Perfect Diet? Eat Everything (Fat, Carbs, Protein Must Balance, Dietitian Says)

Put down the diet book that touts a carb-free, protein-rich diet and tells you all fat is your mortal enemy. Get ready to learn the mystery to permanent weight loss.

Eating everything is the magic bullet, experts say. Variety is the key to not only a good-looking exterior, but a healthy body that can fight disease, according to Ann C. Grandjean, director of Omaha's Center for Human Nutrition, Inc. Grandjean suggests three golden rules for eating: balance, variety and correct servings. Mindful eating that follows these three simple concepts will create healthy bodies.

"Balance. Don't eat all meat one day and then nothing but bread the next day," Grandjean said. "(Include) variety within a given food group -- not just potatoes and green beans. Eat something green, eat something orange, eat something red. (And think of) the right amounts like those three bears -- not too much, too little, but just right." It's the Goldilocks diet, but it isn't really meant to cause rapid weight loss. Grandjean said she's been trying to make nutrition sexy for nearly three decades and she just can't do it.

"Good nutrition is boring as hell. Just saying, 'Make sure to eat five servings of fruit' is boring. So to sell books, (people say you) have to do something mystic," she said. That's how we've become a generation obsessed with counting carbs, cutting fat and eating 3 pounds of bacon in a day in an effort to trim our burgeoning waistlines. But limiting or overloading on any nutrient won't make you thin or healthy. You need healthy servings each of carbs, protein and even fat. Here's why:

Carbohydrates are the human body's primary source of energy. You also get energy from fat, protein and alcohol, but most of the calories we need to live come from carbs, Grandjean said. That makes them essential, so cutting them or severely restricting them is not a good thing. But you should concentrate on getting them from whole grains. A 2003 Harvard study that followed 74,000 female nurses for 12 years found that women who ate the most whole grains weighed less than those who ate the fewest. And a Louisiana State University study of 149 women found that a low fiber intake was linked to higher body fat. Both studies were cited in a Shape.com story.

Proteins, which are made of chains of amino acids, are the foundation of the body. They help create muscles, blood, skin, hair nails and the organs. Athletes need more protein than couch potatoes, Grandjean said, and the Center for Human Nutrition put together an easy questionnaire (PDF format) to help individuals determine exactly how much protein they need for optimum health.

Fat should be kept at 30 percent of total calories each day, unless you're physically active, Grandjean said. Active people can eat up to 35 percent of their diets in fat. But don't avoid it altogether. Fat is in every cell of the body, and in order for those cells to function properly, they need fat from the diet. Fat sources include nearly every protein source, such as fish, meat, chicken and nuts, along with vegetable oil, avocadoes and more.

"You need all kinds of fats, and when you eat a variety of foods, you get all the kinds of fat. You can do harm by concentrating on specific foods instead of concentrating on the total diet," Grandjean said. There's that variety suggestion again. Really -- eat everything, she said again.

The government Web site MyPyramid.gov allows you to tailor a daily menu based on your individual needs, and Grandjean said she loves it because all a user does is enter his or her age and sex and the site spits out specific foods and serving sizes. That brings us to the third leg of Grandjean's diet stool. Instead of eating all carbs or no fat, eat the right amount of each food you consume. In a time when the local homewares store is filled with quart-sized cereal bowls and extra-large, pizza-sized dinner plates, knowing the appropriate serving can be tricky. Start with the nutrition label, then keep these tips from the International Food Information Council in mind or check out our portion size quiz.

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Not long ago, on another thread, I said I was having a terrible time losing weight I'd gained after being temporarily disabled for a year and a half. Oddly enough, not long after that I dropped one pants size for the first time since the accident.

I only changed two things:

I walked more. (Not running--walking, from 5-11 miles a day. I used to lift, and hopefully will begin again this week.)

I stopped drinking soda. I'm trying to drink only water, but I use milk and sometimes juice with whey protein for a meal a day.

I mention this because these changes were the very beginning of my attempt to lose weight, and they're things anyone can do. I hope to increase my exercise and eventually return to a regular gym schedule, and make more changes in diet. But in my case, I always tried to do too much, to change more than one thing at a time in terms of diet (cutting out numerous foods) and exercise (doing too many things).

These are very simple changes, and they've given results beyond the few pounds simply losing water retention pounds (I lost those long ago).

This is good advice. I am trying to reduce my caloric consumption. One danger is that a narrow food selection for their low fat, low sugar, low salt qualities can cause boredom. Since the main battle of a diet is hunger control, boredom sabotages hunger control. Boredom will lead one to binge eating which can cause one to lose control of their hunger battle. Going to an all you can eat restaurant after a diet of tofu and vegetables is a good example. After such a boring diet, such a restaurant would make one go nuts eating everything they can. After wards, you suffer. It would cause you to spend weeks getting your hunger back under control.

Portion control is the key to hunger control. The way you set your portions will moderate your hunger control. I try to keep each meal at the same caloric count. I eat small meals every two hours. A calorie book for different foods is a good method to set your mealtime limit. I found that if I eat a meal with a large caloric count, the next time I am hungry, it is harder to stop eating when my caloric limit is set lower than the calories consumed in the previous meal. I am tempted to binge eat. I call this the rebound effect. The previous meal will determine how hungry you feel at the next meal. As you get into a routine, the portion control becomes more predictable and the hunger felt after you stop eating you will have learned by habit how to deal with. This routine takes many days to establish because of the nature of the body's hunger mechanism.

Can anyone comment on the Isagenix products? I work in a place where everyone seems to be jumping on that bandwagon. I'm curious and skeptical.

At the outset let me be quite clear that I have zero personal experience with these products, in fact I had never heard of them before....perhaps because I have always used the 'eat everything' diet as outlined in the article that leads this thread, I have never had a weight problem and so have never looked into any dieting products.

What I did was a quick web search with the keywords "isagenix" and "scam"....after the first couple of pages of junk hits, I got to some discussion boards where people were talking about Isagenix. It seems to be sold via a MLM or Multi-Level Marketing arrangement, where people who are selling it and want to make money have to continually recruit new "victims" to also sell the products in order make money....it sounds almost like a pyramid setup, and this explains the 'hype' that you mention where "everybody is jumping on the bandwagon". People selling it HAVE to generate hype in order to recruit and therefore maintain their income. Isagenix has a panel of doctors who rave about it's effectiveness and they have some celebrity endorsements, including, apparently, the Osmonds who also sing it's praises.

After I got this far I lost interest in pursuing it further because it doesn't pass the 'smell test' to me, given those findings.

I would encourage you to do a similar search, as I got the info that I did after less than five minutes.

If someone is hyping a medically-related product to you, find out if there are any articles about it in well-established peer-reviewed medical journals, not advertisements or interviews with celebrity shills.

My advice? Eat everything, eat less, exercise more and live your life.

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