Natural Diet: Cooking for Weight Loss

 Conventional diets and fad diets don't work.  In the end, the weight comes back, and even if you're lucky enough to keep it off, you don't really become healthier in the long run.

That's right.  If you don't ever learn to truly feed yourself properly, you will either gain the weight back, wreck your health, or be bound to a miserable lifestyle for the rest of your life.

You cannot think about calorie restriction while you are still consuming more than 3 teaspoons of white sugar (pure sucrose) per day, eating any free-flowing table salt, or any hydrogenated or high heat processed oils.  That would be like trying to run a marathon with nails in your shoes.

If you're currently fatter than you want to be, or you're thin but looking for a way out of the cycle of pain for the sake of staying thin, read on.

For the sake of honesty and full disclosure, I've posted a photo of myself before I started the natural diet at around the beginning of 2008, and where I am now. Well, where I was 5 kg. ago anyway.

I'm losing an average of 10 kg. per year, and have lost 25 kg. so far. It is not very fast, and it may not be a drastic difference, but the weight is gone and has not come back. According to others I've spoken to, many readers and members of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Chef Kathleen Daelemans of Cooking Thin, and others in various communities that have returned to more natural lifestyles, it's permanent. I believe it because even though I had an injury this past summer and couldn't exercise consistently for months, I still lost weight.

Going natural is the best thing I've ever done for myself. Better yet, it's easy and pain free. It's not about doing anything drastic. You just change your style of eating so that your body both gets enough nutrition, and relearns how much is enough. Calorie limitation is something that happens automatically as a result of bring properly nourished.

The natural diet isn't really a diet the way most people think of one. You don't count calories at all. To a degree, you do watch portion sizes though. Even so, you eat when you are hungry, and stop when you are full.

If along the way, you find yourself "comfort eating", don't panic. It's nothing to really feel guilty over. Almost nobody makes it through this life without a few scrapes and scars. You need to lighten up. The natural diet is like when your dermatologist tells you to wash your face only in lukewarm water for a week, so he can see if you have a skin problem or if it's something you're doing to your skin.

It is very difficult to actually consistenly overeat on a natural diet. If after a year or so you find you're still doing that, then it's time to see an eating disorder support group. Until then you don't really know what's wrong with you, if anything. Many people have been convinced that they have eating disorders when they're just improperly nourished. It's a kind of malnutrition veterinarians call being "off feed", where an animal is fat but undernourished. It happens to humans too.

So this is what you do to fix that.

1. Drink enough water!

Water is the most important physical need. Many people don't get enough. If you don't then nothing else can possibly work right as far as your metabolism is concerned. Click here for an easy calculator to help you figure out how much water you really need in a day.

Now that you've done that, the best way to get it actually done is to drink at least a third of what you need every morning when you wake up. The first thing you do after the bathroom should be drinking water. Get the first third out of the way in the morning. Put the rest in bottles so you have it ready and with you. Drink the second third by mid afternoon, and the last third by evening.

2. Rearrange your food pyramid.

Grains are not the base of the pyramid. Well, not in the way most people eat them. Vegetables and fruits are actually the base of it. Have a vegetable soup or salad at every meal, even breakfast. Have fruit handy for snacks. Always keep fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator, so they'll be available.

Buy local and seasonal, so that they'll always be the freshest, ripest, and best tasting. Get used to going shopping for fresh stuff once a week. Just set that aside in your budget. Fruits and vegetables are a better source of carbohydrates, and used by the body much more efficiently than grains.

If you can, sprout your grains, when you have them. If you can't because you can't afford it or don't have the time or means, remember that all grains should be fermented. Fermenting and sprouting makes grains worth more than just their starches.

3. Replace the junk with natural options.

When people think of the word "junk food" the first thing that comes to mind is cookies, candy, chips and the like. That is a horrible half truth. The truth is that the real junk foods lurking in your cabinets are table salt, hydrogenated and superheated vegetable oils, and white sugar.

The former two are just plain poison or gunk to your liver. The latter should be treated as a food additive chemical. Its use only comes into play when you're advanced enough as a natural dieter that you are baking a cake weekly or get into canning. You, at that point, would be using white sugar as a browning agent or preservative, and not a sweetener.

So aside of getting rid of the candy and cookies or just not buying them anymore, you're going to

• replace your table salt with gray or Celtic salt
• replace white sugar with honey, silan (date syrup) or other natural sweeteners
• replace your hydrogenated or superheated vegetable oils with animal fat, butter, ghee, or cold pressed or very midly heated expressed oils
• replace your old snack foods with the real thing, nuts, dried fruits, and toasted granola type goodies
• absolutely eliminate any artificial sweeteners such as saccharine or aspartame because they are poison at worst and will mess up your brain's carbohydrate limitation mechanism at best
• stop eating fake foods in general.

Basically, you're going to be natural.

4. Eat consciously.

Fruits and vegetables can be eaten freely. Meat is the next priority, and should be eaten in moderation. No meat in a can or such things. Use real meat, even in your sandwiches.

Grains are the last main priority. You need them, especially if you don't get into sweets much. However, they should not be the main bulk of your diet. When you do have them, they should have been soaked overnight or the batter from the flour fermented for a few hours in the refrigerator.

For anything that isn't a fruit or vegetable, follow the "one cup-half cup rule" at the table for the first six months to a year. You can have seconds if you want, but your initial portion should be around one cup. Subsequent additional servings should be a half cup each.

This gives you a real idea of how much you actually eat. You will be aware of it when you're eating more or less. There is no "goal" in this though. Don't judge yourself for it. Just be aware of it.

One reason why is because when you go natural, you also become a seasonal person. At some times of the year you may eat more than others. Being portion aware (as opposed to portion controlled) also helps you to not waste food. Wastefulness and ungratefulness go hand in hand, and this is what messes with most people's heads on a diet.

We should be grateful for every bite of food we get. That is the natural human attitude about food. This is the main reason why conventional dieting doesn't work. It makes us view food as the enemy, when it is a basic need.

I hope this helps those out there who are trying to be healthier. I'll add more to this hub as I figure out how to do that without overcrowding it.

Meanwhile, feel free to ask questions and leave comments. I'm walking this road with you, and will post photos every year of my progress. The next one is due in March of 2010.

• Next: Essential Recipes for the Natural Diet >>>
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