Dr. McDougall's Online Discussion Board

Hi everyone, Im new here, I started the McDougall program about a month and a half ago, and currently Im trying to do the MWLP. My main problem at the moment is the amount of fruit I have, which is too much! (but its so good!, its really hard to reduce). I was wondering if anyone had any tips on snacks or things I could have instead of fruit.

Thanks!

Sure. Baby carrots or grape tomatoes with homemade or purchased fat-free hummus. Baby potatoes, cooked and then chilled. Wonderful . A microwaved sweet potato with cinnamon. Brown rice with salsa. Oven baked fries or chips. Air-popped popcorn sprinkled with nutritional yeast. A bowl of soup or chili from that big batch you WILL be making on the weekends. A bowl of oatmeal with a sprinkle of cinnamon and a teaspoon on sugar. A salad with some balsamic vinegar. Basically the same food you eat for meals can be eaten between meals. Remove the word "snack" from your vocabulary and replace it with "food". I'm hungry - I'm going to eat some food. That simple.

Kate

That works, also, if I already have oatmeal for breakfast, there is no problem having it again? and unfortunately im in Brazil at the moment, so I don't have a lot of delicious things available for me (like sweet potatoes or nutritional yeast).

No problem having oatmeal 3 times a day if you want! I think one of things Kate was saying is that as long as we are eating the good whole starches, we can re-think what counts as breakfast, or snacks, or a meal!

Maybe, being in Brazil, you could find what the main whole starch is where you are! It could be something different and exciting!

Studies requiring participants to eat 20 fruit a day show no weight gain and perhaps even the opposite. Fruit is not calorically dense, and do you know anyone who eats fruit all day that is fat? Look at this video by Michael Greger summarizing a couple recent studies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vylO5IpHh10&t=9m15s

It's funny, but I've come to the exact opposite conclusion about fruit: it really is candy for me, and I could sit around and eat it -- whether hungry or not, and always past comfortably full. Simple sugars really do signal some bodies to eat, eat, eat!

So I guess it's different for different people!

Anyone who has a caveman-like response to simple sugars like I do, probably needs to be able to say to themselves, "Fruit is just nature's candy. A few pieces is fine, but stay within a level that maintains your level of physical comfort and level of self-respect."

In other words, anyone who eats fruits past the point of comfortably full -- maybe that's a pattern that you'll want to reign in. Also, anyone who eats fruits in quantities that sabotage their efforts to change the shape or size or their body -- maybe that's also a pattern that you'll want to rein in.

Play with it, and see where you fit in! There is a full spectrum of how people respond to simple sugars, from those who scrape frosting off of their cake because it is too sweet for their liking, to those who will compulsively polish off a jar of frosting if it is in their vicinity. Personally, I am the latter camp (I have eaten, yes -- eaten, a whole jar of ginger preserves in a 24-hour period, because I just kept going back to it at various points in the course of the day. I will consume as much simple sugars as I make available for my own consumption, whether that's strawberries or marshmallows) and always in need of healthy boundaries!

For me personally the scale started to move down only when I gave up on fruits. I still have a banana may be once in three days but not more than that. Two fruits a day (usually it was an apple and banana) would stop my weight loss. I don't gain but I don't lose either. If I snack on carrots or even eat another serving of oatmeal my weight starts to move in the right direction again.