your limits are then the next category is 2800 calories and that involves nuts seeds nut Butters and Tahini so those are 2800 calories per pound and the problem with those if you can eat a small amount and keep it in control that's great but some of us find that those high fat foods are a trigger food and so it makes us want to eat more and so for a lot of people it's difficult to have peanut butter or almond butter in the house or almonds and we'll talk about that later Tom will tell you about his almond story and so that is not um a good food for most people for weight loss and for some of us it's not good for maintenance if you have trouble um moderating how much of them that you're going to eat because we're hardwired to seek out the highest calorie density food in our environment for the least amount of effort that you'll learn about in the pleasure trap book and so that's why some people say if they have ice cream in the house that they just feel like the ice cream's calling them all the time even even if it's vegan ice cream and that's because your brain wants you to get that high calorie food because it it thinks that we're still in a time of famine and that at any moment you know you might run out of food and so you should stock up now you know for the future in case you can't get some food in a couple of weeks well we don't have that problem we have the opposite problem because we have food available everywhere we go and most of it is not healthy food so and then the last calorie um category is 4,000 calories per pound and that happens to be oil all oils even coconut oil even extra virgin olive oil all oils are 4,000 calories per pound and we also know that they're not healthy for our um heart they damage the endothal cells there's lots of information in the plant-based Community about that you can just go on YouTube and Google Dr esselon and oil and you'll find some wonderful videos that he has made talking about why we want to avoid oil and I also want to say we we also even though we're plant eaters and coconut oil is a plant it is saturated fat and and that's not good for people like me who have issues with their LDL cholesterol so that is pretty much the basics about calorie density and here's what I want you to think about so remember that Barbara roll says that we eat between three and 5 pounds of food a day on average so let's say that I eat three pounds of food a day and let's say that I'm eating some things from the right of the red line and so my average calories per pound that I'm consuming is about 2,000 calories per pound because I'm eating um a lot of nut Butters or nuts and I'm eating 3 lounds of food a day and so then if my average of what I'm eating is 2,000 calories per pound then I'm consuming about 6,000 calories a day well at my height and my weight I cannot consume that I would have to be like running all day um and I still wouldn't be able to burn off thatch a pound and a half of weight gain per day doing that since your body burns, 1500 and then you'd have you'd have a surplus left that's right so and there if you go online if you Google how to um determine what your basic caloric intake for the day should be if you're just doing nothing there are some calculators online that are free to use where you can plug in your height age and weight and it will tell you that if you did nothing if you just stayed in bed all day what the minimum requirement of calories would be for you so I I only need about 1,800 calories per day and so if I'm eating 3 lbs of food then I need to be at the 600 or under um calorie density per pound Foods in order to maintain my weight so and I think once I learned that then the light bulb went off for me and I was like oh my gosh that makes so much sense the light bulb went on I mean on yeah that light bulb went on your light bulb's still on I hope it is you need to check your light will you check my light bulb the light bulb went on for me sure all the way screwed into the socket yeah the light bulb went on for me and I was like oh my gosh that makes so much sense and so I'm very happy being able to eat all of these foods and to be able to have you know 3 to four pounds of food a day because that's what makes me not feel deprived because I think when people think about losing weight they don't want the deprivation because they don't want to feel hungry they don't want to sit down to a tiny little plate of food and we also I I never want to have to weigh and measure my food again I did Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig and I did all of those diets and I was obsessed about food all the time you don't want to know how many points that peach is worth there I don't even care I just know that I could eat I if I want it I can eat it and that is just so freeing think about if you're eating three to five um pounds of food a day think about which categories most of your calories are coming from and you could actually calculate um what your calorie density average is for the day and if you are stuck um not able to lose weight right now what Dr Barbara R says what um Dr goldhammer from True North Health Center what Dr Lyle say is eat more non starchy vegetables so if and Dr McDougall says make half of plate non-starchy vegetables then the other half can be fruit and starch and if you do that you will lose weight and the way that we eat to lose weight is also the way that most of us need to eat in order to maintain our weight people ask me all the time once you lost your weight did you start adding more food back in no because I weigh less I need less calories at my lower weight so the way I make up for the that deficit is I eat a lot of low calorie density Foods because they fill me up they taste amazing I mean look at the beautiful color that we have here and um I don't feel deprived and I'm I never go hungry I never go hungry so and I love that so now I want to talk to you about how the foods that we choose um make us feel full or not so here's um a little more information that kind of goes with the calorie density so our stomach holds about a liter of food now this is a 1 quart jar and a liter is about 4.22 um cups of food so about what would fill to the top of this jar Plus about another qu of a cup is the capacity that the average stomach has so think about that this is what we're trying to fill now what Barbara rolls discovered is that we um need to activate the stretch receptors in our stomach when we eat in order for the signal to go to the brain to tell us oh we've had enough food our stomach is full and so when you don't eat enough volume to do that you keep eating because your brain isn't getting the signal even if you've had let's say 400 calories of a nut butter this little tiny bit is 400 calories of nut butter this is not going to activate the stretch receptor in your stomach to tell you that you're full even though you have consumed 400 calories and I'm going to say about 36 38 gam of fat in this that's a lot however if I eat 400 calories of potatoes it's going to activate my stretch receptors and I'm going to fill full you see that versus this so I just think you know the visual is like what this is 400 calories of maple syrup innocent we think it's healthy maybe you're going to make a salad dressing we have maple syrup here somewhere we did we did for for Sweet Pea her pancakes she gets a little drizzle not for me not for you he didn't he was like we have maple syrup where do you keep it well it's in the garage fridge for a reason um because we don't use it very often but that's 400 calories is that going to fill you up and we know Barbara R says it doesn't matter the fat content or the calorie count it is how much water how much fiber and how much volume does it take up in our stomach so you might think well I'm just going to you know have a little bit of it well your body doesn't even register that you had that 400 calories um let me see what do I want to show you now this is 400 calories of almonds same thing that's 400 calories easy to eat that or double that it very easy to eat 800 to 12200 calories of almonds in the sitting and this is not going to activate the stretch receptors that's why I actually had Tammy stop buying these well I was buying them at Costco in the big bag because I would eat them I guess I would say like popcorn and I would probably eat twice that many in a sitting while we were watching the movie maybe three times if I was eating unconsciously so yeah I was getting an extra bonus th000 calories a day of unconscious almonds so which resulted in so I can't 10 pounds of weight gain over the course of like three four months yeah so so instead of unconscious calories I now make a conscious choice to not buy them that's right while we're at Costco or you can have 400 calories of Japanese sweet potatoes which would really fill up your stomach and make you full and these are much healthier than the these as well nothing wrong with almonds they are healthy but they're very high fat now it's kind of controversial but Dr mcdouall says the fat you eat is the fat you wear that's not true for everyone we're all different it is definitely true for me now here's one for you this is 400 calories of golden raisins here is 400 calories of grap I couldn't even get all 400 calories of grapes there was about 20 of them that I couldn't even get in the jar so which one is going to make you feel Fuller you know absolutely we're going to go for the grapes rather than the raisins the thing with the raisins is although they do still have the fiber the water is gone so when you dehydrate Foods you increase the calorie density substantially look at the difference plus there would be 20 more of them if I had all of them all 400 calories here so that makes a huge difference I would much rather have a big bowl of grapes than a small amount of dried fruit now here's uh 400 calories of garbanzo beans that combined with some vegetables which I have these often on my salads is is going to make you very full this is 400 calories of brown rice this is short grain organic brown rice it's about 2 cups that is going that added with some vegetables is going to make you very full or you could pour soup over it which would reduce the calorie density even more because you probably wouldn't want two cups with your broth based soup and then this is 400 calories worth of rolled oats now the thing about rolled oats is they are a healthy grain they don't have as much um they're not intact as much as the oat Groats but the great thing about them is if you cook them with water they're going to expand and you're going to have a bigger volume of them which is going to help to activate your stretch receptors in your stomach and make you full so when we take something that's dried and we cook it like our beans our lentils or our grains and we cook them in water and allow them to absorb the water then we know that they are going to be more satiating and they're going to activate those stretch receptors now the thing about oats is to remember that about 20% of the calories come from fat with oats if you don't know about that look if you buy them on in a package that has nutritional information look at that so if you're trying to lose weight for some people oats can be a trigger to eat more because they have a little bit higher fat content so just be um cautious about that and if it seems like they're a trigger for you to consume more then maybe try having something else for a while instead of the oats it can make a difference for some people and then the app app I could not fit the apples of course in a jar but here is 400 calories worth of apples and you know super filling because we have the water and the fiber is all intact and we're going to have to chew those and then I just want to show you a little thing that I heard Dr um Barbara rolls talk about here's that little bit of 400 calories right there um I heard her talk about this she was talking about an experiment that they did in the laboratory at Penn State so um they cooked dinner for people but before they gave them dinner they had some people eat an apple they had some people drink some apple juice and they had some people eat some applesauce well they made their own applesauce from the same type of app app that they had people just take an apple and eat and here's what happened the people who drank the juice it had no effect on their appetite and they ate the same amount of food when they ate an apple before they um had dinner they ate 20% fewer calories because the Apple was full of water and fiber and started to fill up their stomachs when they ate the applesauce which was still good it's just you know applesauce um you still get some of the fiber it's broken down for you but you have removed a lot of the water when they ate the applesauce they ate slightly less but not a measurable amount and so eat the whole food because the whole food has the fiber and the water and they know for sure that it makes a big imp impact on how many calor effect was the Apple had minus calories negative calorie impact on the eating habit well pretty much she didn't say that though so she didn't say that she just said that they ate about 20% fewer calories when they ate an apple before they had their dinner so um so I think that's remarkable too then I wanted to show you that this this is one um one pound of um food this is I could eat all of this for 100 calories I could eat this because the greens the greens it takes a lot of greens to make a pound of food a lot of greens so or you could this is 400 calories here so you could have all of this or you could have this little bit of almonds and what is going to make you more full I mean there is no way that I could eat all of this at one sitting it would just be ridiculous to be able to do that oh and I was going to show you this so this is something that I do um I will every like um 4 days or so I will just take a whole bunch of vegetables like in this bowl and or this bowl and I will just water sauté them I always start with an onion and some fresh mushrooms and once those start to get nicely sauteed and if you don't have the fire up too H hot to begin with they will release their water and you won't even have to add any water to them and I'll get those Really Cooking nicely and then I'll add some carrots and some broccoli SLO and spinach and whatever I have bell peppers this time I did have carrots I had zucchini and yellow squash and I had the sugar snap peas and then I buy the power greens at Costco and I'll throw those in and then I'll put the lid on it and let it create its own steam so that it steams the greens and I don't I make sure that I don't cook them to the point that everything's limp I still want everything to be a little bit alen M did you hear that so I just don't want everything to be um overcooked and then I divide it up into these little containers and I'll do about 4 lbs of veggies in my big scan pan and then I'll divide them up into four different containers so I know I started with about a pound for each container and then this makes a wonderful breakfast you can have this for breakfast and then you can add some starch to it if you want to and um it also makes a wonderful side dish with my dinner and it's just nice to nice way to get in more non-starchy vegetables and so we're going to talk about sequencing our food and the way we want to sequence our food when we eat is we want to start with the non-starchy vegetables first so something like this the lowest calorie density Foods first because these still have water they're full of fiber they're going to activate my stretch receptors in my stomach and they're going to help me feel full and I'm going to eat that before I go for the Japanese sweet potato or the Yukon Golds or what happened to the rice did you take my rice was I not supposed to oh here it is you didn't take it or the rice because these are higher calorie density Foods so if I'm trying to lose weight I'm I'm wanting to eat more of the non-starchy vegetables start with those first because if I start eating the rice first or I start with the potatoes first I am not going to go back and eat all of those vegetables because my brain is going to say oh that's good keep eating that that's really good and so you want want to start with the lowest calorie density Foods first and then build up Barbara R said that they also discovered that if people started their meal with like a brothy soup they ended up eating less overall calories for the meal for the meal and so remember that eat your lower calorie density Foods first and then go for the higher calorie density Foods so Tom and I discovered that that was really important when we got our air fryer when we first got it I was making french fries like every day because oh man they were so good so I would take our cold Yukon Gold baked potatoes that I would batch cook and I would cut them into fries and I would air fry them and you know it makes a big tray so I would just fill the tray and we would sit down and we would start eating those and we would eat them all gone before we would eat anything else on our plate because they were so good well pretty soon my pants were getting tight and I got on the scale and I had gained 5 lbs so I was talking to Chef AJ and I was like I have gained 5 PBS and she says well what are you doing and we got to talking I was like oh we're you know we're making french fries in our air fryer and she was like and how many are you eating and I said oh well we're eating like I'm making a whole tray of them and she said no no no no you take however many potatoes however however many ounces of potatoes let's say that you would normally eat at a meal and you make that amount into fries and you start eating your low calorie density Foods first and you save the fries for last and so the next time that I made fries we both did that we sat down and we ate the salad we had salad and vegetables first we ate that first and we did not have enough room then to eat all of the french fries that I made so it really works we've put it to the test and yes I did lose the 5 lbs um by sequencing how I was eating and so and I knew that I just needed to be reminded so the dehydrator is great the air fryer is great but just know that when you take the water out of the food even though the fiber is still there you are upping the calorie density of it and so you need to be cautious with that we still use our air fryer all the time I air fry a Japanese sweet potato for my lunch usually every day um and I don't gain weight from it because I only air fry the size that I normally would eat so um so that also has made a really big difference so try to make that plate of yours be half non-starchy vegetables eat the non-starchy vegetables first and then move on to the higher calor density food whether it's your beans your grains your um potatoes your fruit okay I just wish somebody would have told me about this years ago because once I learned it it made so much sense and I realized oh my gosh it's really simple I'm not saying that it's easy to incorporate all of this it takes time to do it but the concept is very simple eat low calorie density Foods first I'm Tammy and I'm Tom and we help you healthy and stay healthy one meal at a time bye bye bye you [Music] guys [Music]

Channel: Nutmeg Notebook

Views: 15,534

Keywords: plant based, tami kramer, whole food plant based, plant based diet, whole food plant based diet, whole food plant based weight loss, Nutmeg Notebook, healthy vegan meals, sos free vegan recipes, vegan weight loss, plant based weight loss, nutmeg notebook live, plant based cooking for beginners, Chef AJ, The Pleasure Trap, chef aj ultimate weight loss, dr. mcdougall maximum weight loss, Dr. Doug Lisle, the secrets to ultimate weight loss, calorie density, vegan, weight loss

Id: UAqAZ6G1ZVE

Length: 54min 2sec (3242 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 27 2024