How Do I Gain
Weight on the McDougall Diet? I’m Not Joking!
(Please do the opposite of the advice below to lose weight faster)
One common question I get from people who seriously follow my instructions
is, “How do I stop losing weight?” For example, this e-mail letter from a
woman says, “I was a 100% raw foodist for almost 2 years and this past 10
days I came off that diet and went on your plan. My question is this:
your plan is definitely the ONE; however, I was only 105 pounds as a raw
foodist (usually high in fat with nuts, seeds, avocados, etc. and sugars
from fruits and juices) and since eating your cooked low-fat plan, I am
losing weight and only weigh 100 pounds now. How do I increase my body
weight?”
Maybe the Problem is
One of Perception?
You and your friends are used to looking at you at one size and now the
change is difficult to adjust to and uncomfortable for many.
Fortunately, people when they first meet folks who follow a healthy diet
will likely think how exceptional they look – they are not burdened by
past perceptions. There is also the problem of envy from those who wish
they could lose weight so easily and were as thin. They may
say, “You look so thin. Have you been ill?”
A
participant in one of our recent live-in programs in Santa Rosa asked me,
“Don’t you think Mary (McDougall) is a little too thin?” My reply was,
“Have you noticed our dietitian, Jill, our psychologist, Doug, and our
administrator, Heather (McDougall)?” “Yes, they’re thin, too,” she
replied. My response was clear, “Our staff members are trim, vigorous,
and young looking for a simple reason; they follow the McDougall diet and
exercise program. You should be so lucky.” (By the way, no one ever
accuse me of being too thin – possibly because I have no hesitation in
eating large amounts of food and strenuously exercising while windsurfing
on the water off Northern California.)
The Kempner Rice Diet
Program Knows about Trim Weight
I
have used a chart from the Kempner Foundation for more than 20 years to
help people who think they are becoming too thin to realize that their new
weight may actually be an ideal weight when it comes to good health.
Walter Kempner, MD, established the Rice Diet Program in the 1940s at Duke
University and until very recently this program was an important part of
Duke’s medical department. The Rice Diet begins with mostly rice and
fruit and then expands to other foods as people become healthier and
thinner.
Again, the purpose of showing these figures is to help reassure you that
you are not becoming too thin on the McDougall Diet – you should not look at these as goal weights.
This chart records
what Kempner considered to be reasonable adult weight in proportion to
height. He also recommended that people with diabetes, heart, kidney, or
blood vessel diseases should weigh l0-l5% less than the optimum figures
presented in this chart.
Women |
Height |
Wt. Should Be Below* lbs. |
4ft 11in |
91 |
5ft |
94 |
5ft 1in |
97 |
5ft 2in |
100 |
5ft 3in |
104 |
5ft 4in |
108 |
5ft 5in |
112 |
5ft 6in |
117 |
5ft 7in |
122 |
5ft 8in |
127 |
5ft 9in |
132 |
5ft 10in |
137 |
5ft 11in |
142 |
6ft |
147 |
*Fully Dressed |
Men |
Height |
Wt. Should Be Below* lbs. |
5ft 2in |
110 |
5ft 3in |
115 |
5ft 4in |
120 |
5ft 5in |
125 |
5ft 6in |
130 |
5ft 7in |
135 |
5ft 8in |
140 |
5ft 9in |
145 |
5ft 10in |
150 |
5ft 11in |
155 |
6ft |
160 |
6ft 1in |
165 |
6ft 2in |
170 |
6ft 3in |
175 |
6ft 4in |
180 |
6ft 5in |
185 |
*Fully Dressed |
Even though you will
not look at these figures as your goal weight, if you follow a starch
centered meal plan, as I recommend, and exercise, you could easily end up
at a weight close to Dr. Kempner's figures. So be reassured you are
not too thin.
How Do You Tell If
You’re the Right Weight?
Take off all of your
clothes and stand in front of the mirror. Do you like what you see? All
the weight charts in the world pale in importance to your own perceptions.
One Important
Precaution.
If you are too thin and have any concern that this might be a health issue
then please check with your doctor. Illnesses, like cancer, infectious
diseases (AIDS), liver and thyroid disease can also cause excessive weight
loss. So can some serious psychological problems, like anorexia and
depression.
How to Gain Weight in
a Healthful Manner
I have known people
who stop eating our diet with the excuse that they became too thin.
This was almost always just an excuse to go back to burgers and fries – an
excuse like inconvenience, difficulty, pressure from a spouse, longing for
cake and cookies, etc. – to stop my recommendations. Never use too much
weight loss as a reason to stop a healthy diet and exercise program.
Many times people
become “too thin” on our diet because they don’t like the food – and that
is simply because they don’t take the time to make interesting dishes. A
plain baked potato and three stalks of broccoli will not make a successful
long-term diet for many people. If you want this for a lifestyle then you
must take the effort to find 4 to 8 dishes that you like to eat and are
willing to find the time to prepare. For example, oatmeal for breakfast,
a soup and bread for lunch, and bean burritos or spaghetti for dinner.
Another common mistake
is to think that our food plan is a diet of green and yellow vegetables.
These foods – like broccoli, cauliflower, pea pods, and sprouts – are too
low in calories to get you through the day. You would have to eat bushel
baskets full to get your 2000 to 3000 calories. Our diet is centered on
delicious higher calorie vegetable foods commonly referred to as starches
– foods like rice, corn, potatoes, beans, pastas, and breads, are also
called “comfort foods” because of the way they make us feel. To this
higher calorie centerpiece are added green and yellow vegetable dishes and
fruits. When I say “higher calorie” this is relative to the low calorie
concentration found in green and yellow vegetables. (Higher calorie does
not mean these choices will make you fat – becoming fat would be very
difficult to accomplish on a starch-based diet – consider there are
billions of people, like rural Chinese, who live on a starch-based diet
(rice) and no one is fat – until they change to the Western diet. There
are a few people running around swearing they follow the McDougall Diet
and they look to be 50 to a hundred pounds overweight. The truth is they
are following their interpretation of my recommendations – you can learn
about unhealthy, overweight vegans – people eating no animal products – in
my October 2002 Newsletter).
Gaining weight is
usually a matter of more calories in than calories out of
your body. Fats are the most easily stored of all three kinds of
calories (protein, carbohydrates and fats). Any change in diet that
raises insulin levels will make weight gain easier – insulin is the
hormone that pushes fat into fat cells and prevents the release of fat.
Make the Following
Changes in this Order to Regain Weight in a Healthful Manner
1) Eat more whole
grain flour products like breads and bagels. Flour is more fattening than
the whole grain because the change in physical properties that comes with
milling causes faster and more complete absorption of the calories and a
great rise in insulin response.
2) Eat more simple
sugars in the form of fruits, dried fruits and fruit juices. This will
cause a greater rise in insulin in your body.
3) Eat more high-fat
plant foods, like nuts (and nut butters), seeds (and seed spreads),
avocados, and olives. Fats are concentrated calories.
4) Add high-fat soy
milks and tofu products. These are higher in fats.
5) Eat more high-fat
soy foods. However, in general, these fake foods (like burgers, hot dogs,
lunch meats, and cheeses) should be kept to a minimum because they are not
very nutritious.
6) Eat more food –
this is often difficult because most people already eat to the full
satisfaction of their appetite. Making more delicious meals and taking
more time to eat may help accomplish this.
7) Eat a greater
variety of foods – new kinds of foods stimulate interest, which increases
food intake.
8) Add salt, sugar
and favorite spices to the surface of your foods. If they taste better to
you then you will eat more. Plus sugar adds calories (empty calories).
9) Use salad
dressing, barbecue and steak sauces (made without oils and animal
products) over your dishes to make them taste better so you eat more.
Many sauces also contain simple sugars that provide calories and raise
insulin levels.
10) Exercise less. We
all know people who are exercise fanatics and they burn 3000 to 5000 extra
calories a day – making it very difficult for them to eat enough food to
fully replenish the expenditure. One simple way to gain more weight, and
in some ways improve your overall health, may be to exercise more
moderately.
I have never seen any
otherwise healthy person “starve to death” when there were adequate
amounts of nutritious foods available to them. Your hunger drive is there
to guarantee your personal survival by making sure you consume sufficient
calories and nutrients. It works just fine when the correct foods are
present – unprocessed starches, vegetables and fruits. With the wrong
foods – meats, dairy products and refined and packaged foods – all bets
are off and you are struggling for survival in this artificial world. The
McDougall Program is the easiest and surest method of achieving trim body
weight, and much better than fighting your hunger drive and losing the
"lifelong battle of the bulge" – it works because the qualities of food
match the size of the stomach, the strengths of the hunger drive, and the
needs of the body – how could it not be this way in a perfectly created
world that works so well for all other matters? |