Super-size the Healthy Way

Summertime and the gardens are full of green, yellow, and red fruits and vegetables!

And there are no better food groups to super-size for nutritional value and filling up on a low calorie eating plan.

That's the idea behind a way of eating called Volumetrics.

Basically, Volumetrics is designed around the idea that people like to eat. Literally. We like the ritual of eating. We like to chew. We like for the process to last a while until we feel satisfied. We don't like the idea of our 400 -calorie meal being about 1 cup of rice and that's it. We don't want to feel deprived.

So nutritionist Barbara Rolls, PhD, designed an eating plan that allows you to eat more, fill up, but not gain a lot of weight. What's the secret?

The hook of Volumetrics is its focus on satiety, the feeling of fullness. Rolls says that people feel full because of the amount of food they eat -- not because of the number of calories or the grams of fat, protein, or carbs. So the trick is to fill up on foods that aren't full of calories.(webmd)

In other words you can pile your plate high with foods that have a high water and fiber content like fruits and vegetables and eat a lot for very few calories, as opposed to the small amount of fattening food you would have on your plate for the same number of calories.

Rolls suggests visualizing it this way:
for the same number of calories, you could have a big bowl of vegetable soup, or 1/6 of a cheeseburger. Which would you be able to spend more time eating? The soup....so, the soup would actually be a more satisfying meal.

So to feel satisfied and lose weight, go ahead and pump up the volume and super-size your servings of fruits and vegetables this summer!

You can learn more about Volumetrics here.