Real food vs. Products for Dieting?

Someone asked me what the difference was between my cooking service and Jenny Craig or Lean Cuisine. No one had ever asked me that before, I felt a bit huffy about it..  But then got to thinking, as it was a Personal Trainer who asked me, that for the average American perhaps it’s not so obvious. 

The focus on dieting in the last 3 decades still has people convinced that caloric restriction works. I went to both the Jenny Craig web site and the Lean Cuisine site.  The sites all focus on low fat, caloric restricted menus and recipes.  The average meal on both Jenny Craig and Lean Cuisine contain about 200 to 300 calories.  Each dish I checked the nutrition info on was woefully inadequate in nutrition, substantially higher carbs that protein, far too little of fat, and very low percentages of iron and calcium.

You will not lose weight by eating these products.  The reason is that they will not only not meet your caloric needs, most important is that they will not meet your nutrient needs.  Satiation occurs when we meet our nutrient needs, not when we fill our stomachs.  As we eat and begin digestion food our bodies signal us to stop eating when the brain gets the message that the nutrient levels in the bloodstream are adequate.  Other wise we just keep eating, or we make ourselves stop eating but are still hungry.

If the Lean Cuisine or Jenny Craig meal gives you about 250 calories per meal, eating these for one or two of your meals each day would leave you hungry, malnourished and put the body in starvation mode- a great way to gain weight!

As much as we would like to think that there are shortcuts to health, alas, there are not.  Eating real food, cooking more, avoiding any processed foods…eating 2000 calories a day with plenty of health organic saturated fats, grass fed and organic meats, low glycemic vegetables is what it takes to not only lose weight but reach a high level of health and energy…

Here is an article that shows how to do that…  How To Eat Each Day