Eat NU~DE: Fruit and Veggies with Fat (and Protein)

Does eating fat make you fat?

We get fat from eating excess calories. And there are lots of ways to end up with too many calories at the end of the day. Here are some popular ones:

• Too little or too mild exercise (or both)


• Eating too much, or too late in the day (or both)


• Eating lots of empty calories from excess fat and sugar (the opposite of eating NU~DE, or NUtrient-DEnse)


• Skipping breakfast and creating a blood-sugar roller coaster throughout the day (making your body breakdown muscle tissue when you don't have enough carbohydrates and encouraging binging by creating urgent, powerful cravings when blood sugar levels drop quickly and deeply)

Fat gets a bad rap because of the connection between, primarily, excessive amounts of saturated (mostly animal source) fats and cardiovascular disease. There are heart healthy fats from sources like olives, fish and nuts. And small amounts of other fats can be easily and healthfully integrated with a lifestyle that includes regular moderately challenging-to-vigorous exercise and a nutrient-dense diet with controlled portions, and frequent, evenly spaced meals and snacks.

But here's an important consideration:

As you become more fit and are burning more and more calories throughout the day (my run-rate is about 2500-3000), and you start to clean up your diet, you're going to get hungrier, and more often. The reason is that you will start to feel more comfortable just being satisfied, rather than full, and the food you eat (like fruits and veggies, which should make up nearly half of the volume of your daily intake) will have fewer calories for the same volume you used to consume. That can be a problem with eating veggies alone. I've snacked on carrots, snap peas and baby tomatoes (I call the combo a "pocket salad") and have been almost as hungry when I'm done as before I started.

When you eat fruit by itself, it can bring up your blood sugar pretty quickly, satisfying you for a short time, but when your blood sugar drops, it can actually make you feel hungrier than before you ate!

That's where a little fat comes in handy.

Combining fruit or veggies with nuts or cheese is a great way to slow the absorption of sugar into your bloodstream. It also carries you for longer and causes a more gradual drop in blood sugar, making your hunger for your next meal come on more slowly and with less severity. A bonus with this trick is getting some additional protein, which has a similar effect that fat does on your blood sugar, but with more nutrient-density and fewer calories.

Here are some of my favorite combinations:

Apples with cheese sticks

Celery with peanut butter

Pocket salad with mixed nuts

Banana with almonds

Broccoli and cauliflower dipped in hummus

Try some of these combinations for a satisfying, healthful late-day snack and notice how it reduces your dinner appetite, helping you to scale back your intake as the day closes. This is a great way to trim a few hundred calories each day (and a few dozen pounds in a year.)

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Watch tomorrow for three great tips to keep your New Years Eve fun from setting your program back too much!