Forget dieting! In a new book called "The Volumetrics Eating Plan," Dr. Barbara Rolls says you can feel full on fewer calories, lose weight and keep it off while eating satisfying portions of nutritious food. For nearly three decades, Rolls has researched food choices, portion sizes, the caloric density of foods, and other factors that influence our appetites. She was invited on the “Today” show to discuss the book. Here’s an excerpt.
Welcome to Volumetrics
Fed up with fad diets that ask you to give up your favorite foods? Tired of feeling ravenous when cutting back on calories? Searching for a sensible, healthy way to manage your weight? Welcome to Volumetrics! With this weight management plan, you'll learn how to fit your favorite foods into your day while eating nutritiously. Perhaps the best news of all is that you'll discover why eating more, not less, of certain foods can be the answer to losing weight and keeping it off.
I am not going to promise that managing your weight will be easy, but I will show you how to make it healthy and sustainable. If you have found that your weight has been creeping up over the years, you are certainly not alone. More than half of all adults in America are overweight or obese. We are surrounded by a huge variety of tempting high-calorie foods, and we are less and less active. For most of us, it is difficult to avoid putting on weight in this obesigenic environment. To resist the almost inevitable weight gain over time, you need sound strategies. I will show you what recent research reveals about how to choose foods that will help you to maintain or reach your optimal weight.
First, let me share with you some information about why I am qualified to direct you to the best food choices. I have spent my career studying eating behavior and weight management. As a professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State University, I train students and conduct research funded by the National Institutes of Health. My lab includes a large research kitchen and dining area. For our studies, people come to the dining area to eat. We test how different properties of foods such as calorie density, fat content, or portion size affect how much people eat, how hungry they feel, and what affects the enjoyment of the foods being eaten. Our studies have led to a better understanding of which foods can help curb hunger without adding extra calories. It is exciting to be doing work that has an impact on the biggest health challenge we have ever faced as a nation — the obesity epidemic. This book gives me the opportunity to take what we have learned in the laboratory and translate it into a sensible, easy-to-follow eating plan that you can use. I look forward to telling you about the basics of healthy weight management.
Volumetrics is an eating plan based on the latest research on how to control hunger while managing calories to lose weight or to hold steady at your current weight. The plan also helps ensure that you are eating a balanced and nutritious diet. Often, when people decide to make the commitment to lose weight, they forget that the foods they eat affect a lot more than their weight. When you are eating fewer calories than you normally do, it is more important than ever to eat a good balance of nutrients. Because you are eating less, you are already at higher risk of not getting an adequate amount of key nutrients. Dieting is the worst possible time to cut out entire food groups. Although Volumetrics can be used to help achieve your goal weight, it is not just for those who want to manage their weight. Since it is a practical guide to nutritious and satisfying foods, it will help to establish habits associated with eating well for optimal health.
Weight-loss clinics across the country are using Volumetrics. Both physicians and dietitians love it because it is a healthy, sensible weight management program.They tell me that their patients are asking for simple and practical advice, as well as recipes to help them achieve and sustain their weight loss. This book will give you just that. It is intended as a companion to The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan. You can read more about the science behind Volumetrics in that book.
This book is filled with simple tips on how you can enjoy delicious food while managing your weight. After being introduced to the basics of Volumetrics in this chapter, you will develop your personalized weight management plan in Chapter 2. A big challenge for me has been to show you how to fit Volumetrics into your busy life. I know when I come home from a day at work, I don't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. In Chapters 3 to 14, you will find recipes for tasty, easy-to-prepare dishes. In addition to the recipes, I give you a variety of tools to help you follow the Volumetrics Eating Plan:
- Techniques for modifying your favorite recipes and incorporating more volumetric foods into your diet.
- A menu plan to give you structure as you learn about what and how much you should be eating. If you find it helpful, you can continue to use this plan — personalize it to suit your preferences.
- A variety of quick meal ideas in the menu plan.
- Modular lists of foods that are equivalent in calories to help you add variety to your menus.
- Self-monitoring charts to keep you on track.
For those of you who like structure, I have included a menu plan in Chapter 15 to guide you through your first month of Volumetrics eating. In the long run, I want to teach you the principles of healthy eating for weight management, so you can apply them no matter the situation. I will show you how to find an eating pattern that is so enjoyable that you will want to sustain it. I can assure you that, if you eat the Volumetrics way, you will be eating a diet that fits with the recommendations of the major health organizations in America and that will help you to lose weight or keep extra pounds from sneaking up on you.
Excerpted from “The Volumetrics Eating Plan” by Barbara Rolls. Copyright © 2005 by Barbara Rolls. Published by HarperCollins. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.