Читать книгу The Greenprint - Marco Borges - Страница 12
ОглавлениеI’ve been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I’ve lost a total of 358 kilos. By all accounts, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
– ERMA BOMBECK
FIGHTING FAT HAS BECOME A NATIONAL OBSESSION, but winning is often a lifelong battle, with major and minor victories along the way. Just ask rapper and songwriter Todd Gaither, who goes by the name Sauce Money. He is a veteran of the hip-hop industry, and for most of his life and career he was in a losing battle with his weight. At one point, he shot up to 227 kilos, which gave him painful and near-crippling stage 3 osteoporosis in his knees. He couldn’t stand for longer than three minutes at a time. He had self-image problems in a business that can often be cruel if someone is overweight or obese.
‘I sank into a dark place – something I wouldn’t wish on anyone – because I was so obese. It was certainly no secret how big I was!’ Sauce said. ‘People in my industry were dying all around me, and I knew I had to address my weight. I reached out to Jay-Z, a good friend of mine – we grew up together – for help. Jay-Z had gone vegan, and he put me in touch with Marco.’
“PLANT-BASED EATING IS THE MOST POWERFUL, MOST EFFECTIVE AND EASIEST WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT – AND KEEP IT OFF.
I worked very closely with Sauce, teaching him how to eat clean, plant-based foods. I knew he could do it because of his rise to prominence in the music world. I began seeing him as a lean, energetic guy and musician – someone proud of how he looked. I immediately put him on my eating plan. As with any lifestyle change, it was tough at first, but Sauce persevered – a mental discipline he learned in his college fraternity.
Sauce kept his diet simple: lots of beans, quinoa and salads. Sure, there were a few bumps in the road, but he stuck to it like a champ. Over about two-and-a-half years, Sauce lost 90 kilos, and kept it off through his vegan lifestyle and working out five to six times a week with swimming, high-intensity cardio and weight training. He no longer has any pain in his knees. He can now stand and continue to work very long hours. Let me add that the very first change he noticed – and it happened in a matter of days – was that his complexion cleared up dramatically and he was super energetic for the first time in a long time.
Sauce told me that going plant-based was ‘the best thing I have ever done’.
Sauce made his health a main priority. And now he believes if he can drop kilos, you can, too. In my most recent conversation with him, the rap star offered these words of encouragement:
‘Simplify your diet. Begin by eating clean, whole foods: fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans. Do the best you can.
‘Become positively addicted to how great you feel. The longer you stay on a plant-based diet, the better you’ll feel. It’s like a wonder drug. You won’t want to go back to your old ways. You can’t “unknow” what you now know and feel. Keep going forward; the future is full of possibilities.
‘Get support from people who will never give up on you. For me, that was Jay-Z and Marco. They took the time to educate me. I owe them my life.
‘Change your mind-set: You have to want to live longer and better than eat bad.’
I couldn’t have said it better myself, Sauce! As he discovered, by following a plant-based diet you will control your weight, satisfy your hunger and feel comfortably full after every meal. In fact, you can eat more to lose weight!
I know this law sounds like a dream come true if you’ve been shackled to restrictive diets that leave you feeling ravenous. Even though ‘eat less’ is the mantra of the weight-loss industry, slimming down does not have to be about deprivation and hunger.
Plant-based eating is the most powerful, most effective and easiest way to lose weight – and keep it off. And there’s plenty of proof.
Following a plant-based diet fights fat around the waistline, for example. After tracking nearly eighty thousand healthy adults for ten years, American Cancer Society researchers found that men and women who ate nineteen or more servings of vegetables a week did not develop abdominal obesity – that is, they didn’t get muffin tops or love handles – while those who ate meat more than seven times a week did! Gaining fat around the waist, or developing what’s known as an ‘apple’ shape, has been linked to heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers.
This isn’t the only study showing the power of plants as fat fighters. In a study conducted at the University of South Carolina and reported on the website of the Vegetarian Resource Group, fifty overweight adults were randomly assigned to one of five diets: a non-vegetarian diet, a semi-vegetarian diet (red meat once a week, poultry no more than five times a week), a pesco-vegetarian diet, a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet or a vegan diet. They followed their assigned diet for two months and were not required to limit their caloric intake. After the initial trial, researchers encouraged the dieters to stick to their assigned diet for another four months.
All the dieters lost weight, but the vegan group lost the most – exactly what we found in our Holy Name study. After six months, the vegan eaters had shed an average of 7.5 per cent of their starting weight. The way I see it, the exciting results of this study and others like it offer proof that a plant-based diet is an effective way to lose weight. I love all this great scientific evidence, but I’m not surprised. When clients come to me, most of them want to get slimmer and fitter. The first thing I do is show them how to incorporate more plants into their diets – and hopefully get them to go plant-based for life. At the same time, I encourage them to cut out the overprocessed foods that are slowly poisoning their bodies. Once they get on a true plant-based diet, I see them drop anywhere from 4.5 to 45 kilos (or more), as their excess fat melts away and they catapult themselves into a world of energy and vitality. All along, they are eating more food than ever before. They are not hungry, and they are shedding excess weight. Many people can lose up to a pound a day eating plants! Of course, as they’re knocking off the pounds, they are simultaneously reversing and preventing lifestyle diseases.
A few years ago, I bumped into a friend at my kids’ school. He casually mentioned that he had some friends who had switched to a plant-based diet following my dietary protocols, and that the results were amazing. I interpreted his remarks to be code for ‘I want to try it’. At the time, he was tipping the scales at 136 kilos, on a six-feet-five frame.
I thanked him for his kind words and said that I’d be happy to guide him along the way if he was willing to give it a try. That very day, he was ready to jump in. He had one reservation, however: ‘I’m Cuban, like you are, and I love Cuban foods.’ I reminded him that a lot of Cuban food is plant-based: black beans, rice, corn, yuca, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and plantains. In fact, the original Cuban diet was mostly vegetarian until the Spaniards, who ruled Cuba until the turn of the century, imported beef and pork and put meat into the cuisine. My friend was sold.
After a full day of eating plant-based, he called me.
‘Bro, you do know that I’m trying to lose weight, right?’
‘Yes, I know, why?’
‘Dude, if I eat all the food you recommended, I’m definitely going to gain weight.’ I started to laugh, then explained to him that plant foods are much denser in nutrients but lighter in calories – the essence of Law #2. For example, a 450-gram bag of spinach may be around 100 calories, while 450 grams of animal protein might be ten times that (around 1,000 calories) with zero fibre! You’ll wind up eating more but taking in fewer calories and getting a lot more fibre.
My friend sighed loudly. ‘I get to eat, I won’t be hungry, and I’m going to lose weight? I’m all in.’
Only a few months later, he had dropped more than 36 kilos, without feeling hungry at all.
Plain and simple: Plant-based eating gets results for every person I have ever worked with.
Why? What’s the secret?
Well, one of the big secrets is fibre.
Fibre is funny stuff. We eat it, but we can’t digest it, so it passes through the digestive tract, doing a bunch of amazing things for weight control and overall health along the way. As I mentioned earlier, 97 per cent of Americans are deficient in fibre. In fact, we are so deficient in fibre that it has been listed as a nutrient of concern in the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines. That’s a problem we really need to work on!
THE MORE YOU KNOW:
FIBRE AND YOUR HEALTH
Fibre is a health saver! It appears to reduce the risk of many illnesses:
ACNE AND RASHES. Fibre may help usher yeasts and fungi from your body, preventing them from being eliminated through your skin, where they could trigger acne or rashes.
BOWEL DISEASES. Fibre may ease irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and other inflammatory conditions in the bowel.
BRAIN HEALTH. Fibre improves mood, cognition and alertness.
CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE. There is evidence that fibre helps prevent heart attacks, and research shows that people who eat a high-fibre diet have a 40 per cent lower risk of heart disease.
CHRONIC INFLAMMATION. Dietary fibre appears to be anti-inflammatory, decreasing inflammation-associated markers, including C-reactive protein (CRP).
COLON CANCER. Fibre whisks toxins and cancer-causing agents from your digestive tract, which helps prevent cancer.
DIVERTICULAR DISEASE. Fibre (especially insoluble fibre) may reduce your risk of diverticulitis – an inflammation of the colon – by 40 per cent.
GALLSTONES. A high-fibre diet may reduce the risk of gallstones because of fibre’s ability to help regulate blood sugar.
HAEMORRHOIDS. A high-fibre diet may lower your risk of haemorrhoids, which can be painful and cause blockages and bleeding.
INFECTIONS. Fibre improves the population of healthy bacteria in your gut – which means it can help prevent infections, including colds and flu.
INSULIN RESISTANCE. Fibre makes your cells more receptive to insulin. Insulin can thus do a better job of getting glucose into cells for energy.
KIDNEY STONES. A high-fibre diet may reduce the risk of kidney stones, likely because of its ability to help regulate blood sugar.
OBESITY AND OVERWEIGHT. Fibre has been shown to enhance weight loss among obese and overweight people, likely because it increases feelings of fullness.
STROKE. Researchers have found that for every 7 grams more fibre you consume on a daily basis, your risk of stroke decreases by 7 per cent.
TYPE 2 DIABETES. Soluble fibre may help to slow the breakdown of carbohydrates and the absorption of sugar in the body, helping to control blood sugar.
HERE’S THE IMPORTANT POINT FOR ALL OF US: Eat more fibre from plant foods to enjoy all of its amazing health benefits.
WHERE’S THE FIBRE?
By definition, fibre is found only in plant foods, and nowhere else. But one of the problems behind our collective fibre deficiency is that most people have no idea what is in their food. In fact, more than half of Americans think steak is a source of fibre.
There are two categories of fibre: soluble and insoluble. Soluble fibre acts like a sponge; it soaks up excess cholesterol, fats and toxins. Insoluble fibre is like a scrub brush; it ‘scours’ the digestive tract as it passes through. We need both the sponge and the scrub brush to keep our systems clean.
Foods high in soluble fibre include oats and oat bran, barley, beans and legumes, apples, pears and citrus fruits (but not fruit juices). Insoluble fibre is found mostly in the skins and husks of plant foods, whereas soluble fibre dwells in the fleshy part inside the fruit. For instance, apple peels are largely insoluble fibre, while the flesh of an apple is mostly soluble fibre.
Both categories of fibre do four powerful things to promote weight loss: NUMBER 1: Fibre tames your appetite so you don’t overeat. There’s a powerful hormone in your body called cholecystokinin (CCK) that helps control satiety, the feeling of fullness that stops hunger. Fibre increases the production and prolongs the activity of CCK. As a result, you’ll feel fuller for longer, and your cravings for fattening stuff will diminish. NUMBER 2: Fibre helps prevent the absorption of excess calories from the fat you eat. Because the body can’t break down fibre, fibre exits the body in the same form it entered. As it moves through your body, it snatches up fat and whisks it all the way through to your colon, where the fat and fibre are packaged together into stool and eliminated from the body.
In a study by the USDA, researchers set a certain limit on calories for volunteers and altered the fibre content in their diets. They found that fewer calories were absorbed with increased fibre intake. People who took in up to 36 grams of fibre a day absorbed 130 fewer calories daily – automatically. Over a year, that adds up to around 47,000 calories. Because every 900 grams of body fat is equal to 3,500 calories, you could lose nearly 6 kilos in a year – effortlessly – by increasing your daily fibre intake. NUMBER 3: Fibre slows down the conversion of carbohydrates to glucose (blood sugar) in your body. This helps prevent weight gain, because excess glucose not used for energy converts to triglycerides that are either stored as unwanted body fat or accumulate in the blood, where they cause artery-clogging plaque. Fibre also increases insulin sensitivity, which means that cells respond well to insulin when it brings glucose to their doors (receptors) as fuel. Over time, eating more fibre will help your body use glucose more efficiently; in other words, your body will become more of a natural ‘fat-burning’ machine. NUMBER 4: Fibre helps populate the levels of beneficial bugs (probiotics) in your gut – a factor that can improve your shape. Your body hosts trillions of these tiny critters, most of whom hang out in your intestines. They break down food, help you absorb certain nutrients, and keep your immune system running at peak efficiency.
But here’s the hitch: there’s now surprising evidence that the wrong gut bugs may make you prone to put on weight. In one study, researchers discovered that a virus called adenovirus-36 (Ad-36) – a bug known to make chickens fatter – was three times more prevalent in the guts of obese people than in the guts of lean people. Also, some gut bacteria trigger cravings and a tendency to store more calories as fat.
Happily, the trick is to make sure the good bugs outnumber the bad. One important way to do this is to feed the good bugs their favourite food: special prebiotic fibres found in a variety of plant foods, like asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, onions, garlic and leeks, as well as chia seeds, flaxseeds and hemp seeds. Nurturing the beneficial creatures in your digestive tract may be a helpful route to a healthy weight.
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Of course, there’s almost no end to the number of trendy diets you can participate in. But thanks to these four factors, the safest and most natural way to shed kilos is simply to eat a fibre-rich plant-based diet. They make fibre a fantastic secret weapon in the fight against fat! I’ll show you how to apply this wellness law to your life in part 2, but let’s talk about how to start incorporating it now. For starters, how much fibre do you need each day to shed kilos, keep your weight under control and stay healthy? The current medical recommendation is up to 35 grams, but no fewer than 25 grams, of fibre daily. Sadly, most adults get only 15 grams or less!
You could hit (and exceed) that target by eating these foods over the course of a day: 40 grams of oatmeal (3 grams fibre), 125 grams of raspberries (8 grams), 30 grams of cooked red or black beans (7 grams), a small apple (5 grams), 35 gramsp of cooked lentils (8 grams), and 75 grams of cooked peas (8 grams). That’s 39 grams of fibre.
There are other simple actions you can take to automatically get into the high-fibre habit:
Have 40 to 80 grams of oats or whole-grain cereal for breakfast.
Sprinkle your cereal with chia seeds or flaxseeds.
Toss a couple of handfuls of greens such as spinach into your smoothies.
Snack on fresh fruit or nuts and seeds.
Use avocado on toast and sandwiches, and in salads and smoothies (½ avocado contains 5 grams of fibre).
Bake with high-fibre flours. For example, 25 grams of coconut flour has 11 grams of fibre, and the same amount of soya flour has 5 grams of fibre.
Chow down on plenty of beans and legumes, an important part of many traditional diets. Just 60 grams of cooked beans can deliver up to 75 per cent of your daily fibre needs. Incorporate these fibre-rich foods into your diet by enjoying hummus and other bean dips or by topping salads with cooked beans or lentils.
Eat plenty of green leafy vegetables, as well as vegetables with high water content such as cucumbers and tomatoes. You end up with a larger portion of fibre and water, which will fill you up before you get too many calories.
Add a bean soup or salad to your dinner to help you feel more satisfied.
A lot of people have asked me why I eat a high-fibre and plant-based diet, since I am naturally thin and don’t need to lose weight. It’s true – I’ve never had a weight problem. But here’s the beauty of it all: not only will this law help you control your weight, but a high-fibre diet also resolves constipation and other digestive problems. The other advantages are that it can reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and some types of cancer. Preventing these illnesses is important to me, because there is a history of heart disease in my family. Eating a plant-based diet high in fibre makes me feel like I am ensuring myself against future problems.
As this law states, a high-fibre, plant-based diet lets you eat more food yet weigh less. It’s satisfying enough to enjoy on an ongoing basis. While most diets are notoriously difficult to stick with, this law sets forth diet principles you can live with for a lifetime.
YOUR GREENPRINT
by Following Law #3
Transitioning to plant-based eating keeps you naturally thinner. Consider the following data: vegetarians are significantly slimmer than meat eaters. On average, vegetarian men weigh nearly 8 kilos less than non-vegetarians, according to an analysis of multiple studies by researchers at Loma Linda University in California. And vegans are the slimmest of all, according to a British study of thirty-eight thousand meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians and vegans, published in June 2003 in the International Journal of Obesity.
TOP 5 HIGH-FIBRE FOODS
IN PLANT-BASED FOOD GROUPS
| PLANT PROTEINS | SERVING SIZE | TOTAL FIBRE (GRAMS) |
| The plant protein food group includes a variety of high-fibre items, which are also good sources of iron, zinc and other vitamins and minerals. Try to have ½ to 1 serving of a plant protein at each meal. | ||
| Lentils, cooked | 75 grams | 15.6 |
| Black beans, cooked | 60 grams | 15.0 |
| Butter beans, cooked | 75 grams | 13.2 |
| Almonds | 25 grams (23 nuts) | 3.5 |
| Pistachio nuts | 25 grams (49 nuts) | 2.9 |
| VEGETABLES | SERVING SIZE | TOTAL FIBRE (GRAMS) |
| The vegetable group includes both raw and cooked vegetables. This group is especially high in disease-fighting antioxidants and life-enriching phytochemicals. Eat liberally from this group. | ||
| Artichoke, cooked | 1 medium | 10.3 |
| Green peas, cooked | 150 grams | 8.8 |
| Broccoli, cooked | 175 grams | 5.1 |
| Turnip greens, cooked | 225 grams | 5.0 |
| Brussels sprouts, cooked | 100 grams | 4.1 |
| FRUITS | SERVING SIZE | TOTAL FIBRE (GRAMS) |
| The fruit group includes raw fresh fruit. Eating just a small amount of fruit daily can reduce heart disease risk and improve your health. Enjoy 1 to 2 servings daily. | ||
| Raspberries | 125 grams | 8.0 |
| Pear (with skin) | 1 medium | 5.5 |
| Apple (with skin) | 1 medium | 4.4 |
| Banana | 1 medium | 3.0 |
| Orange | 1 medium | 3.0 |
| GRAINS | SERVING SIZE | TOTAL FIBRE (GRAMS) |
| The grains group is high in B vitamins and several key minerals, including magnesium, which is involved in more than three hundred health-promoting actions in the body. Try to have 1 or 2 servings daily. | ||
| Quinoa, cooked | 125 grams | 17.0 |
| Bulgur wheat, cooked | 250 grams | 8.0 |
| Pearl barley, cooked | 200 grams | 6.0 |
| Porrifeg oats, instant, cooked | 80 grams | 4.0 |
| Brown rice, cooked | 250 grams | 3.0 |
| SEEDS | SERVING SIZE | TOTAL FIBRE (GRAMS) |
| Seeds pack a fibre punch in a tiny package. Have 1 or 2 servings daily. | ||
| Chia seeds | 25 grams (2 tablespoons) | 10.7 |
| Flaxseeds | 25 grams (2 tablespoons) | 8.5 |
| Squash and pumpkin seeds | 25 grams (2 tablespoons) | 5.0 |
| Dessicated coconut (unsweetened) | 25 grams (2 tablespoons) | 4.6 |
| Chestnuts | 25 grams (2 tablespoons) | 2.0 |
