Portion Control Sucks

It used to be low fat. Then it was low carb. Today it's portion control. And guess what? You're still fat. Or at least 66% of Americans are.

It's still junk food, fattie.

Sorry, mainstream media, food manufacturers, diet clinics, and TV weight loss gurus, but portion control — eating smaller amounts of the same ol' foods that made you fat to begin with — doesn't work. As I always say, portion control is about as effective as the "I'll only put it in a little" method of virginity preservation.

Oh don't get me wrong, the idea of portion control sounds great. Eat what you want, just in small quantities. Problem is, like a lot of ideas that sound good on paper — socialism, welfare, a sitcom featuring those Geiko cavemen — it just doesn't work.

It might work if people could actually do it, but most people can't. In fact, daytime portion control is often the catalyst for nighttime binge eating — one of the biggest causes of fat gain.

So why are we, the fitness industry, promoting it?

Telling someone to stop eating before they're satisfied is like telling someone to stop having sex right before they climax. That's not just a crude joke either. Appetite and the pleasure we get from eating are classified as "sensual desires" and fit into the same category as the sex drive.

Appetite and sex drive: different and not so different.

These are core, continuation-of-life drives: innate and powerful and often hard to control. Combine the natural urge to eat until full with abundant, cheap, and calorie-dense foods and it's no surprise people overeat and get fat.

A Better Plan

So if low-fat diets suck, and low-carb diets are often short-sighted, and portion control has a 95% failure rate, then what's the best nutrition plan for shedding excess body fat so you can have sex with the lights on again?

Well, here's a big part of the answer: volumetrics.

Volumetrics simply means eating "low-calorie-dense" or "high-volume foods." Zucchini for example has only 26 calories per cup. Compare that to one tiny tablespoon of vegetable oil at 120 calories! Food sources like that are calorically dense — very little food, not filling at all, but jam-packed with calories.

Now, I actually don't endorse most "volumetrics" diets because they often ignore the benefits of good fats like omega-3s. And some fat sources, like olive oil and almonds, are healthy and calorie-dense. Chances are if you see a "Volumetrics" book on the shelf, it's mainly just a low-fat diet that encourages you to eat a lot of soup. I'll pass.

However, we can take a page from the volumetrics approach and apply it to our bodybuilding and fat loss goals. We can learn to manipulate recipes and choose foods that get us full without making us fat. In short, we can get ripped and stay ripped with practically no dietary suffering or excessive hunger.

As a side benefit, volumizing your diet will make you healthier and increase longevity since the most filling foods are often the most health-promoting.

Let's take a look at a real life example.

Volumizing in Action

A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me to make a "healthed-up" zucchini bread for a party. Now, I had no idea what zucchini bread was. Turns out it's the official carb source of the devil: a sugary, cake-like dessert sorta like banana bread — dense with calories, carbs, and bad fats.

And my friend asked me to make it? Did she not know what I do for a living?

I took the challenge anyway. I figured if I could "health-up" zucchini bread I could work just about any culinary wonder.

Here's the original, fattening recipe:

The Devil's Zucchini Bread

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup water
2 cups grated zucchini
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup chopped pecans

This makes two small loafs... and an enormous spare tire around your waist. Total calories for the entire recipe? 5112!

Time to trim that down without making the portions smaller. First I examined the recipe and found the major calorie sources: flour, sugar, oil, pecans, and eggs. Let's see how I "healthed-up" each and dropped calories while keeping the volume/weight of food the same:

White flour: Replaced with whole grain flour. No calories saved, but makes it healthier and adds fiber.

Sugar: Replaced with sucralose (Splenda). Saves about 700 calories.

Oil: Replaced with unsweetened apple sauce. Saves over 1800 calories!

Pecans: Replaced with walnuts. Lowers calories a bit, better fatty acid profile.

Eggs: Replaced with egg whites. Nothing wrong with omega-3 enriched whole eggs, I eat a ton of them, but in this case we're focusing on reducing calories. Using egg whites drops 180 additional calories from the recipe.

Calories in original recipe: 5112

Calories in my version: 2372

Saves 2740 calories!

And the taste? Most people don't even realize they're eating a healthier, low-calorie version. (And the zucchini actually can't be tasted.) So, here's the final volumized recipe:

Shugart's Volumized Zucchini Bread

3 1/4 cups whole wheat or whole grain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups Splenda
1 cup unsweetened apple sauce
3/4 cup egg whites
1/3 cup water
4 cups grated zucchini (Note how I doubled this, adding nutrition and "bulk" but hardly any calories.)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a big bowl, combine whole wheat flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon, and Splenda.

In a separate bowl, combine apple sauce, egg whites, water, zucchini, and lemon juice.

Mix wet ingredients into dry, add walnuts and fold in, or add walnuts to the top after pouring into loaf pans. Bake in two standard loaf pans, sprayed with nonstick spray, for one hour or until a toothpick comes out clean when you poke the loaf.

Now, keep in mind our theme here: volumization. This version of the recipe is not only healthier, but a loaf of my zucchini bread is exactly the same size as the diet-wrecking original version. Your stomach doesn't know the difference. You'll be just as satiated and satisfied with less than half the calories.

Other Volumizing Tips and Tricks

Dr. Lonnie Lowery calls this "calorie dilution" and it's basically the same idea as volumetrics: eating high volume, low-density foods. Here's some more tips:

• For burgers, mix lean ground turkey and/or veggies with your ground beef.

• For spaghetti, cut out half the pasta and replace with sprouts.

• Unsweetened apple sauce can be used to replace vegetable oil in pancakes, muffins, and most baked goods.

• Replace half the pasta in lasagna (or all of it) with zucchini, squash, or eggplant.

• Add pure canned pumpkin into whole-grain pancake mix.

• Use steamed and blended cauliflower in mashed potatoes to cut carbs and overall calories.

• Instead of adding butter, bananas, syrup, peanut butter or other calorie-dense ingredients to recipes, use calorie-free extracts or imitation flavorings.

Wrap-up

Another benefit of volumizing your diet is that you don't need to count calories. Since you're getting full at each meal, you're naturally controlling caloric intake. Using a volumetrics-style approach is great for maintenance phases or to keep the fat off after a stricter diet plan like the Velocity Diet.

Get full, get healthy, get lean. Can't beat that.