here's the thing

That last post was too long, too dry, too boring, and tooo heavy! This one will be much lighter in tone.

losing weight is difficult right? It's not only a matter of getting on the right track, it's also a matter of staying on it, which may require a little intrapersonal work. Beyond that it's actually not all that difficult, in terms of how it's accomplished. It is basically calories in vs calories burned.

but here's a neat trick. if you limit your diet to the foods with a high nutrient to calorie ratio, you're more than halfway there. You can eat till full, have your calorie and nutrient needs met, and lose weight slowly but consistently, probably about a pound a week on average. It takes a while because you're eating till full, but that's actually a good thing - you really want to lose the excess weight gradually and consistently, so the body's autonomic metabolic reference points are adjusting along with the body. (This is the reason crash diets don't work.)

so what are the high calorie foods most responsible, the culprits? some are obvious, members of the carb family like alcohol and refined (concentrated) sweeteners of any kind. What may not be as obvious is how high refined fats are in calories. Even "healthy" vegetable oils like olive oil are 100% fat, and very high in calories on a proportional basis. The less oil you put in and on your food the better.

Fats are of course essential, one of the three macronutrients, but we may not need as much fat for good health as we've been led to believe. Here's another trick - if you get 100% of your fat requirement from whole foods, you automatically cut calories. And It can be argued also if you get that fat from whole plant sources like nuts, seeds and avocados, you automatically raise the nutrition to calorie ratio at the same time.

Meats and other animal sources are relatively high in fat, and the conventional wisdom at this point is "not the good kind", although there is much debate over what the "good kind" of fats are, so I'll only say if you consume animal products be sensible about it, and think about how large quantities can spike calorie intake undesirably, and keep it to small portions.

I have a vegan bias, so I'll say something about that approach. Many folks find that by just going vegan, and nothing else, they lose weight easily and automatically, without even really trying. Obviously they are getting less calories. There can be a few reasons for that, 1) when people do go vegan they are frequently trying to eat healthier, and they start making choices that are higher on the nutrient to calorie ratio scale. 2) and in doing so, they find they have less cravings for empty calorie junk food. You could try to live on wonder bread alone, and get plenty of calories, but your body will still say - I'm hungry!

So we can make a case that if we begin to concentrate on the quality of our calories we can pretty much forget about counting them, junk food cravings will lessen automatically (the body will feel nourished, because it is), and the weight will just come off gradually, as it should, until we reach the correct weight for us.

There's plenty of junk vegan food out there too, and there are plenty of overweight vegans. How do we weed out the bad stuff? there's a simple way to approach this, and it's true whether you are vegan or not. When you are at the grocery, stick to the outside of the store, most of the stuff in the middle will end up there, around yours. Minimize the boxes, cans and packages to the extent possible. You will find that after awhile it's really not that difficult to cut way back on that stuff. If you're vegan do the vast majority of your shopping on the fresh produce aisle. I notice even at Whole Foods, where there are very good fresh produce sections, how few carts have much produce in them.

Thinking you can lose weight just by exercise alone, without improving your diet, is difficult in my experience. This is not true for someone already in a very good condition and weight - those folks can do a longer and/or more intense exercise session and knock of the pounds quickly by exercise alone. We can get there too, a step at a time.

But just by raising your nutrient to calorie ratio you will begin losing weight staying with your current activity routines, in the vast majority of cases. And as your body gets lighter it wants to move more, and that begins the virtuous cycle of regular activity and good diet, the ultimate condition of optimum health.