Calorie Density

I came across a very interesting forum thread on McDougall’s forum site regarding calorie density. Jeff Novick is very interesting to read. He explains things so that they are easy to understand. Nutritional studies are not the easiest thing for me to decode. This concept has completely changed the way I look at food and diet.

Ok — calorie density. There is no way I can explain it as good as Novick did so here is an excerpt. Read the entire thread when you have time. Emphasis added by me.

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Unlimited does not mean unlimited in the sense that you can eat all you want of anything.

What it means is that if you follow the principles of the program, especially of the Maximum Weight Loss program, you will be able to eat all you want until you are comfortably full, and still lose weight.

Many many studies have been done in the last few decades confirming this. If you allow people to eat “ad libitum” or all they want till the are comfortably full, from low calorie dense foods, they will lose weight, not be hungry and do not have to count calories.

Of course, calories still count, but it becomes almost impossible to over consume calories from the foods you choose if you follow these recommendations.

Fresh Veggies are around 100 cal/lb
Fresh Fruits around 250-300 cal/lb
Starchy Veggies/Intact Whole Grains around 450-500 cal/lb
Legumes around 550-600 cal/lb
Processed Grains (even if their Whole grain) around 1200-1500 cal/lb
Nuts/Seeds around 2800 cal/lb
Oils around 4000 cal/lb

What they found is if the calorie density of the food is below 400 calories per pound, no matter how much they eat, they all lost weight.

Between 600-800 calories per pound, with some moderate exercise, they all lost weight.

Between 800-1200 calories per pound, people gained weight, except for those with very high activity levels

Over 1200 calories per pound, everyone gained weight.

These numbers are also inline with other recommendations.

The recent WCF/AICR report on cancer recommends that the average calorie density of our diets be around 550-600 calories per pound, to avoid obesity and weight problems.

The Okinawan diet, before Western influence, was around 600-650 calories per pound

So, knowing all this, if you look at the numbers, it all makes sense.

A starch based diet, made up of starchy vegetables and intact whole grains [this is not flour, bread, etc] along with some fruit and veggies, will have a calorie density under 500 calories per pound and maybe even 400 calorie per pound. It would be near impossible to overeat.

You can also see the problem with many of the “low fat” diets that focused on processed whole grains, like whole wheat bread, crackers, dry cereals. At 1200-1500 calories per pound, if they become a large part of the diet, they can raise the overall calorie density and make it much easier to overeat on calories and easy to gain weight and/or not lose weight, even with a higher activity level. Hence the principles of the MWL program is to avoid those foods, or really limit them.

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Ok how do you measure the calorie density of a food. I downloaded the CRON-O-Meter (free and I love it!). Select a food and for grams put in 454 (there are approx 454 grams in a pound).

You can also figure out the calorie density from the nutritional label:

“It’s not hard to figure out. Just look at the label to see how many ounces in a serving. That will tell you how many servings in a pound, and that will tell you how many calories in a pound.

For example, say a product has 200 calories in a 2 ounce serving. You’d multiply 200 by 8 since there are 16 ounces in a pound, and get 1600 calories per pound.”

I think this might explain my problems with losing lately. I have definitely consumed too many flour products even though they were homemade. Whole wheat flour has a calorie density of 1540 calories/lb!

I put this into practice last night and had a baked potato (350 calories per lb) and mexican rice (recipe from McDougall cookbook) which was 327. I couldn’t even finish the entire meal and was very full. I was down on the scale today!! That’s another story because my scale broke so I had to use my old one which always weighs me less but I was down 3.5 lbs. Probably not that much in reality but more like 2 lbs.

My goal is to keep all foods below 500 kcals/lb