Mindell Dieting Tips

• Before starting any diet, check with your physician. If you don’t feel that your family doctor understands your dieting needs, contact a bariatrician, who specializes in the filed. For the name of one in your area, write to the American Society of Bariatric Physicians, Suite 300, 5200 South Quebec, Englewood, Colorado 80111. (Enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope.)
• If you’re on a low- or no-carbohydrate diet, beware of artificially sweetened “sugarless” or “dietetic” gum or candy that has sorbitols, mannitols, or hixitols. These ingredients are metabolized in the system as carbohydrates, only more slowly!
• If you’re on a diet that allows alcohol, a glass of wine before dinner stimulates the gastric juices and aids in proper digestion.
• If you do have wine, remember that dry white has less calories than red.
• If you’re eating popcorn as a low-calorie snack, be aware that movie theater popcorn has twice the calories per cup as “light” microwave—and two-and-a-half times that of air-popped.
• When a recipe calls for a cup of sour cream, substitute low-fat yogurt and you’ll save over 300 calories.
• Remember that the body’s natural response to a decreased food intake is to burn fewer calories—which is why diets without exercise don’t work in the long run.
• Watch out for such diet fallacies as:
  • Gelatin dessert is nonfattening.
  • Grapefruit causes you to lose weight.
  • Fruits have no calories.
  • High-protein foods have no calories.
  • A pound of steak is not as fattening as a potato.
  • Toast has much fewer calories than bread.
• Whatever you’re eating, sit down to eat it, and eat it slowly. (You might expend more calories standing than sitting, but you tend to eat more that way, too.) Also, don’t read or watch TV until you finish your meal.
• When selecting fruit, remember that all fruits are not equal, that an apple, a banana, or a pear has more calories and carbohydrates than a half cantaloupe, a cup of raw strawberries, or a fresh tangerine.
• When choosing your vegetable, taken green beans instead of peas (you save 40 calories on a half-cup serving), spinach instead of mixed vegetables (you save 35 calories), and mashed potatoes—if you must—instead of hasted browns (you save 139 calories).
• Carbohydrate watchers, don’t underestimate onions; one cup of cooked onions has 18 g.
• If you’re counting every calorie, realize that 1 tablespoon of lecithin granules contains 50 calories and lecithin capsule about 8.
• Try a one-day-a-week water fast (the ancient Greeks did it). Limit yourself to cold tap or bottled water (not iced) or herb tea with lemon or lime juice. Nothing else. This should pep you up, too.