Many health guru’s will tell you that you can have all of your favorite foods in moderation, and you don’t have to count calories. Maybe you orderd something healthy at dinner only to have a friend or family member say you could have something else (unhealthy) if you only eat in moderation.

Give me a break. If your health goals involve losing weight, you have to count calories if you want consistent results. Living in the land of “moderation” will only make you fatter. Let me explain why eating in moderation does not work.

A Little Adds Up

Let us say you are going to have your favorite foods in moderation. Which is the same thing as reasonable portions every one in a while. Consider the following:

Each one of the above on their own is no big deal. Could you look through that list and say you only have one of those a month? In a week?

More than likely you eat all of those things every week or month. You are eating reasonable portions of your favorite foods every once in a while. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Well, in a months time you would have eaten 8 slices of pizza, 8 beers, 4 fast food hamburgers, 4 donuts, 4 bowls of popcorn, 1 slice of office cake, and a big plate of pasta. Does it still sound like your life of moderation is a healthy lifestyle?

Believe it or not, that scenario is conservative. If you take a close look at your diet and you may find yourself eating far more than you realize under the disguise of “moderation”. I’m willing to bet you are combining some of those items in a single meal.

What Moderation Really Means

While I have painted a grim picture of moderation, it only represents how most people view food when eating in moderation. What moderation should represent to you is eating ONE favorite food every once in a while (once a week).

This can be flexible depending on your goals. If you are losing weight, “once in a while” should mean once a week to you. If you are active, healthy, and maintaining your weight, you can get a way with a reasonable portion of your favorite food couple times a week.

Still Need to Count the Calories

If you choose to eat your favorite foods every once in a while, you still need to count the calories and keep track of it in your food log. Staying under your target calories for the day will limit the impact a large calorie meal will have on your results.

Don’t forget if you eat more calories than your body can use over the next few hours, it will get stored as fat. This is why it’s important to limit your portion sizes of your favorite foods.

My advice is to eat your favorite foods while tracking the calories. This may help limit the amount you will eat and keep you on track towards the goals of your diet. “Moderation” without keeping track of what you are eating will only make you fatter.

What do you think?

Most clear thinking people understand they don’t know everything and are open to learning something new. There is always more we can learn about weight loss. Despite that, there is some knowledge that people hold on to as gospel. Many try to be open to a new way of thinking, but tend to revert back to their original way of doing things. Today, we will take a closer look at how culture views dieting and eating. If you have trouble losing weight or simply want to learn something new about nutrition, read on!

As the great Yoda would say:

You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned

Much of what we learn from our parents, school, or watching the television, seems to entrench itself into our cultures and become “fact”. In reality, much of what we know is just learned habits. Habits can be broken so that new and better habits can be put into their place. All we have to do is realize the popular methods may not be the best way and be open to relearning what we think we know.

Eat Less to Lose Weight – WRONG

Eating less is widely accepted as a way to lose weight. While generally true, eating less to lose weight is NOT a fact. Many overweight or obese people don’t eat more calories than healthier people. They simply eat their calories at the wrong time(s) of the day, or perhaps eat more calories than their daily activity requires (which is not necessarily a large number of calories). For these folks, eating less may actually slow their metabolism further which will eventually lead to them needing even fewer calories to maintain their current weight. This cycle of lowering calories to lose weight cannot continue; from there weight gain is really the only option.

Eat More and You Will Gain Weight – WRONG

You can gain weight if you eat too much or too often. It’s NOT a fact. There are plenty of people in the world that can eat more calories and not gain weight because they are active. Eating unprocessed foods with a low calorie density will allow a person to consume much more throughout the day without gaining weight.

Many people realize that activity determines if they can eat more and “get away with it”. Those same people might exercise a great deal and complain about their performance not improving. Most of the time they are not getting enough calories to fuel their body so they can take their exercise to the next level. But when someone suggests eating more calories, they refuse because they don’t want to gain weight. It’s a programmed response that has become habit, even if they acknowledge that eating more food can be beneficial, they won’t be able to do it.

Everyone Should Eat X Calories – WRONG

There are an endless number of diets pushed on late night infommericals that will tell you how many calories to eat in a day. Every nutrition label on every item of food in the grocery store states “… based on a 2000 calorie diet” which leads many to believe this is the proper number of calories to eat. This is NOT a fact.

No two people are the same. Each person has their own special calorie needs. If there is a diet program that tells you the ideal number of calories to eat, they are likely wrong and the diet will fail. Sure, there are diets that say eat 800 calories a day, such as the ridiculous cookie diet, then you will lose weight. These diets are designed to get you quick results so they can sell more units. You will almost always gain the weight back after your metabolism slows down in response to the extremely low calories.

You must determine your own calorie needs in order to be successful in your health and fitness efforts.

You Have to Eat “Rabbit Food” to Lost Weight - WRONG

While eating more vegetables is a good idea and part of a balanced eating plan, they only make up a small portion of the calories you need. Foods that most rabbits would avoid are necessary on any good diet plan. While you will lose weight eating only vegetables, the extreme low calories will trash your metabolism to the point where eating just about anything will cause you to gain weight.

Being Fat (or Skinny) is in my Genes – PROBABLY NOT

While there are people that are predisposed to a certain body type, it does not mean you are genetically doomed to being fat. Only a very small number of people have genetic issues that cause them to be overweight, most likely the result of regulation issues with their hormones. Most everyone else is the result of following the poor eating habits of your family and friends.

You’ll get better results in your health if you stop blaming your genes for your failures.

Six Meals a Day is Better Suited for Athletes – WRONG

Anyone that has heard of the Olympics has also heard of Michael Phelps. This guy, as well as many athletes, must eat an extreme amount of calories due to their high levels of activity. Eating many meals a day works for athletes only because they can’t eat all of their calories in just a few meals.

You don’t have to be a world-class athlete to eat five or six meals a day. You only need to scale back the calories. You can benefit from feeding your body the correct amount of calories to fuel your activity throughout the day, just like an athlete.

Diet Soda is Good For Me – WRONG

Diet soda’s are the go-to drink for anyone who wants to cut down on their calories. These drinks taste good and are often with zero calories, which make it easy to incorporate into a diet plan. But…

There are numerous studies in regard to the health related issues associated with diet soft drinks. There are statistics that show those who drink diet sodas are almost certain to become obese. There are numerous factors that contribute to this, but diet soda does not help. If you consume ANY diet drinks during the day, you have a 36.5% chance of becoming obese. If you drink two cans a day, you chances of becoming obese jumps up to a staggering 57.1%.

If you care in the least bit about your health, drop the diet soda.

Eating a Natural Balanced Meal Every Three Hours Will Increase My Energy Levels and Allow Me to Eat More Food is Exactly What I Need to Achieve My Health and Fitness Goals - TRUE!

Yes, this is a shameless plug, but it is true.  

Three meals a day is programmed into our limbic brain. After decades of eating on the schedule I am suddenly asking you to double the number of times you eat in a day. No matter how much sense it makes on the surface, when it comes time to eat, you will have a difficult time convincing yourself you need to eat a second breakfast, second lunch and perhaps second dinner.

Resist the bad habits and focus on the reasons you should start eating every three hours.

It’s All About Forming New Habits

Making lifestyle changes in order to improve your health is all about breaking old habits and forming new ones to replace them. Steve Pavlina runs a personal development blog and wrote an article titled 30 Days to Success that describes forming new habits in just a month. On one of my favorite blogs, Zenhabits.net, there is an article that offers advice in regard to forming new habits.

There are many myths regarding dieting and nutrition that we regard as fact, but in the end is not true. Do you have any diet myths or habit forming tips you would like to share?

Mmmm, cookies. Who does not love cookies? They come in any shape, color and flavor imaginable. Without a doubt, there is a cookie tailored to the needs of even the pickiest of eaters. These delightfully evil treats are a key contributor to the obesity epidemic in the world today. When somebody, a doctor in this case, comes up with a diet based around the cookie, it’s going to get the attention of every cookie lover looking to lose weight.

As a result, the aptly named “Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet” has received a great deal of media attention. No doubt you have heard of it. Now it’s my turn to review the Cookie Diet and whether it should used in the spirit of eating every three hours, or avoided entirely.

Dismissed it Because of the Name

The first time I heard the phrase “Cookie Diet” was a few years ago. I immediately tuned out after hearing the phrase. Back then, I was an obese man still trying to figure out how to lose weight. The idea that a diet can be centered on cookies was outrageous to me. I tuned-out and forgot all about the Cookie Diet, that is until a review of the Cookie Diet popped up on the blog Lazy Man and Health.

About the Cookies

Dr. Siegal chose cookies because he was looking for a snack that was portable, durable and does not require refrigeration. It really is a good idea if you can get your head around that your diet will consist mostly of cookies.

These are not your traditional cookies consisting of large amounts of sugar, chocolate or peanut butter. The Lazy Mandescribed the cookie as nothing more than a “nutrition bar”. I agree with that assessment in the sense that the cookies Dr. Siegal is pushing are not traditional cookies, but I do believe them to be cookies in the sense they are a round, flat-ish and baked product.

I have not personally sampled these cookies, but there is some indication that they probably don’t taste great. There is very little information on their web site. Most useful information is scattered throughout the Cookie Diet Blog. One snippet caught my attention:

If you’re serious about finding truly delicious cookies, or weight loss through magic and miracles, then you probably aren’t serious about doing what is necessary to achieve a healthy and sustainable weight. If that’s the case, you might want to wait until you’re ready. The last thing you need is another diet failure.

Wow. Dr. Siegal indicates if you are looking for a deliciouscookie, you are not serious about losing weight. I agree that one needs to be in the correct mindset in order to lose weight, but he can’t blame people for asking if his cookies taste good. People want the Cookie Diet to be about eating the tasty and unhealthy cookies that we know and love. Maybe Dr. Siegal should have called the diet the “Healthy Cookie Diet”. But if he had done that, his sales would be much lower.

The blog goes on to say “Delicious foods make people overeat and get fat“. I generally disagree. I’m more from the camp that believes having unclear goals and not eating enough calories on a diet will lead to overeating because of a starvation response. I will concede that in a general sense, it’s difficult to eat only one delicious cookie. I’d rather have 2.

Are the Cookies Healthy?

Possibly. There are numerous references to these cookies containing some amount of protein. If they don’t taste ”delicious” then there is probably a limited amount of sugar, if any. The Cookie Diet web site does not provide any information about the nutritional content of its products, which includes drinkable shakes. I’d imagine there is a nutritional label located directly on the product packaging. If anyone has access to one of these labels, please send me the information and I will update this article.

The site does indicate you will eat six cookies a day and they will total about 500 calories. My college education allows me to conclude the cookies are just around 83 calories each. With so few calories there is likely little fat and sugar in the product. There may also be good starchy carbs in addition to the protein in their secret cookie formula.

I don’t think Dr. Siegal is including protein in the cookie for the benefits protein provides, but rather protein has been known to make a person feel fuller and more satisfied. It makes sense that if you are only going to give someone 80-85 calories to last them a few hours, giving them protein may help that person feel less hungry than if you were to give them the same calories in carbohydrates or fat.

Even with the limited information, some might determine the cookies can be called “healthy” based on the fact there are only ~83 calories. There is little chance of gaining weight on these cookies; you would be hard pressed to gain weight even if you scarfed your entire day’s supply in one sitting.

What the Diet Really Involves

The goal of the cookie is to provide a very small number of calories to keep your stomach from shriveling up like a prune during the day. From what I gather, the cookies are only there in an attempt to keep you from eating anything else during the day. I can imagine followers tearing into their 83 calorie cookie as if they were on crack struggling to get their next hit.

The real food comes in the evening when you get to have a 300 calorie dinner consisting of “six ounces of lean chicken, fish or turkey and one cup of non-starchy, green vegetables“, according to the Cookie Diet Blog. This 300 calorie dinner will be your primary source of nourishment for the entire day, and there are no cookies for dessert.

I can’t argue with that type of dinner, it is a good balance of lean protein and fibrous carbohydrates. My problem is a dieting person will have to go hungry (even with the cookies) during their most active hours, which for most people is the morning and afternoon.

Realities of the Cookie Diet

The Cookie Diet is an intriguing idea, but I feel it suitable for a very small number of people. Here are my conclusions about the diet: 

In my opinion, I believe the cookie diet to be more about selling cookies under the disguise of a diet, rather than the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. The Cookie Diet is not a lifestyle. The Cookie Diet web site is only pushing cookies and does nothing to educate their customers about weight loss. I had to piece together tid-bits of information scattered around their site just to get an idea of what the diet is about. Perhaps they include some dietary information with their products, but it would seem to me that is something they would mention on their site.

Obviously, I do not recommend the diet. There is no reason to starve while losing weight. Take the Cookie Diet dinner, which does not include cookies, and eat it four or five times a day. You won’t be so hungry and you’ll probably be at a calorie deficit.

Have any of you tried the Cookie Diet or known someone that has? Were they successful in losing weight and keeping it off?

Have you ever heard a family member or friend talk about starting a new diet and eating only “healthy” food such as salads, fruits, and, non-fat yogurt only to find a short while later they are unable to keep on the diet plan because they feel as if they are starving? Perhaps you have experienced this yourself?

It’s generally considered common knowledge that we must cut calories in order to lose weight. It’s also common knowledge that salads, fruits, and non-fat yogurts have less calories than pizza, hamburgers, and ice cream. So, if we want to lose weight it makes sense that we replace the high-calorie foods with low calorie alternatives. However…

If you eat three healthy meals a day you will only succeed in starving yourself.

While we may lose weight by doing this, it’s difficult to maintain a diet that consists of three low calorie meals over the long-term. Many of us will tend to binge on one of our daily meals, or perhaps the starvation pains kick-in after a couple weeks. Even though some weight loss has occurred, the weight will often return once the old eating habits take over. This is the diet roller-coaster.

If you can relate, take comfort in knowing that your chances of succeeding with such a diet is extremely small. In fact, had you kept it up for a long time you may have caused yourself some additional health problems. Failure is almost unavoidable since your body has mechanisms in place to prevent you from starving.

The weight loss results from eating in this manner are not worth the pain and mental distress that comes with borderline starvation. I’m not sure about you, but I’d rather be fat and happy than thin and miserable by eating in this manner. Life is far too short. The simple fact of the matter is there are not enough calories in three meals of healthy food to keep your body functioning as it should.

Unless you recently won a hotdog eating championship and/or have an unnaturally large stomach, it’s unrealistic to eat your required number of calories each day by only eating three healthy meals. This is where eating every three hours enters the picture.

Eating five or six healthy meals a day enables you to lose weight while practically stuffing yourself.

Generally speaking, good natural health foods are lower in calories than their processed counterparts. 300 calories of healthy food is very filling compared to the 300 calories of a hamburger (small part of a whole burger) which will leave you hungry for more.

As I already mentioned, the 300 calorie healthy meal won’t cut it when three meals will only total 900 calories. You won’t last long like that, especially men. However, try eating 300 calories every few hours and you’ll be getting 1500 to 1800 calories a day depending on if you go with five or six meals.  As long as these calorie numbers are less than the calories needed to maintain your current weight, you will lose weight while eating every three hours!  See, no need to starve yourself!

Would you rather eat three healthy meals and starve, or eat healthy meals every three hours and still lose weight?

This is the fourth article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

As I mentioned in “You Must Count Calories if You Want to Be Healthy“, keeping a food log is essential to ensuring that you are not eating too few or too many calories each day. This is especially important if you need to lose weight or train for a sport. Having a log aids in keeping your meals properly balanced and your daily calories on track. Knowing what to track in your food log can be a daunting task for the beginner. Today we’ll look at the key information you need to take from nutritional labels and put into your food log.

Start reading nutrition labels… today.

The nutritional labels on food are there for a reason. Don’t put anything into your body unless you can read and understand the label. Even if you end up eating a high calorie, nutrient deficient food, at least you know what you are eating and the consequences it will have on your daily plan.

Start reading the nutritional labels on everything, preferably before you put it into your shopping cart. Temptations are much easier to curb when you are still at the grocery store. You are far more likely to eat a “bad” food if you already paid for it. Nothing should go into your shopping cart unless you have read the nutrition label and decided if that particular food can be put into your Eat Every Three diet plan. Make reading the nutrition labels a habit.

What to track in the log.

In your log, you want to track the “sides” of the meal or main ingredients. Do not only track the combined calories of the entire meal unless you absolutely must. Keep track of the following in the log:

The name of the food would be its own row in your spreadsheet. The other information should be column titles. Armed with this information, you can add up the information from each of the columns to get your grand totals for the meal.

The reasons for tracking the nutrient information in addition to calories will become useful later when we get to meal planning.

Make a spreadsheet, use a notebook, or an online log.

Creating a simple spreadsheet to to log your food and the nutritional content is the most convenient method of tracking your calories and nutrients. If you are not savvy with spreadsheet programs such as Excel, then you can use a notebook to write the information down. Use whatever method that you will consistently utilize. The advantage with Excel is that it can provide an automated way to add columns together, that way everything in your meal will be added up for you.

My log consists of two spreadsheets. I use one sheet to track the meals, the other is a list of the common foods and their nutritional content that I routinely buy and eat. This way, I can cut and paste a line of nutritional content from the food list to my meal plan without having to memorize or reread the labels on the food. This works well for me, but you may find another method that is convenient for you.

There are free online food logs available from a number of places. I personally have not used them, but I know others that have. Each of them have their own food database (which may or may not match up to the food you eating) so you can easily populate your log with the relevant information. I am not sure if they all track the information listed above. Feel free to check them out and see! Try online logs such as:

I do not use online logs because I’m too lazy to take the extra step of logging into an account. However, there is the added advantage of accessing your food log from any computer with Internet access.

Get in the habit.

Habits do not form overnight. I believe there are studies that show a habit takes three weeks to form. Tracking all of the food you eat will be slow and time consuming in the beginning. Before too long, keeping your food log up-to-date will be second nature. If you are serious about achieving personal health goals, keeping a food log is a must.

Do you have a handy method or tricks for keeping a food log updated?

This is the third article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

Many people believe the goal of counting calories is to count as few calories as humanly possible in your food. I’m sure there are diet plans out there that advocate this barbaric practice, but not here at EatEveryThree.com. Today you’ll learn that you must count calories not only to avoid eating too much, but also to avoid eating too little.

Have a goal.

If you have physical goals to meet, such as losing fat weight, you must count the calories in everything you put in your mouth at every meal until you reach your goal. This usually involves keeping some sort of log of your foods and portion sizes. Yes, food logs are inconvenient, but we are talking about your health, which should be of concern to you. Weight loss can be achieved without keeping a log, but it will take longer or you may never reach your goal.

Uncontrolled calorie intake will either leave you landing low or high of your required calorie target. Both circumstances will have negative consequences on your physical health and your ability to lose or gain weight.

If you simply want to maintain your weight, you should be at least counting calories in your head to make sure you are in the ballpark of your target calorie range.

Don’t eat too few calories.

People often do not think of this as a problem. One of the reasons you should be counting calories is to ensure that you are eating enough, and often this means eating more healthy food at each of your meals. Keep in mind that many healthy foods are not calorie dense. As a result, you may stuff yourself with healthy food but still be short on your required calories.

If you do not eat enough calories, you may lose fat for a little while. Eventually, your body will stop losing weight as your metabolism slows due to the lack of energy (calories). Reduced metabolism makes losing fat weight difficult.

The only cure for slow metabolism is to eat more healthy calories. It seems backwards to popular opinion, but I promise it works if you have been in calorie deficit for a while. The trick is figuring out how many calories YOU require.

Don’t eat too many calories. 

If your calories are too high, the common side-effect is weight-gain in the form of fat. Regardless of whether you are eating healthy foods or not, you may still be eating too many calories in any given day. Remember, it is possible to eat too much healthy food and gain weight.

Eating more calories than your body requires is not necessarily a bad thing. These excess calories can be put to good use. For example, weight training on a regular schedule will cause some of those excess calories to build muscle, which increases metabolism. The type of foods you eat will also contribute to how well this process works.

Eat the calories YOUR body needs.

There is not a magic number of calories I can tell you to eat. Any diet program that tells you there is a perfect number of calories is lying. I can say a man should eat 2800 calories a day to maintain his weight, but that would probably only be accurate for 1 in 8 men. The number depends greatly on his activity level and body composition (muscle mass and fat). Don’t get caught up in statistics that show calorie averages. As far as I’m concerned, the average American is unhealthy and overweight. You should not want to be average.

There are formulas available to help men and women determine how many calories they require based on body composition and activity. The difficulty with the numbers is that the multiplier for the activity level is subjective. Most of the time, these numbers need adjustment, because they only provide a number of calories as a starting point.

As a starting point, men can look at 2200 and women 1800 for weight maintenance. Expect to adjust these numbers based on your results. If you are eating healthy food that adds up to the target calories (+/- 50), you should know within a week or two if those numbers are too high, or too little based on weight gain or loss. 

The CalorieKing has a basic weight maintenance calorie calculator that I found somewhat accurate. You may need to get a couple of calorie calculations by adjusting the activity profile if you feel you fall between categories.

If you want to lose weight, shave off a few hundred calories. Do not cut calories too much or your metabolism will slow down. Women might want to only shave 100 calories at a time. If you go too low, then you may be literally starving yourself to death. You will still get great results by cutting small amounts of calories.

Check your weight each week, if you are going down then don’t change a thing. If you stayed the same or gone up, adjust accordingly. If you distribute your calories properly throughout the day (eat every three hours), you will have more energy and get better weight loss results than you ever have before.

There are more advanced methods of calorie calculations that I will cover at a future date. For now, get accustomed to counting your calories for every meal. Before long, counting calories will be second nature.

In my next article, I’ll discuss the specifics of tracking your food in a log and planning daily meals.

Do you have any calorie counting tips or tricks to share?

While out to dinner with family or friends have you ever ordered a chicken caesar salad (or any healthy meal) only to have someone yell out “Are you on a diet or something?”.

Maybe you had a fat-burger for lunch and you feel like something light for dinner. Perhaps you are trying to lose weight. The practical reasons for your meal choice does not matter to society. If you eat healthy, then you must be on some diet and people feel the urge to pick at those perceived to be “on a diet”.

This behavior is the result of society giving special meaning to to the word “diet”. I use the word often here at EatEveryThree.com and feel the need to clarify the usage.

Let us analyze the word. I turned to the online edition of Merriam-Webster to provide a definition to “diet”:

a: food and drink regularly provided or consumed b: habitual nourishment c: the kind and amount of food prescribed for a person or animal for a special reason d: a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one’s weight <going on a diet> 

As you can see, there are four definitions there. Judging by the first three it’s safe to say that every living organism is on some sort of diet. Some nourishment must be consumed in order to survive. Most people generally eat the same types of foods week-to-week. This means everybody is “on a diet”.

The last definition was probably inserted due to how society views the word. The irritating part to me is the “eating and drinking sparingly“. It does not have much relation to the other definitions. It also implies that when you are not eating sparingly that one’s weight will increase. It’s simply not always true.

For future reference, my use of the word on EatEveryThree.com will be in relation to the a, b, and c definitions. I believe people should be on a habitual diet of balanced natural foods that are consistently consumed every three hours. There is no diet to be “on”, as that translates to some day being “off” from healthy eating.

I could be making a big deal out of nothing. Perhaps I’m more bothered by the negative connotations associated with eating in order to lose weight. It was not long ago when overweight people were embarrassed to order unhealthy food. These days it seems people are embarrassed to order healthy meals and are sometimes criticized for doing so.

What are your thoughts? Am I getting carried away over nothing?