Discussion Board

I am thinking about trying the MWL program for a month. I honestly feel it is more restrictive than I'd be happy with long-term, but I figure I owe it to myself to at least try. I'd also be curious how much faster my weight loss would be doing it.
Unlike my current diet, where I make exceptions here and there and am not 100% compliant, if I were to do this I'd want to stick to the rules. No variations. No exceptions. So I need to understand the rules, and I have a few questions for starters.

1. No flour products. I can understand this rule for any commercial ground flour, as even the "whole wheat" isn't truly whole-meal flour, and has had nutrition processed out of it. But what about flour I mill myself at home, just prior to use? It's got 100% of all the nutrients, no added anything. It's good stuff!! The breads and pasta I make from it are truly a gift from heaven. If the answer is no, I can't use it, I can live with it. But I'd sure like to know the rationale!!
2. No simple sugars. Does this include honey? When I first started changing my diet, before I even knew about McDougall, I made my morning porridge palatable by mixing in yogurt, honey, and cream! One of the first changes I made when I came here was to stop the yogurt and cream. I still have a small amount of goats milk in my daily porridge, and one small spoonful of honey. The goats milk is one of my "exceptions" in my current diet and I don't even have to ask about that... it's gone if I do MWL. But can I still have the one small spoonful of honey?
3. Fruits. I understand I can have 2 servings of fruit a day on MWL. What if I want to have blueberries as one of my servings? How many blueberries are in a serving?
Those are my questions for now. Thank you for your time.

-Norm

I think you on the right track, Norm, and that you will be pleased with the results. Also, expect your tastes and preferences to change as you have more experience with a simpler way of eating.

Flour and breads are concentrated. So, like simple sugars, you can ingest many more calories in a bite of these than you would get in a bite of of the unrefined foods. So it makes sense to avoid them. Keeping the calorie density (calories/weight) low is very helpful for weight management.

I think a general rule for servings of fruits and veggies is that 1/2 cup is a serving but someone may correct me on that. So you could enjoy a cup of berries daily. You could use them to sweeten your oatmeal! Eat your spoon full of honey...and get over it!!! Ha ha!

Now focus on all of the wonderful foods you can eat that are within the MWL guidelines! Enjoy the food and keep us posted on your successes!

Hi Norm,
Check the sticky post at the top of this forum. The first link in that post takes you to a .pdf that has guidelines including both flour and honey.

You may not get the hard and fast rule you were looking for. While not exactly forbidden, their use is supposed to be very limited compared to the regular plan.

Isn't the part of wheat that is milled into flour the seed?

Okay. This makes NO sense to me at all. A wheat berry is far more concentrated than the flour you get from it. For every cup of wheat berries I mill into flour, I get well over a cup of flour. Try to compress the resulting flour back into the same cup... can't be done. Try compressing the bread I make from it back into that same cup... Don't even bother!! I don't see how a bite of anything I make with my wheat flour could possibly have more calories than an equal bite of the same amount of wheat berries. I'm not trying to argue, just wanting to understand.

Oh wow... that is WAY more blueberries than I've ever put in my porridge... I'll eat my normal amount and not feel guilty if my second serving of fruit is the large one out of the basket.

If I do this my kickoff date will be Sept 29 or 30. I'll keep you posted.

-Norm

Thanks... you know, I've read that... but also read lots of other links posted here and there and taking it all together confused me... For instance... "use simple sugars sparingly" is open to interpretation. If someone told me they only had 1 drink a day... I wouldn't call that sparingly. I think 1 small spoon of honey a day is sparingly... but others might not. Based on pinkrose's post, I've decided my spoonful of honey is a go. As are my blueberries.
I'm still unsure about my bread and pasta made from home milled flour.... The rules seem to say no... and I am willing go with that, but still want to understand the why.

-Norm

Hi Norm,
From page 61 of the The McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss book:

"4. Eliminate All Flour Products
Eat your grains whole. Eliminate breads, bagels, pastas, pretzels, crackers, and corn and wheat tortillas. In general, the less a food is processed, the better for weight loss. Grinding changes two major characteristics of the food: First and most important, grinding a whole grain into flour increases the surface area of the food exposed to the intestinal tract, which increases the amount of nutrition absorbed in the intestines. This also increases the rate at which carbohydrates enter the blood stream, where they raise insulin and blood sugar. Grinding a whole grain into flour increases absorption of calories and the rise in blood sugar and insulin by three to four times. Second, grinding disrupts the dietary fiber, thereby reducing its ability to slow absorption, lower insulin, regulate blood sugar, satisfy appetite, and enhance elimination."

That's Dr. McDougall's explanation. Don't know all the science behind it but it does seem to work for a lot of people...

Okay. I can wrap my head around that explanation. While my flour is not as finely ground as commercial flour, the explanation given would still apply. My home milled flour is off the list!

-Norm

In addition to the info. provided already, these newsletters may also help explain why flour is avoided on MWL:

Scroll down to "Purification of Carbohydrates Makes Weight Loss More Difficult":

http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/oct/sugar.htm

Scroll down to "Can I Eat Flour Products Like In Bread":

http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008nl/jan/grains.htm

Norm, sorry I don't have a link to a post, but I've seen Jeff say that if you're going to use flour, pasta is preferred to dry food like bread. The reason is that calorie density is calories per weight unit of food. The pasta absorbs water when it cooks, so the result is fewer calories per weight of food.

So that cup of pasta may have the same calories compared to a cup of bread, but it's going to weigh more. The theory is your body detects fullness by weight (among other things) so you'll feel fuller with that heavier water rich food than with that same volume of dry food.

I've kinda wondered why you can't just drink a glass of water with the bread and get the same result. Yet experience does show me it's easier to overeat ww. bread than ww. pasta!

Also, this is just something from my experience rather than anything I've read here, but I wonder if you've ever tried to just cook and eat wheat berries or rye berries. They're just so dense and chewy, it's very unlikely you'd be able to eat as much as if they were milled and made into homemade bread. So that observation supports the basic principle that whole foods are just harder to overeat than more processed foods.

The reason that eating a slice of bread and drinking a glass of water is not the same as eating pasta is because when you cook pasta the water is cooked into it. Therefore it stays in your stomach longer. When you eat bread and then drink water the water goes right through you.

Jeff once said something like when you eat raisins and a glass of water the water is gone through your stomach in 5 minutes but if you eat equal calorie amount of grapes the water stays in your stomach much longer because the water is bound to the grapes. So you stay fuller much longer.

Makes sense Adrienne, thanks for clearing that up.

Norm,

You might want to check out these threads from Jeff
Intact Whole Grains vs Refined Processed Grains
viewtopic.php?t=6045
viewtopic.php?t=6512
viewtopic.php?t=6122

and the info on Calorie Density
Calorie Density, Weight Loss, BMI, How Much To Eat
viewtopic.php?t=6032
viewtopic.php?t=6916

He also has a DVD on calorie density
http://www.drmcdougall.com/store_calorie_density.html

Best wishes.
Vic

Wow!!

Just read all the links everyone posted. I have learned more by doing so then I have in a while!!

Thank you!

-Norm

I think you are on a steep learning curve here, Norm, and I appreciate your efforts!

Compare products made with flour (even whole grains) to the unrefined starches many of us typically eat (brown rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes etc.) and you will see that the flour products are more concentrated. Think about all of the water content in these starches. The water adds no calories but it adds volume, decreasing the calorie density.

Look at the difference between the calories in an ounce of whole wheat pita bread and an ounce of brown rice.

See:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/bak ... cts/4853/2

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cer ... sta/5707/2

The pita bread's calorie density is over 2x the calorie density of the rice!