None of my WFPB research quite prepared me for the weight
loss. Now granted, I didn't need to lose a lot of
weight. I started at 185 lbs so I wasn't expecting
much. But my body dropped 3-5 lbs every week until it
settled at about 175. Curious, I started digging into other
WFPB success stories and further research.
From what I can see, your body on WFPB will seek its natural
weight, which is usually a lot less than where you started.
You will likely end up with a BMI of around 23. You can find
a lot of BMI calculators on the web, so plug in your height and a
few sample weights to get an idea of where you will likely end
up. If your doctor has told you to lose weight, you might
have found your option; a WFPB lifestyle can shed weight AND help
you live a healthier, longer life.
But more than losing weight, I was surprised at how much fat I
lost. For years, I worked out at the gym, did yoga several
days a week, walked at least 45 minutes every day at work, but I
could not get my body fat percentage (BFP) below 21%. After
retiring, I cut back on the gym, so my BFP might have gone up a
bit; not sure.
After a few months on a WFPB lifestyle, I put on my pants in the
morning and before I could get the belt on, my pants dropped to
the floor on their own. I had worn pants with a 36" waist
for decades, and now they fell off me. I tried on pants with
a smaller waist and discovered that a 32" waist fit just fine.
I headed to the gym to get a body assessment. They hooked
me to an InBody 270, which reported my BFP was now 13%. I
had dropped eight points from my BFP using only diet. In the
months since, my BFP has inched back up. I am now at 15%
BFP, a level seen in some research studies to be just about
ideal. A bit higher, true, but still much better than I was
able to get with the SAD and a lot of exercise.
If you are coming from an SAD, you will be adding considerable
daily fiber. And digesting fiber takes a lot of
water, far more than you were likely used to getting. In my
case, I went from eating about 15-20 grams of fiber daily to over
60 grams each day. That increase in fiber intake meant I had
to adjust my water intake to match.
Dr. Michael Greger, in his book How Not to Die (2015),
lists five 12-ounce glasses of water as a daily goal, so I started
with that. But I soon saw this wasn't working for me.
Besides the periodic constipation, I also had occasional painful
muscle cramps. Nothing tells me I'm low on water like
getting blasted out of a night's sleep with a leg cramp.
I started boosting my water intake from Dr. Greger's recommended
half gallon a day. Eventually, I settled on a full gallon
(16 cups) of water as adequate for me. YMMV; play around
with your water intake to find what works best for you.
By the way, the water in smoothies or soups does NOT count toward
your water intake. That water does help your body digest the
soup or the smoothie, but you still need to drink additional water
so you can process that meal's sandwich or salad.
Note that coffee and various teas count towards your water
intake; green tea especially has a lot of powerful nutrients in
it.
Your teeth exist to turn bites of food into a slurry (called chyme, sounds like time) that you swallow so the rest of your digestive system can process the tiny food particles. If you don't chew enough to create that slurry in your mouth, the rest of your system may not get the chyme it needs to work on. And the only way you can turn a bite of food into slurry is to chew; a lot.
I started out actually counting each time I chewed a bite of
food; I had to chew about thirty times to turn that morsel into a
slurry. Eventually, this slow, thorough chewing became part
of my mealtime. And that mealtime takes a while, as in half
an hour or more for dinner.
Besides reducing the constipation issues, this slow, deliberate
eating style lets the rest of my digestive system process the food
properly. The stomach gets some time to churn and flood each
bite with acid before passing it along. And the bacteria in
my large intestine get to work on the food soup they need rather
than the large wads of half-chewed food they used to get.
Note that your body can deal with inadequately chewed food, sort
of. The lumps end up in your colon, which does what it can,
but most of the nutrients that could feed your bacterial colony
aren't available, and the chunk gets pushed out the end without
providing you much nutrition. Basically, if it goes down the
throat as a lump, it comes out the end as a lump. Help out
your gut bacteria; chew your food completely They will repay
you with good health.
A plant-based diet lacks vitamin B12 and your body can't make B12
early enough in the digestive process for your own use. But
you MUST have adequate B12 intake to stay healthy. Your
options are to supplement, eat nutritional yeast (nooch), or both.
I chose to do both. I take a morning Nature Made
time-release B12 (1000 mcg) supplement. I also make sure my
evening salad includes a dressing with a tablespoon or two of
nutritional yeast (I like the Bragg brand).
I find the background on B12 recommendations interesting.
Dr. Greger is quite strict; you must supplement with B12 (he
suggests 2,500 mcg per week) or a WFPB diet will end up killing
you. Dr. John McDougall, author of The Starch Solution
(2011) and another pioneer in plant-based nutrition, is a bit less
strict. He notes that your body only needs a tiny amount of
B12 each day and can save up some to use later, so he's more laid
back on B12, calling for a very low dose (5 mcg daily) supplement.
I used a supplement plus nooch for months and noted that my scalp
hair, once nearly white, started to repigment to its original
brown. But when I stopped the daily B12 supplement, relying
only on the nutritional yeast, my scalp hair started to turn grey
again in two or three months. I have since returned to my
daily 1000 mcg B12 supplement.
I suspect that Dr. McDougall is technically correct, that you don't need a lot of B12 to survive. But Dr. Greger's advice works better for me; a higher level of B12 intake pays dividends in hair repigmentation and (likely) other body processes.
My local grocery stores carry hundreds of different plants in a
variety of forms. Fresh produce, dried beans, bulk grains,
refrigerated tofu, frozen berries, canned fruits; the list seems
endless. Each plant offers a different collection of
phytonutrients (phyto means plant in Greek, btw).
Eating a variety of plants gives your body a variety of
nutrients. And these nutrients work together in subtle and
complex ways to improve your health.
For example, turmeric contains curcumin, a powerful antioxidant
that can prevent or treat a large number of chronic diseases,
including cancers, arthritis, and other inflammatory
conditions. But to get the most effect from eating turmeric
(Dr. Greger recommends 1/4 teaspoon per day), you should include
ground black pepper in the same meal. The pepper helps
ensure your liver routes the turmeric (and other spices in that
meal) to the body's bloodstream so all parts of your body get the
benefits.
To really mix things up, consider trying the 50-food challenge;
eating 50 different plant foods in a single week. In this
challenge, spices count as a food, so try adding a variety of
spices to your meals, such as cardamom, za'atar, ginger, or
cinnamon. Each type of bean is a different plant, so try
meals featuring kidney, pinto, white, or cranberry beans, for
example. The same goes for grains; you can include brown
rice, farro, buckwheat, quinoa, barley, and many other grains,
letting you try out new textures and flavors.
Those starting out on WFPB might feel intimidated by what looks
like a lot of prep time. I've done SAD and WFPB, and frankly
didn't see a lot of difference in prep time. What I did see,
though, was a huge difference in prep safety. Preparing meat
for a SAD meal meant paying attention to cross-contamination,
using a lot of hot, soapy water on cooking and prepping surfaces,
and avoiding sampling any food you were preparing until after it
had been thoroughly cooked. The risk for not getting this
right was increased chance of some serious bacterial infections.
This level of concern drops way down on a WFPB diet. You do
need to wash your fresh produce (packaged or unpackaged) to guard
against bugs like E. coli, because these bacteria could be spread
by fecal contamination during irrigation, harvesting or
distribution. But for me, plant-based cooking is a far more
relaxed experience than animal-based cooking. I make a
terrific plant-based chocolate chip cookie, and I get to eat the
raw dough. Try that with a SAD cookie recipe! Or
rather, don't!!
Part of food prep is the time involved. I have the luxury
of retirement, so I can put on a pot of beans and let them cook
for two or three hours, no problem. For those on a work
schedule, there are some faster cooking options. You can
cook lentils in 20 minutes or so. S&W makes an excellent
line of low-sodium canned beans that sell locally for about $1.25
per 15 oz can and are ready to eat in seconds. And the
frozen food section usually has lots of options for fruits,
vegetables, and pre-cooked grains.
Another aspect of food prep is front-loading all the
effort. Several working WFPB followers will devote a large
part of one day to cooking for the entire week, then freeze the
food in meal-sized portions. A weekday dinner is reheat and
eat.
And you can keep a fairly large batch of soup in the fridge for
several days. Bob's Red Mill sells a dried Vegi Soup Mix
with two kinds of lentils, two kinds of split peas, barley, and
tiny wheat noodles. I'll throw one cup of this into a pot
with four cups of water, simmer for an hour, then toss in some
chopped frozen kale and spices and cook for another twenty minutes
or so. This makes enough soup to last me for several meals.
My WFPB change all started with Dr. Michael Greger and his book,
How Not to Die (2015). This book is filled with a lot
of guidance on how to build up a healthy WFPB diet. In
particular, his Daily Dozen gives you a detailed checklist of
important foods to eat every day, complete with quantities, so you
can start a healthy WFPB diet. His website
even includes a Daily Dozen app you can download to help you stay
on track.
Additionally, Dr. Greger uploads a new video to his website every
day on a WFPB topic of interest. You might find these videos
are more than you need to know at the beginning, but they can
prove valuable later as your knowledge of WFPB lifestyle improves.
Dr. Greger and his staff read through thousands of research
papers and surveys each year, looking for ways to improve WFPB
nutrition, then pass that information along to readers. As
far as I can tell, he takes no money from the drug companies,
medical industry, or food companies. When I have changed my
WFPB diet based on his recommendations, I have always seen
positive results in my bloodwork or medical exams. I
consider his web site and his information of the highest quality.
The Forks Over Knives documentary, released in 2011 and available
for free viewing on YouTube, brought WFPB diet to the
masses. This wonderful movie mixes nutritional research with
stories of people starting out on their WFPB adventure.
There is science here, but not an overwhelming amount, and it is
presented simply and clearly. Most importantly (at least, to
me), you see the gradual realization in a tiny area of the medical
community that diet has a far greater positive impact on chronic
disease than any meds your doctor can provide.
Along with the documentary, this website promotes
additional, high-quality research and resources for those
interested in a WFPB diet. This include cookbooks, meal
planners, and classes that can ease your lifestyle change, plus
short essays on many different topics related to chronic disease.
And this website holds a LOT of success stories, submitted by
people who started out on a WFPB diet. These essays often
describe the health issue(s) that compelled their change, along
with key parts of starting out that struck them most
forcefully. I find these success stories inspiring,
motivating, and great fun to read.
T. Colin Campbell, PhD, is one of the researchers behind The
China Study of the 1980s; a book of that name was published in
2005 and introduced the world to the nutritional drivers behind
our most deadly chronic diseases. This study is a
cornerstone of the WFPB diet movement; Dr. Campbell and his
associates feature in the Forks Over Knives documentary.
Dr. Campbell's website includes
articles, recipes, resources, and much more, all aimed at those
interested in adopting a WFPB lifestyle. You can find the
science and the history behind the movement, and you can also find
Chef AJ's excellent recipe for Butterscotch Pie.
There are websites with some recipes, and then there's Chef AJ's
website.
She has been following a whole food, plant-based diet for decades,
bringing her love of WFPB cooking to books and social media.
In 2018, she was inducted into the Vegetarian Hall of Fame
(There's a Hall of Fame? Who knew?). She packs a lot
of info into her recipes, with variations and cooking techniques
to help you adapt, if needed. And there are a LOT of
recipes; everything from sauces to desserts, breakfasts to
smoothies. If you are looking for a particular ingredient or
technique, she likely has you covered.
Thanks for reading...
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