Focus on How Much You Eat, Not on What You Eat

With spring on the way, you can trade in that cup of hot chocolate for some iced tea; instead of hearty hot meals, grilling out with burgers, potato salad and apple pie or peach cobbler, topped with vanilla ice cream, are on the menu. Pretty soon, it's going to be summer and with summer comes summer fare. After that, fall with its own special menu arrives, such as state fair cotton candy, funnel cakes, and corn dogs.

Unfortunately, perhaps for you, no matter what time of year it is, thin people eat just those foods as you do even though they are said to be "fattening." Yet, those people don't gain weight. Why would that be?

Well, it's not really what you eat, but how much you eat that matters when it comes to weight gain. Yes, thin people, too, drink Coke, eat Snickers bars, and have that cream puff. Yet, they don't gain weight. And perhaps also unfortunately, the opposite is also true. If you're a serious health food buff, maybe even vegetarian, you can be just as overweight or obese as those who eat the standard American diet. But don't listen to me if you don't want to. Do some research on your own.

Go to McDonald's or another fast food restaurant, and look at the thin and overweight people there. Then, go on over to your favorite health-food restaurant (if you have one) or one nearby you if you're not a health-food nut, and take a look at the patrons there. Do a similar count of both slim and overweight people there, too. What do you see? You're likely to see as many overweight and obese people at the health-food restaurant as you are at the fast food restaurant.

Now, why is it that a vegetarian can be overweight or obese just as one who eats the standard American diet can be? That's really quite simple. If you have three helpings of vegetarian spaghetti, some chocolate cake (even vegetarian-based) and a latte, you'll have a similar amount of calories in that meal as you will with most meat-based or similar "American fare" meals. Even for health-food fans, the calories themselves are what count more than anything; if you have three helpings of broccoli cheese casserole, you're still getting too many calories. Even though some of those calories are supposed "healthy" calories, calories are calories, and it's your caloric intake in general that makes you gain weight.

Let's take a look at processed foods, too. Processed foods first came into the American diet at the end of the 18th century. Those who were richest ate the most processed foods, because they could afford to pay for the extra refinement. However, up until about 1990, the rich who ate the most processed foods still had the least amount of problems with being overweight and obese. The poor had the most obesity in their ranks, about 10%. The middle class had between 7 and 8% of its population as overweight or obese, while the richest classes had just 1 or 2% of its population overweight or obese. Today, every class boasts equal amounts of overweight and obese people.

Many experts theorize about good calories, bad calories, high or low-carb diets, and high or low nutrition content foods. In general, these people say that if you eat healthy food, you'll get thin, whereas if you eat "unhealthy" food, you'll be overweight or even obese.

However, if you look at everyday people eating everyday foods, most normal weight, overweight and obese people eat the same things and at about the same percentages. The only real difference between being normal weight versus overweight or obese is that those who weigh a normal amount eat the amount of calories their bodies need, while overweight and obese people eat a little bit to a lot more than their bodies need, depending on the amount of extra weight they carry with them.

When it comes to your weight, what you eat does not really count. However, how much you eat does.

This is where we get down to the nitty-gritty. Because it's not what you eat but how much you eat that can make you slim or overweight. Why is it that some people, no matter where they come from, eat more than they need to even though they know they shouldn't and hate being overweight?

In fact, it's something called the "Food Monster." That is that constant urge, that those of us who are overweight all have, to eat or snack even when we're not hungry. And again, it's not because our food is less nutritious than 100 years ago. It's because we have something going on deep in our subconscious minds that we need to focus on. We need to focus on this, not on blaming our food suppliers for what they provide us or for what we eat, and we certainly also don't need to beat up on ourselves for our weight problems.