Eating only vegetables and fruits...

Let's start from the premise that you can't be obese if you ate
exclusively fruits and vegetables (I have no idea if the premise is
correct or false). I thought I should build a weight management
strategy around it. I read that you could not stay healthy "very long"
on only fruits and veggies, so I'd be very careful when basing my diet
on lots of fruits and veggies.

Here are a few strategies. Please free to comment on them. If you have
others, please share with me.

1. Once a month, for a week I eat only fruits and veggies. Then I go
back to the regular diet with meat, chicken, fish, nuts and others so-
called healthy and non-fattening food.
2. Every day I make 80% of all my calories intake veggies and fruits.
3. Eating only veggies and fruits every other day.

wrote in message
...
Let's start from the premise that you can't be obese if you ate
exclusively fruits and vegetables (I have no idea if the premise is
correct or false). I thought I should build a weight management
strategy around it. I read that you could not stay healthy "very long"
on only fruits and veggies, so I'd be very careful when basing my diet
on lots of fruits and veggies.

Here are a few strategies. Please free to comment on them. If you have
others, please share with me.

1. Once a month, for a week I eat only fruits and veggies. Then I go
back to the regular diet with meat, chicken, fish, nuts and others so-
called healthy and non-fattening food.
2. Every day I make 80% of all my calories intake veggies and fruits.
3. Eating only veggies and fruits every other day.

What if I disagree with your premise?
Do you consider potatoes, sweet potatoes, and navy beans vegetables?

Seems sort of bizarre to me.

On 19 déc, 11:47, "Del Cecchi" wrote:
wrote in message

...

Let's start from the premise that you can't be obese if you ate
exclusively fruits and vegetables (I have no idea if the premise is
correct or false). I thought I should build a weight management
strategy around it. I read that you could not stay healthy "very long"
on only fruits and veggies, so I'd be very careful when basing my diet
on lots of fruits and veggies.

Here are a few strategies. Please free to comment on them. If you have
others, please share with me.

1. Once a month, for a week I eat only fruits and veggies. Then I go
back to the regular diet with meat, chicken, fish, nuts and others so-
called healthy and non-fattening food.
2. Every day I make 80% of all my calories intake veggies and fruits.
3. Eating only veggies and fruits every other day.

What if I disagree with your premise?
Do you consider potatoes, sweet potatoes, and navy beans vegetables?

Seems sort of bizarre to me.

I'm not trying to debate. I just want to lose weight. Please help me.

On Dec 19, 4:02 pm, "
wrote:
On 19 déc, 11:47, "Del Cecchi" wrote:





wrote in message

...

Let's start from the premise that you can't be obese if you ate
exclusively fruits and vegetables (I have no idea if the premise is
correct or false). I thought I should build a weight management
strategy around it. I read that you could not stay healthy "very long"
on only fruits and veggies, so I'd be very careful when basing my diet
on lots of fruits and veggies.

Here are a few strategies. Please free to comment on them. If you have
others, please share with me.

1. Once a month, for a week I eat only fruits and veggies. Then I go
back to the regular diet with meat, chicken, fish, nuts and others so-
called healthy and non-fattening food.
2. Every day I make 80% of all my calories intake veggies and fruits.
3. Eating only veggies and fruits every other day.

What if I disagree with your premise?
Do you consider potatoes, sweet potatoes, and navy beans vegetables?

Seems sort of bizarre to me.

I'm not trying to debate. I just want to lose weight. Please help me.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hey Mike. Yes, you can get fat eating only fruit and vegetables. It is
just that you would need to eat a lot by weight if it was mostly
lettuce, spinach, celery, etc....the really low cal stuff. Of course
avacados and a few other vegetables have much higher caloric value.
You just have to count calories no matter what you choose. Vegetarians
can be overweight, but not usually. This is probably because pies,
cakes, vegetable oils, peanut butter and nuts, just to mention a few
vegetarian foods, are loaded with calories. Then the lacto-ovo
vegetarians can get lots of calories from eggs, milk and cheese as
well. On the other hand, if you use nonfat milk, egg whites rather
than the yolks, you would be eating low calorie. That's what I do. I
have a sweet tooth, so I use a lot of Splenda and Aspartame in
meringues and on oatmeal along with the Smuckers sugar-free breakfast
syrup at only 20 cal per quarter cup. It's great stuff.

I guess my point is that you need to identify what it is you really
want and like to eat. If it's sweets, there are all kinds of
substitutes using artificial sweetners...a compromise to be sure, but
doable. If you just have to have something fried or a spread on toast
for example, buy the 40 cal per slice Nature's Own Light bread, and
put the sugar-free jams on it at 10 cal per tablespoon or Promise fat-
free margarine at only 5 cal per tablespoon. If you have to have
something fried, you can use the Promise if you're careful, but it
tends to just evaporate into thin air...why? Hell, it is mostly air
and water to begin with, but it kind of works. The spray vegetable
oils seem to work a little better though and probably don't add much
more in the way of calories, but I can't really judge 1/4 second which
is the serving size, so it is hard to tell.

It is really tough, we know, but the good news is that you become
accustomed to a changed diet and begin to like the substituted items
almost as well as the original, high-cal stuff. Perhaps part of it is
that when you get hungry, lots of things taste better, I can't say for
sure, but I did train myself to eat and actually relish tomatoes,
which I used to avoid completely unless they were in catsup or
spaghetti sauce.

Bottom line.... You gotta count calories. It's that simple (or
difficult). Of course you also have to know your maintenance calories,
or your weight goal and the calories you are allotted a day to get to
that goal. Weight loss then becomes its own reward and reinforcement
as you start to look, and later feel better. You probably already know
all this, but it never hurts to review the essentials. My other
"trick" as you already know is to eat high fiber....about 500% of the
daily recommended minimum fiber intake, low-cal, low-fat, low-sugar,
high water, and lots of very low-cal vegetables. I eat 6 egg whites a
day in my meringue, 3 bowls of oats, puffed whole wheat cereal with
Splenda and nonfat milk, 2 slices of the Nature's Own light bread with
non-fat Promise...total 90 calories, 2 cans of green beans (no salt
added) with the Smucker's sugar-free syrup on top. 2 cans + syrup =
150 cal, and lots of celery, a couple carrots, sometimes lettuce,
cabbage, broccoli, artichoke hearts packed in water, water chestnuts
packed in water, green peppers, onions, a small tomato....I really
don't measure this salad so closely, but count it as 100 calories for
a huge bowlful. I don't eat fruit, nuts, sweets, egg yolk, oils, or
higher cal. vegetables, but manage to get plenty to eat nontheless.
More importantly I maintain my wt. at 136 pounds on the 2000 cal I
get. I also NEVER go over (or under) that 2,000 calories. It works for
me. I'm sure there are lots of ways to succeed. dkw

wrote in message
...
On 19 déc, 11:47, "Del Cecchi" wrote:
wrote in message

...

Let's start from the premise that you can't be obese if you ate
exclusively fruits and vegetables (I have no idea if the premise is
correct or false). I thought I should build a weight management
strategy around it. I read that you could not stay healthy "very
long"
on only fruits and veggies, so I'd be very careful when basing my
diet
on lots of fruits and veggies.

Here are a few strategies. Please free to comment on them. If you
have
others, please share with me.

1. Once a month, for a week I eat only fruits and veggies. Then I go
back to the regular diet with meat, chicken, fish, nuts and others
so-
called healthy and non-fattening food.
2. Every day I make 80% of all my calories intake veggies and fruits.
3. Eating only veggies and fruits every other day.

What if I disagree with your premise?
Do you consider potatoes, sweet potatoes, and navy beans vegetables?

Seems sort of bizarre to me.

I'm not trying to debate. I just want to lose weight. Please help me.

------------------------

OK, why are you choosing a bizarre pattern for eating like that? Review
the posts of a number of folks worth of emulating like historian, or
chris, or others. Read the suggestions of the American Heart Association
or the Mayo Clinic or the US Government, or someone else reputable.
Hell, even Dean Ornish or the South Beach guy.

Eat a sensible balanced diet with some fruit and vegetables and some
starches and some protein and an appropriate number of calories. Get
some exercise like walking or biking an hour a day.

read up on "the hacker's diet"

whatever.

It's hard.

del

I now realize that the eating patterns I was enquirying about are
rather strange. Thanks for your past and future help.