Veganist_ Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World - Kathy Freston [4]
A plant-based diet revs your metabolism, causing you to burn calories up to 16% faster than you would on a non-plant-based diet for at least the first 3 hours after meals.
Most of us only overeat when we’re eating the wrong foods. When we’re eating healthfully, our bodies know when to stop and “turn off” our hunger switch.
Plant-based foods are naturally low in fat. It’s very hard to be—or stay—overweight on a vegan diet.
A fat gram has 9 calories; a carbohydrate has only 4. By avoiding fats—like these found in meat and cheese—you avoid lots of calories.
The quick results some people get with high-animal protein, low-carb diets don’t last because most of the loss is water—or unsustainable calorie deprivation.
It’s simply a myth that vegans have a hard time getting enough protein. Besides, most Americans eat far more protein than their bodies need or can successfully use. And because it comes from animals, the protein is accompanied by a lot of fat, too.
Processed carbohydrates like the ones found in white bread, conventional cakes and cookies, and your basic junk food give you a cheap high and a fast crash, causing you to keep eating. The carbs found in whole grains give you energy over a much longer period of time and spare you the crash (and subsequent binge) altogether.
Anyone who has struggled with weight knows how hard it can be to lose it and especially to keep it off. Even those of us who aren’t seriously overweight often struggle with extra pounds that we’re just not comfortable with, or find ourselves embarrassed by a body image we instinctively know is not right.
There are probably a thousand different programs and diets out there promising quick weight loss, and most dieters will try several over the course of a lifetime—with only limited success. As you’ve no doubt heard or read or experienced, most dieters end up losing and gaining back hundreds of pounds over a lifetime, and usually gain back more than they’ve lost in each successive round. Why? To put it very simply, it’s because with all these big dietary shifts the metabolism gets really confused and can’t settle on “normal.” When you eat a mostly plant-based diet, all that changes.
Eating vegan is not a weight-loss program per se, but weight loss is one of the great side effects of eating a healthy, plant-based diet. But you don’t have to take it just from me. Later in this chapter you’ll be able to listen in on my conversation with Dr. Dean Ornish, who probably knows more about the way fats are processed in our bodies than anyone on the planet. He will explain, in easy-to-understand terms, just why our bodies process food so efficiently when we stop eating animals or at least move toward a plant-based diet.
A moment of truth here: If you continue to eat processed foods full of sugar and fat, you won’t lose weight. But you knew that. And that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to discover how good you’ll feel on a diet of vegetarian proteins, whole grains, and all the glorious and diverse vegetables and fruits of the earth.
If you look around, you won’t see many fat vegans. Vegans tend to be slim and strong, gorgeous and glowing, and that’s because a healthy, plant-based diet creates vitality and vigor—and weight loss simply happens as a result of not eating fatty animal protein.
And lest you think a plant-based diet is for weaklings, consider bulls, elephants, gorillas, orangutans, and stallions. These plant eaters are pure lean and powerful muscle.
Of course some people think vegans are thin because once you eliminate meat there’s nothing good left to eat or because we’re unbearably choosy eaters. Hardly! When you start focusing your diet on plant-based foods, a magnificent array of flavors and colors and textures and aromas opens to you and awakens your appetite to some really incredible vegetarian dishes.
We’ve become so accustomed to the taste of salt and sugar and the mouthfeel