Itua Iyoha: The ‘Whole Foods’ Secret to Achieving Your Optimal Weight Without Dieting

The first part of this series covered the benefits of a plant based diet. {Click here to read it if you missed it}

Have you ever tried to lose weight? It’s not the most fun thing in the world. Calorie counting, portion control, drinking meal replacement shakes and green smoothies, following fitfam diets and meal plans… And then after you’ve struggled to do everything the diet books tell you to do, you jump on the scale and the needle has barely moved. Why is it so hard?

If I asked you what the best way to lose weight is, chances are you’d say something along the lines of ‘eat fewer calories’, ‘eat less carbs’ or ‘fat-burning exercises’.

Our understanding of the link between nutrition and weight loss is heavily influenced by what the media celebrates as the ‘perfect diet’ depending on what happens to be the current trend. A decade ago low fat was all the rage; then it was high protein. At some point the Mediterranean diet became the holy grail, these days it’s low carb-low sugar. But the truth is that, fad diets are not going to help you lose excess weight and keep it off in the long run, because none of them addresses why we gain weight in the first place.

There are 2 reasons we find it so easy to gain excess weight and find it so hard to lose it:

Eating processed food
Much of what we classify as food these days age isn’t really food; it’s empty calories. Wheat flour, cooking oil, high-fructose corn syrup, white sugar, packaged fruit juice…these highly refined ‘foods’ feature prominently in the things we regularly consume as staples – bread, Indomie, spaghetti, and so on. But the body cannot recognise these highly refined substances as the original food they came from. They register as pure calories, so your body is unable to tell you when you are full based on the quantity you eat. It then becomes very easy for us to eat far too many calories from just a small portion of food.

Unnecessary focus on macronutrients
Conventional dietary advice typically demonises one macronutrient – e.g. carbs or fat – and promotes high intake of others – e.g. protein. But this is a very unhealthy and unnatural way to eat. We end up eating too much of one nutrient and not enough of another, which creates a nutritional imbalance in our bodies. For example a plate of cauliflower rice and chicken might sound like a healthy meal, but it lacks the carbohydrates that fuel the brain. And a bowl of granola with skim milk is high in fibre but lacking in fat. It’s very difficult to maintain this way of eating long term as we are never properly nourished and satisfied. The body is essentially in starvation mode, using its fat stores to feed itself. Eventually when we stop eating this way, all the weight we managed to lose comes rushing back as the body tries to replenish the stores.

The healthy, sustainable solution to weight loss is a whole foods, plant based diet.

A whole foods diet includes all the foods you’re familiar with, but in unrefined/minimally refined form and nutritionally balanced. It mostly consists of starchy food, along with vegetables and fruits. Starchy foods are the bedrock of this diet because they naturally contain the ideal balance of macronutrients. Our bodies mostly run on carbohydrate, with smaller requirements for protein and fat. The recommended daily intake of macronutrients is about 70% carbohydrate, 11% protein, 15% fat and 6% fibre. This is roughly the macronutrient ratio typically found in whole starchy foods such as legumes, seeds, tubers and cereals. These foods also contain small amounts of essential micronutrients, which are supplemented by the fruits and vegetables that also form part of this diet.

Because a whole foods diet provides nutrients in the amounts and proportions that are required by the body, there is no need to store excess fat. This is why you can literally eat yourself to a healthy weight by following the whole foods diet. Over time the excess weight just falls off and stays off, even with minimal exercise. But, in order to get the benefits of eating whole foods, you must combine the whole foods philosophy with the plant-based philosophy (covered in the first article of this series). Apart from promoting disease in the body, animal products are so calorie dense and fibre deficient that the body does not handle them well. It is extremely easy to overeat with a diet high in meat, cheese, milk, eggs and so on, unless you restrict your portions and caloric intake. But of course, this is not sustainable. With a whole foods, plant based diet you are free to enjoy delicious good food, free of guilt and restrictions.

As this is not a fad diet but rather a way of eating, there is no meal plan you must follow…no diet book you must buy. All you need to do is to follow some basic guidelines in the beginning; eventually you’ll get used to it and it will come naturally to you.

So how can you go about reaping the benefits of a whole foods, plant based diet? In the last part of this series I’ll share tips on how one can adopt this style of eating in Nigeria.