Volumize Your Diet
Eat Large, Stay Lean!
by Chris Shugart


Portion Control Sucks
It used to be low fat. Then it was low carb. Today it's portion
control. And guess what? You're still fat. Or at least 66%
of Americans are.


It's still junk food, fattie.
Sorry, mainstream media, food manufacturers, diet clinics, and
TV weight loss gurus, but portion control — eating smaller
amounts of the same ol' foods that made you fat to begin with
— doesn't work. As I always say, portion control is
about as effective as the "I'll only put it in a little" method of
virginity preservation.
Oh don't get me wrong, the idea of portion control sounds
great. Eat what you want, just in small quantities. Problem is,
like a lot of ideas that sound good on paper — socialism,
welfare, a sitcom featuring those Geiko cavemen — it just
doesn't work.
It might work if people could actually do it, but most people
can't. In fact, daytime portion control is often the catalyst for
nighttime binge eating — one of the biggest causes of fat
gain.
So why are we, the fitness industry, promoting it?
Telling someone to stop eating before they're satisfied is like
telling someone to stop having sex right before they climax. That's
not just a crude joke either. Appetite and the pleasure we get from
eating are classified as "sensual desires" and fit into the same
category as the sex drive.


Appetite and sex drive: different and not so different.
These are core, continuation-of-life drives: innate and powerful
and often hard to control. Combine the natural urge to eat until
full with abundant, cheap, and calorie-dense foods and it's no
surprise people overeat and get fat.


A Better Plan
So if low-fat diets suck, and low-carb diets are often
short-sighted, and portion control has a 95% failure rate, then
what's the best nutrition plan for shedding excess body fat so you
can have sex with the lights on again?
Well, here's a big part of the answer: volumetrics.
Volumetrics simply means eating "low-calorie-dense" or
"high-volume foods." Zucchini for example has only 26 calories per cup. Compare that to one tiny tablespoon of vegetable
oil at 120 calories! Food sources like that are calorically dense — very little food, not filling at all, but
jam-packed with calories.

Now, I actually don't endorse most "volumetrics" diets because
they often ignore the benefits of good fats like omega-3s. And some
fat sources, like olive oil and almonds, are healthy and calorie-dense. Chances are if you see a "Volumetrics" book on the
shelf, it's mainly just a low-fat diet that encourages you to eat a
lot of soup. I'll pass.
However, we can take a page from the volumetrics approach and
apply it to our bodybuilding and fat loss goals. We can learn to
manipulate recipes and choose foods that get us full without
making us fat. In short, we can get ripped and stay ripped with
practically no dietary suffering or excessive hunger.
As a side benefit, volumizing your diet will make you healthier
and increase longevity since the most filling foods are often the
most health-promoting.
Let's take a look at a real life example.


Volumizing in Action
A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me to make a
"healthed-up" zucchini bread for a party. Now, I had no idea what
zucchini bread was. Turns out it's the official carb source of the
devil: a sugary, cake-like dessert sorta like banana bread —
dense with calories, carbs, and bad fats.
And my friend asked me to make it? Did she not know what
I do for a living?
I took the challenge anyway. I figured if I could "health-up"
zucchini bread I could work just about any culinary wonder.
Here's the original, fattening recipe:


The Devil's Zucchini Bread


3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup water
2 cups grated zucchini
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup chopped pecans
This makes two small loafs... and an enormous spare tire
around your waist. Total calories for the entire recipe? 5112!




Time to trim that down without making the portions
smaller. First I examined the recipe and found the major calorie
sources: flour, sugar, oil, pecans, and eggs. Let's see how I
"healthed-up" each and dropped calories while keeping the
volume/weight of food the same:
White flour: Replaced with whole grain flour. No calories saved,
but makes it healthier and adds fiber.
Sugar: Replaced with sucralose (Splenda). Saves about 700
calories.
Oil: Replaced with unsweetened apple sauce. Saves over 1800
calories!
Pecans: Replaced with walnuts. Lowers calories a bit, better
fatty acid profile.
Eggs: Replaced with egg whites. Nothing wrong with omega-3
enriched whole eggs, I eat a ton of them, but in this case we're
focusing on reducing calories. Using egg whites drops 180
additional calories from the recipe.
Calories in original recipe: 5112
Calories in my version: 2372
Saves 2740 calories!
And the taste? Most people don't even realize they're eating a
healthier, low-calorie version. (And the zucchini actually
can't be tasted.) So, here's the final volumized recipe:


Shugart's Volumized Zucchini Bread


3 1/4 cups whole wheat or whole grain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups Splenda
1 cup unsweetened apple sauce
3/4 cup egg whites
1/3 cup water
4 cups grated zucchini (Note how I doubled this, adding nutrition
and "bulk" but hardly any calories.)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup chopped walnuts
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a big bowl, combine whole
wheat flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon, and Splenda.

In a separate bowl, combine apple sauce, egg whites, water,
zucchini, and lemon juice.

Mix wet ingredients into dry, add walnuts and fold in, or add
walnuts to the top after pouring into loaf pans. Bake in two
standard loaf pans, sprayed with nonstick spray, for one hour or
until a toothpick comes out clean when you poke the loaf.

Now, keep in mind our theme here: volumization. This version of
the recipe is not only healthier, but a loaf of my zucchini bread
is exactly the same size as the diet-wrecking original version.
Your stomach doesn't know the difference. You'll be just as
satiated and satisfied with less than half the calories.


Other Volumizing Tips and Tricks
Dr. Lonnie Lowery calls this "calorie dilution" and it's
basically the same idea as volumetrics: eating high volume,
low-density foods. Here's some more tips:

• For burgers, mix lean ground turkey and/or veggies with your
ground beef.


• For spaghetti, cut out half the pasta and replace with
sprouts.

• Unsweetened apple sauce can be used to replace vegetable oil
in pancakes, muffins, and most baked goods.

• Replace half the pasta in lasagna (or all of it) with
zucchini, squash, or eggplant.


• Add pure canned pumpkin into whole-grain pancake mix.

• Use steamed and blended cauliflower in mashed potatoes to cut
carbs and overall calories.

• Instead of adding butter, bananas, syrup, peanut butter or
other calorie-dense ingredients to recipes, use calorie-free
extracts or imitation flavorings.



Wrap-up
Another benefit of volumizing your diet is that you don't need
to count calories. Since you're getting full at each meal, you're
naturally controlling caloric intake. Using a volumetrics-style
approach is great for maintenance phases or to keep the fat off
after a stricter diet plan like the Velocity Diet.
Get full, get healthy, get lean. Can't beat that.



© 1998 — 2008 Testosterone, LLC.
All Rights Reserved.