Universal Eating Program for a Healthy Lifestyle

by Steve M Dotson

copyright 2005

Part I:  Diet Programs versus Lifestyle Programming.

This eating program requires a balance of factors necessary for you to achieve control over your eating habits.  In addition to managing your food intake, this program involves regular exercise.

Although minimal calories are important, you need a balance of calorie types—i.e. proteins and good carbohydrates.  Depending on your goals and your level of regular exercise activity, you can adjust your caloric balance while staying in the desired caloric range through portion control.

An important step is learning to eat at the proper frequency, and adjusting the calories consumed each time you eat.  Whether you’re at home, at work, or on vacation, you can learn to stay on track.  Even more important, you can learn to tell what went wrong when you’ve lost control of your diet, and be able to get back on track quickly.

 The following information will help you achieve quality toning as you get enough calories, keep your metabolism up, and store very little as fat. You will glean information on organizing your grocery shopping so you remain adaptable when preparing big meals or quick, no-time-to-cook meals.  You will learn to eat balanced nutrients and “wise” calorie foods you enjoy.  And, you will develop skills so you can modify a meal or snack to stay exactly where you need to be to keep burning calories efficiently without triggering your body to interrupt metabolism or store too much as fat.  The knowledge you will gain is known as the “universal program for a healthy lifestyle.”

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It seems that most dieting programs are structured to keep the consumer buying into them—that is, purchasing specific foods and resources from the company. The dieting industry generates more than fifty billion dollars very year.  When a new dieting trend arises, companies simply integrate that new trend into their marketing approach.   

Consumers who have tried many dieting approaches are often victims of chronic dieting syndrome.  Chronic dieting syndrome comes from a need to conform to society’s thinness values.  This might seem appropriate considering the high amount of obese people that live in the U.S., but actually it is not a healthy long term alternative.

Professionals know that there are no magic fixes to control weight.  In today’s busy world, it is easiest for consumers to eat badly:   fast foods, preservatives and high glycemic foods (refined carbs, potato chips, French fries).  True changes can only come from altering lifestyle and integrating good habits into an already existing daily routine.

 A diet that works short term is potentially an unnatural process that could result in the lowering of metabolic activity.  When this happens, the dieter can loose control more easily and become dependant on each emerging dieting trend.  He often travels from trend to trend when the results he achieves are only temporary.

   Because I am a Personal Trainer with no products to sell or markets to push, my job is to help my clients achieve lasting results while exercising and improving their diet lifestyle.   I’ve had to create an atypical eating plan—a structure that allows these clients to make full use of their time between training sessions.  I teach them resourcefulness and the skills to determine their own metabolic needs.    The overall goal is for the clients to eat ‘healthy’ while they achieve maximum fitness gains in a short amount of time.

Part II:  Tools

There are tools that can help you meet your goals, and the first of these is integrating new habits into your lifestyle, one at a time.  Don’t try to change everything at once or you will set yourself up for failure.   The object is to adopt a new habit and let it start working on its own, allowing the next step to follow naturally.   Remember that change is two-fold:  something must go away and something new must replace it.

Look at your life and look at the way you spend your time.  What is the best habit to replace?  With this question always in mind, you can improve without overburdening yourself with a bundle of new habits.  It is easy to be inspired to change but if you change too much at once, in a moment of weakness you could find yourself in a place where you have no indulgences to fall back on unless you “fail” at your diet scheme.

That is why I focus on changing your lifestyle with baby steps. You need to make compromises and adapt rather than trying for an idealistic clean slate/new program.  Simply find a stagnate or bad habit and import a reasonable alternative.  This means you will need to be objective.  As a Personal Trainer, I can help you discover how to ask yourself the right questions which will lead you to the next logical step.

 No one knows your lifestyle and habits better than you do.  Most of the time you already know which bad habits need to be replaced but you aren’t sure how to go about it.  Frustration is natural.  You need to learn to distance yourself from the problem if necessary, and sometimes this distance comes in the form of time, a concept that is both ideally and statistically true.

Research says it takes approximately 30 days to change a habit.  Some bad habits are connected to much larger habits that you have been ignoring.  I urge you to sneak up on these “demons”—find their weak points and slowly work on changing that part of your lifestyle.  Listen to your inner voice—the part of your mind that speaks objectively.   Arm that voice with the proper tools.  Remember your goals, and work toward them constantly, but with small, unhurried steps.

There are three key words to remember as you work toward your goals:

• Constant and progressive intake of the correct information and stimulation.
• Small changes that allow the modifications to become integrated–instead of rejected.
• Adjusting to change.  You cannot just take something away.  You need to work with what you have and mold it into a habit that supports your own ends. 

I help my clients find themselves and their self image—help them break out of the collective mold of today’s body/dieting image.  I help them overcome their insecurities by rising above them and changing the habits they have formed to sustain them.

If I do not follow this formula, client frustration sets in.

Part III:  Adaptable Structure

Everyone is different.  Each client has his own food preferences and body chemistry.  Therefore, each diet has to be custom-tailored with food that will help the individual achieve his goals—while learning to enjoy the eating process.  At some point, all clients go off track.  When this happens, I talk to them about how to get back on track. Usually, I’m telling them things they already know—they just need a little help focusing on what they really want for themselves.  Once they regain their focus, their resolve returns and they are back in control.

Eventually, the client can learn to reorient his lifestyle in times of change or loss of focus.  The following information is used to inform the beginner but is also useful for reference and reminders along the way.

Part IV:  The Road to Portion Control

• BMR:  The BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the sum of all the body’s activities that maintain your system in a rested state.  If you don’t get enough calories, then there is no energy available to maintain your BMR quota and your body tissues must be converted to keep alive.

The number of calories needed to maintain your BMR is calculated by determining your percentage of body fat.  Once your Basal Metabolic Rate is known, you can break down your daily caloric intake into meals.  Even if you eat badly, you can make sure you stay in the desired range, consuming the number of calories you need to maintain your much needed body tissues.

Knowing your BMR number is beneficial, no matter what you hope to achieve from exercising.  If all you are doing is resistance training, it can help you increase your strength more rapidly.  If you are involved in any sort of athletic activity and trying to gain weight, your body will need approximately five hundred more calories than your BMR.  If you train like an elite athlete, then you will want to follow this same plan, allowing even more protein or good calories to achieve optimal energy storage and lean muscle tissue growth.  There is room for experimentation within this healthy eating structure.  Exercise and your BMR work together. 

You can lose weight quickly, without exercising, if you starve yourself. But Homo sapiens need regular, vigorous activity to keep their bodies burning correctly.  We will degrade without it, and when it comes to motor skills and efficient muscle firing, we need not only regular vigorous activity, but also rhythmic and spontaneous activity. 

Anthropology has a lot to offer in understanding our most basic needs and how to naturally maintain our system.  Our ancestors may have danced around a bonfire a couple times a week, but there are more practical ways in today’s world for you to perform much-needed activity:  long duration walking over subtle changes in terrain, jogging at times, maybe even running; martial arts, dancing, swimming...  The list is endless.

If you exercise AND starve yourself, you will not be able to maintain growth, size and strength of your lean muscle tissue.  In our current society, many do this in order to improve their self-image.   Starvation dieting (too far below the BMR) can slow down your metabolism, causing you to store even more fat when your diet slips.  Starvation dieting is a vicious cycle, and it can be addictive.

• The metabolic BMR connection:  Lean body mass is the major factor influencing the BMR.   More lean muscle mass means more BMR demand. This is why resistance training with every part of your body will help with weight control.  Also, the BMR rises in response to lower temperatures as a compensatory mechanism to maintain body temperature. 

It is beneficial to eat more frequently, even if you are cutting back on calories.  When you eat smaller meals more often, you stimulate your metabolism to burn calories rather than triggering the body’s response to store fat.  About 10-15% of the body’s total energy needs are used in activities related to eating.  If you do it right, your eating habits can work to your advantage.   Changing eating habits to stimulate your BMR, AND at the same time doing resistance training, can help you maintain and encourage tone while staying lean. 

If you want to be “buff”, add calories over the top of you BMR demand in order to begin adding weight.  If you are already overweight, however, you probably won’t want to do this.  In the 1980’s, when society  was fixated on size through bodybuilding and breast implants,  what was thought of as “buff” was usually shape with fat on it.  What made the pros really stand out was their size:  they were huge, but also had very little body fat. 

Body type is closely linked to aesthetic appeal.   Some people operate efficiently with more body fat than others.  If you are concerned about your physical appearance, try experimenting with not letting image affect you.  Pretend you aren’t insecure about your body.  Adopt a shell, and form a new attitude.  Most likely, you will realize that in time, many of the things you thought were important actually were a reflection of your insecurities.   When your sense of self is no longer impaired by your self image, when you think better of yourself, others will appreciate you for who you are.

Part V:  The Master Grocery List

The foods on your Master Grocery List must be healthy AND be ones you enjoy.  There are three categories.  Fill in all categories with foods you can maintain in your kitchen, and always have food from all three available:

1)      NOW

a)      Instant, snack, grab and go, car/travel:

a.                                                             Vegetables

b.                                                            Meats

c.                                                             Nuts

d.                                                            Grains

e.                                                             Fruits

f.                                                              Bars and conglomerations

2)      Foods requiring minimal preparation time of 3-5 minutes:

 Frozen foods

 Blender, juicer

 Quick heating

 Quick recipes

 Ready soups

3)  Long preparation

                      Solo

 Family preferences.  (You can personalize your own variations of family  meals.  Calculate caloric percentages for standard meal size and adapt your own portion by determining how to consume the same meals as the rest of the family, with minor modifications.)

Part VI:  Master Meals

Once you understand your target range for calories, it may seem tedious to have to constantly read labels or consult your master food chart.  However if you have personalized some ‘long preparation’ meals to conform to your calorie range, you can adapt your master meals into quick preparation meals in your range by modifying them, and decreasing quantities.

Although it is enjoyable and beneficial to discover new foods, you need to begin adjusting to your healthy lifestyle by working with foods you already know and like.  The more you work with your master meals, the more obvious it will become that it can be fun and easy to change your eating habits.

VII:   Master Food Chart

Eat every 3-4 hours or if this isn’t possible, every 4-5 five hours.

Control your metabolism by being hungry.  Reduce your calories so you don’t feel full.  If you are accustomed to ‘stuffing’ yourself, you won’t be used to giving/receiving hunger signals that frequently.  If you have been eating bigger meals less often, you can start modifying your eating at your next hunger signal:  eat a portion that provides your new meal caloric range (BMR quota) and then begin eating at your new interval.

Initially, to help get the hunger signal stimulated, you can consume fewer calories in proteins and fats while getting the BMR quota in vegetables and fruits.  Make the modifications in step with your lifestyle, not forcing a big change and/or confusing your body’s already formed cycles.

Be aware that when diet is changed, it will often trigger a water weight change of from one to seven pounds!  Do not count on body weight for valid information until you have total control of your healthy eating lifestyle. Most people don’t have access to lab work to measure their actual weight fluctuations of lean mass, water mass and fat mass, so you need to learn to control your old habits and incorporate your new ones with proper timing and placement.  Knowing how often to eat and how much to eat during each meal is the pivotal ritual that ties together the stimulation of metabolism and the ability to lose weight safely—and long term.

Following are some ideas to help your new eating habits:

a.       Eat three meals and have a protein shake/bar in between.

b.      Carry foods from your master grocery list with you—fruits, nuts, protein bars, raw vegetables.

To recap:

·        Break down your BMR demand for each meal, and apply portion control.

·        Eat 5-6 meals a day and divide your BMR demand by the number of meals to achieve portion control.

·        Don’t eat large meals and small snacks.  Your goal is evenness of caloric intake. 

·        Design meals that have caloric needs from each category on the master grocery list.

·        Adapt appropriate caloric needs to your usual meals.  After doing this for a while, you will get a feel for preparing proper meals without having to plan.  Eventually you will understand how to judge a restaurant meal.  

Part VIII:  Things You Need to Know.

1)      Our diet vs. other cultures.

Our modern diet is different from the eating habits found in cultures that do not have their food prepackaged, or so many different types of foods.  We have more options—good AND bad—to deal with.

Think of the foods eaten in various cultures where diet is determined by location and climate.   Many of these cultures have well-rounded and complete diets—diets that have evolved from eating traditions that have been fine-tuned to be in balance simply by passing practices down from generation to generation.

For instance, consider the traditional preparation methods and ingredients in Chinese, Japanese and Mediterranean cuisines.  The Chinese almost exclusively use fresh ingredients and the style of preparation in the wok is one of the best ways to preserve nutrients.  The Japanese have an amazing ability to balance carb and protein portions, and the Greeks managed to stay away from red meats and still get a lot of protein. 

            2)  The Glycemic Index.

Some things are best avoided, such as refined flour and sugar not existing in whole foods.  Potatoes have a tendency to increase the GI.  Carbs separated from their complete state, (whole foods), can easily work against you.  Soda pop and mainstream fruit juices have not only a high GI, but also no way to retard the absorbtion of the sugars.  The result is fat storage and subtle to major insulin reactions.

To prevent insulin reactions and enhanced fat storage, go with the low GI foods and whole foods.  Eating more often (every 3-4 hours) helps keep insulin reactions in check.  Not eating for a long time and then eating carbs is a sure way accumulate fat and create a hyper-reactivity to foods with a high GI.  Especially avoid high GI foods for the last meal of the day.  They are more likely to be transported into fat cells.

Throughout history, when humans have tried to isolate their diet or alter whole foods from their natural state, serious problems have begun.  Diseases such as pellagra, beriberi, scurvy and rickets all arose from isolations of a single food or a process of taking a food away from its natural state.

3)  Nutrients.

Stress, various chemicals, some processing methods, and illegal and prescription drugs can all drain nutrients. People who take prescription drugs, smokers, coffee drinkers, alcohol drinkers, people who exist in polluted areas, consumers of canned foods, and people who eat processed foods can have nutrients either drained from the food or the body itself.  Some nutrients are not absorbed in the body if other nutrient combinations are not available.  Therefore, whole foods are preferred. 

Lost nutrients (not absorbed and prematurely drained) are considerable in modern society.  A lack of nutrients and the use of pharmaceuticals can change metabolism for the worse.  I have had many clients who cannot control their weight when taking certain drugs.  Pharmaceuticals, blood sugar problems, and thyroid issues are common culprits to prevent one from taking control of their body fat percentages.

A sensible diet needs the following:

            a. dietary fiber

            b. balance of protein and carbs

c. guiding of metabolism with proper eating frequency and                                      quantity       

d. good supplements:

            dietary fiber

                                    muscle growth enhancement      

                                    daily multi vitamin

for follow-up questions contact:

Steve Dotson

columbiatrainers@hotmail.com