Читать книгу The Big Healthy Soup Diet: Nourish Your Body and Lose up to 10lbs in a Week - Linda Lazarides - Страница 6

Although some weight-loss plans involve special techniques like cutting out carbohydrates, most people still tend to think of eating fruit and salads as the best way to lose weight. Apples, lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes are very low-calorie foods. You can fill up a whole plate with these items and still consume only 100 Calories. It seems logical that if you eat only 100 Calories for lunch, you must lose weight…right?

Well, maybe. The big problem is that most people who use this approach can’t stick with it for very long. After bingeing on chocolate a couple of times and giving up the diet in despair, these individuals (and you are probably one of them!) usually blame themselves for their ‘weak willpower’.

In fact, we now know that there is a very good reason why this type of diet is doomed from the start. Salad foods are cold. Too much cold food can make you feel depressed, especially if you are a chilly individual and feel the cold easily. Depression is also a ‘rebound’ effect of excessive deprivation. It leads to an overwhelming desire for comfort

(1,000 calories = 1 Calorie or kilocalorie. Throughout this book the word ‘calorie’ refers to ‘kilocalories’.)

foods—most of which are, of course, loaded with excess calories. This is a physical desire. It has nothing to do with being greedy or weakwilled. Your body is desperate to get warmth and energy and it forces you to crave foods that will quickly satisfy those needs. Modern weight-loss science isjust beginning to recognize this problem, and to work with it rather than against it.

Traditional Oriental wisdom has understood the problem all along. In Oriental medicine, too much raw or cold food would be considered to encourage weight gain as it depletes the body’s ‘fire’ or Yang energy (metabolism). Hot chunky soups made with lentils and moderately flavoured with garlic, onion, cayenne, chilli and ginger are much more energizing. Oriental experts believe that such foods burn off excess water in our bodies, and this is of course very good news for sufferers of water retention—a common cause of overweight. Don’t overdo these spices—burning your insides would be counterproductive and unnecessary.

The warmth of soup makes you feel full as salad rarely can. Soup itself is a comfort food. But owing to its water content and healthy ingredients, this is a low-calorie comfort food and there is no problem with extra helpings. You won’t eat any more calories than in the average salad. But the results are far superior:

 Fewer cravings for sweet, starchy and fatty food

 Much improved ability to stick to the diet

 Faster, more successful weight-loss