Six Simple Rules....and a Menu Plan.

The Duh! Diet can be reduced to five simple rules and three simple meal plans.

The Duh! Rules.

1. First, do no harm. That is: eat things that are good for you rather than bad. In food terms, this translates into: drink water and water-filled foods.
2. Fill up on less calorie-dense foods: fruits and vegetables. This is the first rule made more concrete. Fruits and vegetables are good for you, damn good. It's hard to believe they aren't. They're packed with nutrients and very little calories.
3. Get a good amount of low-fat or good-fat protein: low-fat dairy, chicken, lower-fat beef, fish. This speaks for itself. Your body needs protein, and it's especially important if you're eating less--to spare muscle from being lost.
4. Limit your fat intake. Read labels. Choose foods with less fat. Some nuts with healthy oils--walnuts, almonds, peanuts--are probably an exception. But in general, less fat means fewer calories.
5. Heavily limit or avoid altogether heavily processed foods. Yes, this means candy, cake, white flour, etc. It's not that 'carbs' are bad. It's just that the refining process removes so much nutritional value and concentrates the calories into these foods. A single slice of bread may have over 150 calories, whereas a lovely apple might have only 110--plus lots of fiber and water to fill you up.
   
6. Integrate filling and healthful whole grains and legumes (yes, beans) very moderately as you find out how many you can eat.
   

That's it! It's that simple.

What does it mean in terms of everday eating?

The Duh! Diet Menu Plan.

Eat three meals and three snacks: breakfast, lunch and dinner, snacks in between, plus a third as dessert.

Every meal and every snack begins with a glass of room-temperature water. Just drink it right down. Your body needs it. It will fill you up.

Each snack consists of: one piece of fruit and one serving of low-fat protein: some low-fat yogurt (with as little sugar as possible), a nonfat latte, some low-fat cottage cheese, even just an ounce of cheese (higher in fat, but it's a very small quantity.)

For lunch and dinner, eat:

a softball-sized serving of vegetables,
a tennis ball-sized serving of protein,
a pingpong ball-sized serving of whole grains,
1 teaspoon of fat.

That's it. It couldn't be simpler. Cooking the vegetables with no fat, you can probably add another serving, too, and still not add too many calories.

Breakfast is a little different.

For breakfast eat:

a tennis ball-sized serving of whole grains,
one to two servings of protein--e.g., a glass of nonfat milk,
an egg, 1/2 c. low-fat cottage cheese, etc.
optionally: 1 teaspon of oil to cook the eggs or butter the grains.

That's it. I eat a small boal of oatmeal and a non-fat latte, plus a hard-boiled egg.

This comes out to about 1400-1800 calories per day--great for weight loss but perfectly adequate for nutrition.

Assumptions.

This all assumes you are fairly sedentary or want to lose weight quickly.

If you are more active--if you stand or walk all day at work--you can add a piece of fruit at breakfast and add another portion of protein.

You can also add more whole grains and legumes. For instance, five low-fat Triscuits added to a snack adds only about 100 calories.

Simplicity.

It isn't complicated. It's worked for me.

I'm still counting calories to make sure I stay within reasonable limits. But then I cook a lot of meals at home and so can weigh and choose everything. Eating on the go, it's better to have a game plan.

I eat 1400 calories when I'm sedentary. But when I exercise, I can eat 2400 to 2500 calories. And days between exercising, I stick to 1800 to 2000 calories.

This amounts to adding some extra oil--I generally don't cook with it at all and so avoid those calories which I can then use for more fruits and vegetables.

Plus I add in some grains--such as fresh-baked, fat-free whole grain corn muffins--or splurge on a bit more cheese and even a few pieces of candy.

Favorite treat? A Fudgsicle has about 70 calories. You can't beat it.

--E. R. O'Neill

I Lost 20 Pounds in Two Months!

I'm Happy!

Sorry for the exclamation points.

But I've been following the Duh! Diet since January 6th. It's now March 1st. That's less than two months--much less, considering February is so short.

The results?

I lost 20 pounds in two months.

I went from 164 pounds to 143.6 pounds.

That's 12% of my original body weight (12.4% to be exact).

On Atkins, I never got below 150.

That's a BMI (Body Mass Index) of 22.5--down from 25.7. (A BMI of above 25 is considered 'overweight.')

This is kind of my target weight, although looking at my body, I realize I could lose a tiny bit more pudge around the middle.

Yes, it is a tad perfectionistic.

The more important thing is: I want to keep eating healthfully and see where that times me.

The Real Truth: Exercise Helps.

I confess: it's not just the Duh! Diet.

I added a Duh! Exercise Regime.

That is equally uncomplicated.

I go to the gym three to four times a week.

There I light some weights for five or ten minutes, just focusing on one body area: abs, shoulders, pecs, legs.

Then I do some cardio training for 30 to 35 minutes. Or I may do a lower intensity for a longer period--60 to 65 minutes.

I try to adjust up and down, to take it easier one day and worker harder another, to keep my body not knowing what's happening.

The cardio machines I use measure my hear rate, and I use the heart rate to target my effort.

My resting heart rate lying down is around 75 beats per minute, so I target 125-145 as the zone I need to reach to give myself a decent calorie- and fat-burning workout.

At 140-145 I work up a good sweat but am not exhausted.

Sometimes I don't lift the weights.

Sometimes if I'm tired, I take a long walk instead (at least 30 minutes), as I find that soothing.

And that is it.

The Good Side of Exercise: Eating More.

Of course, when I exercised more, I needed to eat more.

I could really tell the difference between "I would like to eat more" at 1400 calories a day, and "I absolutely need to eat more" when I had exercised. There is hunger and there is hunger. It's good to know the difference.

Now I can eat 2400 to 2500 calories a day and still be losing weight and fat.

Eating more need not mean eating worse. Partly I simply eat more of the same good food.

But I am able to do things like saute vegetables in oil or have more complex carbs--such as low-fat corn muffins, more oatmeal in the morning, cereal as a snack, etc. And yes, I can also eat a few pieces of candy or a bit more chocolate or nuts.

Results.

Using the Duh! Diet for a month, I lost 14 pounds.

Adding in the Duh! Exercise Regime for another month, I lost another 6 pounds.

But dieting I had only gone from 20% body fat to 18%. Adding exercise I went from 18.3% body fat to 16.4%--that's between Feburary 8 and March 1st.

The point is: it is not complicated or time-consuming.

Eat less, eat more healthfully, exercise more. Do it reasonably. Any reasonable program will probably work, within limits.

--E. R. O'Neill

Sorting through the Madness.

There are so many diets arguing what seem like contradictory ideas that it seems impossible to sort out the mad onslaught.

But despite the surface variety, there are really not such huge differences amongst diets.

That is one of the Big Secrets that can allow you to diet successfully--to choose any diet or no specific diet and still to eat better, feel better, lose weight.

The surface variety--low fat diets, low carb diets, zone diets, etc.--covers up some pretty simple structures.

How To Analyze a Diet.

Basically, every diet has some theory, a method, strategies and tips.

A diet's theory is it's actual understanding or explanation of how weight loss occurs--hence of why people become overweight.

Here there's a small amount of variety. Atkins et al. believe people eat too many carbs, or, on the Sears/Zone theory, the wrong kinds of carbs in the wrong proportions.

The Sugar Busters similarly feel that people eat the wrong carbs--too many refined carbohydrates, sugar, white flour, potatoes, "white foods."

Most theories of weight gain and loss are pretty simple. The theory is: if you eat too much food or too much of the wrong types of food, you will gain excess weight.

Hence most theories of dieting boil down to: eat less.

Atkins is remarkable for having a very different theory of how your metabolism works, but some studies suggest that people eat fewer calories on Atkins, too, despite all the fat. So many carbs cut out lots of sugar, and the fat is very satisfying, so people end up simply reducing calories.

Does it matter which theory is true? I suppose it does--if you are a scientist. Are you? I'm not. So I don't care why I lose weight and feel and look good, I just want to!

The method is its way of implementing the theory.

For example, on Atkins the theory is that carbs make you fat, so you must reduce carbs.

On the Zone diet, the theory is that the wrong carbs and too many of them make you fat, so you carefully balance carbs with protein and vegetables, and you substitute the 'better' carbs.

If the theory is 'too many calories make you fat,' the method is: reduce calories. Etcetera. It's not very complicated.

Where Different Diets Become the Same.

Widely different theories can actually have quite similar methods.

If in most cases the theory is 'eating too much of the wrong stuff makes you fat,' the method is: eat more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff--indeed, eat less over all.

In other words, the problem is: you eat too much. And the solution is: don't eat so much!

If this sounds like an old and not very funny joke--"Doctor, doctor! It hurts when I do this!" "Don't do this!"--I mean it to.

The Duh! Diet idea is to cut through the clutter, get down to basics, stop worrying which diet to follow and follow something approaching common sense and sanity.

Strategies are the way of implementing the method.

Yes, I can reduce carbohydrates, but counting carbs is the strategy. Indeed, the list of strategies is the actual rules: only eat 20 grams of carbs a day, eat 2 cups of salad, eat limited quantities of dairy and unlimited quantities of chicken and fish, etc.

This is what people remember.

On the Zone, it's dividing the plate into zones and putting X% vegetables and X% protein and X% starch.

Now the strategies are much less scientific.

Will a certain portion of the plate automatically give you the right number of grams of protein or carbohydrates? Not likely. But it's a way of getting them.

Duh! Strategies.

A strategy is a real-world implementation of the logically-inspired method.

Some diets ask you to count calories. I do that for myself. It's useful. But it's just one particular method of the general strategy of calorie reduction--perhaps the most common diet strategy of all.

I start each meal and snack with a glass of water. It's a method. It implements the strategy of doing no harm, of doing what everyone says is healthy--drink lots of water, eat lots of fruits and vegetables.

The Sonoma Diet asks you to eat specific 'power' foods: tomatoes, almonds, etc.

Is there anything magical about these foods? Why almonds and not walnuts? Or peanuts? Or flax meal?

The method is always a bit of a trick. It's a neat way to bring the theory and the strategy into everyday life.

Leave the Tip.

Finally, there are tips. Tips are like micro-strategies. These are things often found in magazine articles. There they are often doctored up as methods or even whole theories.

A tip is something like: start every meal with hot soup. Scientists have found that people who consume hot soup at the beginning of a meal eat fewer calories overall.

In a sense, there's a theory here: people gain weight because they eat too much. Eating too much can be avoided by filling up the stomach and convincing the body to eat less. Hot liquids do that, so the method is: start each meal with hot liquid. But then why not coffee? Or tea?

There's no reason. It's a scientific factoid turned into a tip disguised as a diet.

Lately, experts say the same thing about calcium. People who eat more tend to weigh less. So eat more calcium and you'll lose weight. This may not even work! There's a famous scientific dictum: correlation is not causality. That is: two things happening at the same time doesn't make one thing cause the other.

The Duh! Theory and Method.

Here there's a theory--eating too many calories is bad--and the method is to less. It's not really a strategy, because it's not general enough. You can't eat soup at the beginning of every meal. It's just a tip, a little everyday bit of know-how to help you do what you want to do.

The Duh! Diet is simple.

The theory is: we are fat because we eat too much.

The method is: eat less, eat better.

The strategy is: favor more harmless, better, lower-calorie foods--water, fruits and vegetables, lower-fat proteins or healthy-fat proteins; avoid, limit and reduce heavily processed, calorically-dense foods (cake, pastry, candy, etc.).

The tips are things like: eat three meals and three snacks a day; control your portion size; try counting calories; etc.

But the main thing is: do what makes the most sense, do what works for you, don't worry about which theory is correct.

In the old adage: there's more than one way to skin a cat. (But don't eat it.)

--E. R. O'Neill