It’s getting to that time of year when our thoughts turn to making new year’s resolutions. Research from the start of this year showed that for some it’s all about staying fit and healthy, for others it’s about enjoying life to the fullest and spending more time with family and friends, but at number two on the top ten’s new year’s resolution list is… to lose weight.

If this is going to be one of your new year’s resolutions for 2016, I’ll show you below Why Following A Whole Food Plant-Based Diet Will Help You To Lose Weight.

Many people wonder how they can lose weight with eating so much food, others have been told that following a whole food, plant-based diet can help them to regain their health and keep them healthy.

Others have been told that you can’t lose weight following it and are puzzled at why you don’t count calories or control your portion size. Today I’m going to outline Why Following A Whole Food Plant-Based Diet Will Help You To Lose Weight.

It’s surprisingly easy once you get into the swing of it, and what’s so brilliant about this way of eating is that it’s a lifestyle change, for well, life. This is not a quick fix that lasts for only a short time.

This is all about changing your eating habits permanently.

Once you start to see the benefits of eating like this there will be no going back.

Such as…

You’ll get the body you want, you’ll have more energy, you’ll sleep better and wake up feeling rested and in a good mood, you’ll have fewer aches and pains, you’ll be able to move and get around much better, you’ll find it easier to breathe and you’ll have an improved immune system.

Not to mention being able to fit into clothes you thought you’d never be able to wear again!

You’ll be able to lose weight, but you’ll also be able to keep it off for good and continue to lose it.

Does it sound too good to be true?

Well, just look at all the large-scale observational studies that have shown consistently that vegetarians and vegans have lower body mass indexes and significantly lower rates of obesity compared with people who eat animal products.

Studies[1] have shown that whole food, plant based diets are very effective for weight loss without counting calories or restricting your portion size.[2]

Not forgetting the huge amounts of anecdotal evidence over the years from people who have transformed their lives by following a whole food, plant based diet. (Check out my Facebook page to see the case studies I post.)

Here are five reasons why following a whole food, plant based diet will help you to lose weight:

1.    It speeds up your metabolism.

If you think you’ve got a slow metabolism – in other words your body doesn’t turn food into energy as quickly as you would like it to, then you may be surprised to learn that by sticking entirely to eating whole, plant foods and keeping all oils to a minimum you will not only see your calorie-burning speed up after you’ve eaten, but you’ll experience an extra burn after you’ve eaten for three hours or more.

Eating whole, plant foods can readjust your cells so that calorie burn after a meal is noticeably faster.

2.    You crowd out high fat foods and replace them with healthful plant foods.

Animals such as cows, chicken, turkey, pigs, goats, lambs, fish store extra calories as fat. When you eat an animal you eat their fat too. Just one gram of animal fat packs in nine calories!

Compare that with healthful plant foods such as potatoes (yes potatoes are good for you as long as you don’t smother them with cheese, butter, cream, chilli beef etc), beans, wholemeal/wheat bread and pasta. There’s no animal fat in these foods so they only have four calories per gram. That’s less than half the calories that you find in animal fat!

3.    You fill up on fibre packed food that has virtually no calories.

By crowding out the high fat animal food with healthful plant foods, you’ll feel more satisfied. Why? Because fibre, which is only found in plant foods, not animal foods, holds water, so it tricks your stomach into thinking that you’ve eaten lots. It tells your brain that you’re full long before you’ve eaten too many calories and it keeps you feeling fuller for longer.

4.    Your body gets all the nutrients it needs from whole plant foods so it makes your body run inefficiently which, believe it or not is what you need your body to do to lose weight.

As Dr Barnard says:

The body treats carbohydrates differently than fat calories. The difference comes with how the body stores the energy of different food types. It is very inefficient for the body to store the energy of carbohydrates as body fat—it burns 23 percent of the calories of the carbohydrate—but fat is converted easily into body fat. Only 3 percent of the calories in fat are burned in the process of conversion and storage.[3] It is the type of food, not so much the quantity, that affects body fat the most.[4]

5.    Your taste buds will change over the first three weeks that you start following a whole food, plant based diet so that sugar dense food like chocolate, biscuits, cookies, cakes etc will become less appealing.

Not only will you lose weight eating like this, but you’ll also see other positive health changes such as improved digestion and regularity,

Following a whole food, plant-based diet is not a flash in the pan diet that promises instant weight loss. This is a long lasting lifestyle change for sustainable weight loss.

There’s no meal replacement drinks to take, weight-loss pills or supplements that promise quick weight loss.

This is all about eating whole plant based foods, as close to their natural state as possible with a minimum amount of processing. Cooking from scratch, rather than fast food.

It’s all about changing your eating habits permanently.

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Have you checked out my new Plant-Based Weight Course? Designed to teach you step by step how to lose weight by following a whole food, plant-based diet each module will empower you with the knowledge that will inspire and motivate you to lose weight and keep it off permanently. Check it out now!

If you want to switch to following a whole food,plant-based diet but aren’t interested in losing weight, then my new 23 Day Plant-Based Switch Course is for you.

Designed to take you by the hand and lead you step by step over 23 days to switch from your usual diet to following a whole food, plant based diet it’ll give you all the information you need!

 

Sources:

[1] Rosell M et al. Weight gain over 5 years in 21,966 meat-eating, fish-eating, vegetarian, and vegan men and women in EPIC-Oxford. Int J Obes 2006 Sep;30(9):1389–96.
Halkjær J et al. Intake of total, animal and plant protein and subsequent changes in weight or waist circumference in European men and women: the Diogenes project. Int J Obes 2011 Aug;35(8):1104–13.
Hernández-Alonso P et al. High dietary protein intake is associated with an increased body weight and total death risk. Clin Nutr 2015 Apr 7. pii: S0261-5614(15)00091–6.
Vergnaud AC et al. Macronutrient composition of the diet and prospective weight change in participants of the EPIC-PANACEA study. PLoS ONE 2013;8:e57300
[2] Berkow SE et al. Vegetarian diets and weight status. Nutr Rev 2006 Apr;64(4):175–88. Barnard ND. The effects of a low-fat, plant-based dietary intervention on body weight, metabolism, and insulin sensitivity. Am J Med 2005 Sep;118(9):991–7.
[3] Flatt JP. Energetics of intermediary metabolism. In: Gatrow JS, Halliday D, eds. Substrate and Energy Metabolism in Man. London: John Libbey and Co., 1985;58-69.
[4]  Dreon DM, Frey-Hewitt B, Ellsworth N, Williams PT, Terry RB, Wood PD. Dietary fat: carbohydrate ratio and obesity in middle-aged men. Am J Clin Nutr. 1988;47:995-1000.