Eat Less Fat and Lose Weight for Life - No ‘Yo-Yo Effect’

Easily lose weight without sacrificing too many delicious things. The best way to stay slim for life. Lose weight with pleasure. How much fat should you eat per day to lose weight?

If you have known me all my life, you would perhaps think that I belong to people who stay slim no matter what. This is wrong. I have the tendency to gain weight like everybody else.

My friend Susi, who is slightly overweight, is asking me, “Look, you aren’t skinny…”.

I'm smiling back at her and say, “Honey! I’ve never been skinny in my life, but excuse me for the rude interruption, what were you just saying?”

Susi continues, “I wanted to ask you if you have a secret that allows you to keep your weight more or less constant. You’ve always been somewhat slender, but I know that you just don’t eat very little. I’ve never seen that you're too careful with your eating habits. As I know cakes, cookies, chocolate, and nuts are your 'sweet weaknesses'. How do you still manage to stay slim?”

“Yes,” I answer, “It looks like I don’t care much about my figure. Nevertheless, it’s only partially true. I actually avoid eating a lot of carbohydrates like bread, pasta, pizza, etc. This is because I’m a little bit allergic to gluten. Although, I love bread ‘to death’ I don’t eat much baked goods and pasta. It happens sometimes that I eat 'a ton' of bread or can’t stop eating great cheesy pizza. It happens, but only sometimes.”

“Like yesterday!” Susi smiles.

I respond, “Yeah, that pizza was great! I especially loved the cheese in its crust! Give me more!”

Susi laments, “See what I mean. You don’t say that you can’t eat pizza because you want stay slim. You eat it and stay like you are; and, look at me,” she is pointing on her roundness.

“You don’t look that fat, but of course few pounds less would suit you better,” I say it to her, “OK, OK. There is also a sort of secret of being slim, and it works without the ‘yo-yo’ effect too.”

“This must be true; I’ve never seen that you buy different sizes of jeans,” says Susi.

“Hmm, in my closet I have at least one pair of jeans that are too small! But this is OK with me. We don’t need to 'die' because we aren’t what we want to be. In general, I’m slim enough. I even don’t want to be much slimmer. Maybe a little bit.” I’m smiling as I say this to Susi.

“You know that I would like to have your problem,” she is curious. “Tell me finally your secret,” Susi makes herself more comfortable on the sofa as she awaits my reply.

“You probably read the ‘Nutrition Facts’ panel on every grocery product that you buy, don’t you?”

“No! Not on every product,” Susi speaks, “But I read it, at least sometimes.”

I continue, “There, you can find an information on how much fat you need per day. It is in general, 65 grams (2.30 ounces) for women and 80 grams (2.82 ounces) for men. It's a small amount, isn't it? All you need to do is to count the total fat grams that you eat during a day. When you don’t eat more fat than 65 grams per day, you'll begin to lose weight.

If you prefer to lose weight faster, take daily only 55-60 grams of fat. This would be enough to stay slim. The numbers for men, to achieve the same result, generally are 70-75 grams fat per day. After you’re finished with your diet, you can go back to 65 grams (men 80 grams) daily. This won’t cause the terribly ‘yo-yo effect’; provided you'll stay with the given fat limit per day.”

Susi looks a little bit skeptical but I continue, “I’ve done it in the past and my ex-boyfriend Joe has done it also. It was fifteen years ago and he was very fat. At that time, I began to be slightly bigger as well. This was the reason for us to begin with the 'lose weight with pleasure' program. We thought together, 'Why not, let’s try it.' I have to tell you that Joe was able to hold his weight, more or less, constant. Today, he is still slim. This form of dieting worked very well with him.”

“Tell me, how you did it practically. It seems to be difficult. You don’t count the calories, but still you have to count something. What exactly have I to do?”

“It isn’t difficult at all. 'Lose weight with pleasure' is not a diet but a program where you learn to change your eating habits. It is simply, 'Less fat makes less fat'. The wonderful outcome of this idea is that you don’t need to give your money away. You can keep all your money and get slimmer at the same time. You don’t need to buy anything additional. You don’t need special pills, drinks, or food. You can buy almost the same food as before, but hopefully you would do it more conscious, and buying less sweets but more veggies.”

“I like it,” Susi says.

“OK. You’ll need a notepad or simply a piece of paper. Write down on it, all the fat grams you take in during a day.”

Still confused, Susi asks, “How do I know how much fat I ate?”

I explain her, “Every grocery product we use, tells us in the “Nutrition Facts” panel how many grams of fat one serving size contains. For example, you cook a vegetable soup for two. You take a tablespoon of butter and fry a chopped onion in it, after this, you put some vegetables, chicken broth or vegetable broth and some noodles. The soup is ready. How much fat do we have in one portion? Let’s check.

One tablespoon of butter has 11 gram of fat, and you’ve used one cube of vegetable bouillon, the package says it is 4 grams of fat. Vegetables and noodles do have zero fat. All together, you’ve used 15 grams fat. This means one portion of your simple vegetable soup (you’ve cooked for two) gives you 7.5 grams fat each.

When you ate a slice of bread with your soup, check on the bread package how much fat it contains. Generally, it would be one or two grams; and it looks like you still have space for some ice cream! One cup of it usually contains 23 grams fat. You can have this special treat because during a day you have saved on your fat grams.

Let’s say your breakfast was only 12 grams and your lunch was 16 grams; plus the last meal contained 8.5 grams (soup and bread), it totals 36.5 fat grams. You can now have a cup of ice cream and still lose weight. This isn’t of course the healthy way and you shouldn’t do it every day, but from time to time, to satisfy your sweet tooth, it is OK.”

“Phew, it’s a lot of information and work…:-|,” says Susi.

“This is true, but nothing comes to you without any effort, you know it. It must be worked out. I made it easy for myself. I counted the fat grams in my head instead of writing them down and I remembered, for example, breakfast was so many grams, lunch was that many grams, and I knew if I could eat a big dinner or a poor one. I put my day’s gram intake in three parts: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Twenty grams of fat for each. When my breakfast was only ten grams I could add those not used grams for lunch and my lunch could have 30 grams of fat, if it hadn’t, I could have more grams for dinner. I think it’s pretty easy.”

“I want to try it!” Susi is optimistic.

She should be.

The way to a slimmer figure is there; we can only take information and make it real. It’s easy and cheap. You need only a piece of paper and the information on how many grams of fat our food contains. This info is on every package of food you buy. If not, you’ll find a lot of information on the Internet. I found, for example, two interesting Internet pages with information about fat charts: the first one is here and here is the second one.

On this these pages, you’ll also get information about calories, but counting calories is less easy compared to counting fat grams. You don’t need to count calories! Scientists have found that the fat in the diet is mainly responsible for the excess of weight. With the time, you’ll learn a lot about fat grams, for example, vegetables have almost no fat (EAT MORE VEGGIES!). Avocados, however, are very fatty as well as alcohol (beer, wine, etc.). Actually, alcohol does have no fat; however, it still belongs to fat-containing foods because alcohol is processed pretty much like fat in our bodies.

For more information about alcohol, see the chart below. Bread usually contains one gram per slice. Ice cream, cakes, nuts, cheese contain a lot of fat. Check the charts on internet pages (see above) or read the labels on your groceries for details.

What so wonderful about this “Lose weight with pleasure” program is that you need only yourself, a piece of paper, and the will to achieve the 'slimmer-you'. This is all you need. You don’t need to buy any books, any widgets, gadgets, or any software.

Take yourself to healthier lifestyle! Feel yourself like a new person!

I wish you success!

By the way, some exercises – like yoga - won’t hurt you.

Alcohol and Fat-Grams

For alcohol, I gave points instead of grams, because alcohol doesn’t really contain fat. For example, one point is equivalent one gram fat, five points = five grams fat, sixteen points = sixteen grams fat, and so far and so on.

I needed to give you this chart because about alcohol you'll find confusing information on internet, however, without this chart (see below) your program won't work properly.

This article isn’t intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/202365/fat

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/422916/nutritional-disease/247891/Obesity-and-weight-control

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/422916/nutritional-disease/247880/Dietary-fat