Eat More and Weigh Less!
Yes, Seriously...

It’s not just a catchy heading – if you know which foods to eat, you can eat more of them and watch the scale go down. Still sounds like there’s a catch, huh? Behold: Volumetrics. It’s not a new concept really; it’s just that the volumetrics “diet” hasn’t been making the big splash that the Atkins, South Beach, and other common fad diets have because, well, it’s not a short-term approach to eating. It’s a lifestyle (which means it’s NOT a diet). Here’s the skinny: Eat a lot of high-volume, low-calorie foods and basically stuff yourself for a small amount of calories. I’m not saying here’s free license to pig out, but you’ll never feel hungry (or deprived) if you eat according to the volumetrics plan. Let me break it down for you...

Water and Fiber = A Feast

Volumetrics introduces the idea of Energy Density (E.D.) to help us choose the best foods to eat. Stay with me here, this is way less complicated than it sounds! Energy density is the number of calories a food has, per volume. Water has 0 calories so it has the lowest E.D. Foods with a high water concentration generally have a low E.D. as well. If you take out the water (consider a piece of watermelon, for example), you also reduce the size of the food but you haven’t reduced the calories, so the E.D. goes up and suddenly that dry watermelon isn’t the best option anymore (which is why the volumetrics plan stresses eating whole fruit instead of the dried variety).

Fiber is also low in calories, so if you’re still with me you’re catching on that foods that are high in fiber with a high water concentration have the lowest E.D. These are the foods you want to eat more of. Think that leaves you eating only fruits and vegetables? Not so! Protein is always important and you’ll also eat carbs (thank goodness says this carb lover!). Fish and other seafood have a lower E.D. than beef, cheese, or even eggs (not that eggs are bad). You can eat any of these foods, but you’ll want to choose the surf before the turf whenever possible. Proteins are terrific because they take longer to digest so we stay fuller longer. As for your bread and pastas – cooked pasta is 65% water, which is about the same as seafood. However, bread is 35 to 40% water so you’ll want to choose it less often.

How to Start Right Now

Still not quite understanding how to calculate the E.D. number of a food? Luckily it’s simple math. Take the calories of the food you want to eat and divide it by its weight in grams (per serving). That’s it! Let’s take a Lean Cuisine frozen meal for example. Most Lean Cuisine dinners weight about 6 ounces and contain about 300 calories or less. There are 28 grams in an ounce (remember that!), so a dinner would weigh about 168 grams. 300 divided by 168 gives you the E.D. of 1.8. That’s a moderate E.D. which means it’s not super bad, but it’s not great either, so you should limit how often you eat it. One thing you can do when you have to nuke one of these meals is to add some veggies and also eat some fruit along with it. This will lower the E.D. of the entire meal.

Need more convincing to try it out? Consider this: For 500 calories you can have half a burger, a couple fries and a soda. Or go the volumetrics way and eat an open-faced roast beef sandwich with Swiss cheese and sautéed red bell peppers, a bowl of tomato soup, fruit and sparkling water. Hmm...decisions, decisions!

Quick Facts about Volumetrics

• If the food has fewer calories than grams it’s a great food choice and you can eat more of these foods.

• If the food has the same number of calories as grams or more calories than grams (per serving) it’s a moderate food choice and you should limit your intake.

• If the food has more than twice the number of calories as grams try not to pick these foods or limit them to one “cheat” meal a week. Anything more than that and they’ll wreak havoc on your lake-side skin-bearing plans!

• Want all the info on this plan? Check out the book The Volumetrics Eating Plan, by Dr. Barbara Rolls (creator of Volumetrics).

• Need a recipe to try it out with first?

Meet the
Trainer

Crystal is a certified personal trainer through
the National Sports and Conditioning Association (NSCA). She has a passion for helping others live a healthy lifestyle and coaching them to push their limits beyond what they think they are
capable of.