Week 1: A short history of obesity, macronutrients and their effects

Around the world today, people are suffering from more diet-related diseases than ever before in
recent history.
The so-called Western diet has been implicated as the major contributor to our modern epidemics of
disease.

>> We don't actually know what about the western diet is creating the problems but what we do know
with a great deal of confidence is that populations who eat this diet which is normally defined as a diet
high in meat high in processed foods with very little whole grains very little fruits and vegetables

The populations who eat that way have very high rates of chronic disease.

>> When you think about the increasing rates of obesity and diabetes you could really think of it as a
tsunami wave off the coast. It's enormous.
Physicians nowadays more than ever need to advise patients about food. Which foods to eat more of
or less of and why.
How to shop for, prepare, cook, enjoy healthy delicious foods.

Not just nutritious fats not bio-chemistry but food.

>> We are living in a food environments that fails to support our health.

Taking back the control over our food preparation

is essential to our long term well-being.

By examining our eating behaviors and learning the skills we need to reclaim

responsibility for what's in our food, we can celebrate the foods that

will protect us and bring us pleasure for the rest of our lives.

A sociocultural history of obesity

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The human body runs on food.

Once, food shortage was the major concern.

After the Second World War, technological advances in food production

led to a new era that was characterized by an overabundance

of inexpensive food, and relatively little physical activity.

In the decades that followed,

other socio-cultural shifts continued to contribute to the changing way we ate.

Women who had previously controlled most of the average family's food preparation,

now enter the workforce in significant numbers.

And the processed food industry began to capitalize on our need for

fast convenient food.

0:50
This meant that fewer meals for being cooked at home, and

since convenient foods were generally higher in calories than home-cooked meals,

the average persons caloric intake increase dramatically.

1:05
Academic studying the intersection of food and

health like Michael Pollan, have written extensively

about the implications of this cultural shift on the way we eat today.

>> To the extent, we outsource our food.

First, we eat less healthy food, more salt, and fat, and sugar.

But we also eat more food because processed food is often designed

as snack food, and marketed to us as a way to eat continually through the day.
>> The changes in the way, we, as a society ate led to the emergence of

obesity as a recognized chronic disease with well-defined health consequences, and

medical recommendations were made to try and address this growing health crisis.

In the second half of the 20th century, a lot of attention was

focused on reducing saturated fat, and total fat in our diets.

And the processed food industry responded by giving us what we wanted.

But, they still had a vested interest in selling their products, so

they found other ways to make the reduced fat products taste good.

One way they did this was by adding significantly more sugar,

and other forms of sugar, like corn syrup to almost everything we ate.

This not only made the reduced fat foods more appealing, but

it also increased their shelf life.

So the food industry had a huge incentive to add corn syrup, and

other sweeteners to packaged foods.

The resulting increase in our intake of simple sugars fueled our modern

epidemics of obesity and diabetes.

These shifts in our food consumption patterns

have led us to a point in history where our physiological adaptation,

our ability to store energy as fat, has become maladaptive.

The balance between food availability and

energy expenditure has been disrupted, and its left us with

an exponential increase in the incidence of obesity over the past 60 years.

An epidemic that the World Health Organization

has labeled a worldwide public health crisis.

Macronutrient structure and metabolism

In order to survive, the human organism needs to take in oxygen, water, and food.

We can survive only about three minutes without air,

three days without water, and three weeks without food.

Because food is so important to our survival, it's been studied extensively.

And since 1827 when a British physician by the name of William Prout

first proposed that humans need three macronutrients to survive,

physicians, scientists, and increasingly the general public have trying

to figure out exactly how much of each of these nutrients will optimize our health.

0:45
But to some extent, the focus on nutrients rather than food has confused many people.
>> And we tend to get lost in this conversation about nutrients, good and

bad and it's understandable because scientists

need to reduce things to a single variable to study them.

And the variable in food would appear to be the nutrient.

But we also have lots of studies that show that simply removing or

boosting nutrients or turning them into supplements doesn't seem to work.

That food is much more complicated, it's a system.

>> A basic understanding of the nutrients can give us a helpful background for

our discussions about food.

So we'll review the nutrients and how the body uses them, but

most of this course will focus on discussions about food and health.

Because ultimately, people eat food, not nutrients.

Dietary carbohydrates are combinations of sugar units that come in both simple and

complex forms.

Simple carbohydrates include the monosaccharides, or

single sugar units like glucose and fructose.

As well as the disaccharides, or two-sugar units like sucrose, or table sugar.

Complex carbohydrates, or polysaccharides,

include the dietary starches that our body can break down and digest,

and also the indigestible polysaccharides that make up dietary fiber.

During the process of digestion, carbohydrates are broken down and

converted to glucose, which can then be metabolized by the body

to produce usable energy in the form of ATP.

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If energy demands are low, glucose can be stored, and

most of the time it's stored as adipose tissue.

2:33
Dietary proteins are also broken down into their component parts,

amino acids, during the process of digestion.

And these amino acids can be used to build and

repair lean tissues in the body and perform many other important functions.

But amino acids can also be broken down and used for energy.

And if they're consumed in excess,

they can contribute to fat stores in the body as well.

3:02
Dietary fats can also be broken down into smaller components and used for energy.

[MUSIC]
Or, they can be stored as adipose tissue, depending on our energy needs.

3:18
Fats are the most energy dense storage form, providing nine calories of

energy for every gram, and alcohol provides seven calories per gram.

In contrast, carbohydrates and proteins provide only four calories per gram.

This is one of the reasons we've evolved to store excess nutrients as

adipose tissue, and this brings us to the underlying

physiologic cause of overweight and obesity.

Any calories that aren't converted into usable energy

in the form of ATP are stored in the body for later use.

Most of the time they're stored as adipose tissue.

So disturbing the energy balance to favor energy expenditure

over energy storage needs to be one of the priorities for

people who are trying to lose excess weight.

This can be achieved by consuming fewer calories,

burning more calories through exercise, or a combination of both.

But in addition, when long term health is the end goal,

the quality of our food matters just as much as the number of calories we consume.

Within each category of macronutrients, we need to choose

foods that will support our health, rather than working against it.

Carbohydrate-rich foods and the Glycemic Index

All nutrients are not created equal

especially when it comes to their effect on our health.

So shifting our focus from nutrients to foods can help us

develop better eating habits that will support our long term health.

>> Getting our head around the idea that we should be focused on the category of

foods, mot nutrients, is I think very important.

And I think doctors should be talking to patients about food.

Even if as scientists and researchers they see through foods to nutrients.

It may be a helpful way to study foods.

It's not a helpful way to communicate about food.

>> Let's look at an example of how focusing on nutrients rather than food

can leave us confused and

potentially consuming a diet that's dangerous to our health.

0:48
In recent years, a lot of attention has been focused on the fact

that many of us are eating too many carbohydrates.

There are lots of popular diet trends that encourage us

to drastically reduce the carbohydrates in our diet,

even to the point of limiting our intake of fresh fruit.

At the same time, some of these low-carb diets seem to suggest that protein and

fats can be eaten freely.

But a diet that's very high in animal protein and contains no whole grain or not

enough fruits and vegetables could leave us with serious problems in the long run.

In fact, the category carbohydrates includes a wide spectrum of foods.

Some of which are really important for our health.

And some of which can compromise it.

Whole grains like brown rice and rolled oats are carbohydrates

that provide our bodies with a usable source of energy and

bound together in that very same food is a significant amount of fiber,

which slows the release of glucose from that food into the bloodstream.

The glycemic index of a food is the measure of

the speed at which glucose is released into the blood stream after it's digested.

A whole grain like brown rice or

quinoa will result in a slower release of glucose and a more muted insulin response.
On the other hand, a food that's high in refined carbohydrates, like white bread or

soda, will lead to a more rapid release of glucose into the blood.

And in response to this, the body releases a large amount of insulin,

the hormone in our bodies that lowers blood sugar.

Because of spike of glucose and insulin lead to less stable blood sugar levels,

eating foods that are refined, especially highly processed carbohydrates,

can result in an earlier return of hunger and a tendency to overeat.

2:50
The glycemic index of a food is lower when the food contains fiber or when it's eaten

in combination with protein foods or foods containing some dietary fat.

3:02
For people who are struggling to manage their weight, or their blood sugar levels,

eating foods that have a low glycemic index is especially important,

but choosing low glycemic foods is generally a good idea for all us.

So when we talk about dietary carbohydrates

we're actually talking about a very broad family of foods.

Some that can be harmful to our long term health, and some that can support it.

Learning how to choose the right foods within each nutrient category is one of

the keys to long term success.

Animal and plant-based proteins

Protein-rich foods, including animal and

plant-based proteins can also vary enormously in their quality and

their implications for our long-term health.

Proteins are often said to act as building blocks for the lean tissues in our bodies.

But they serve many other important functions in body regulation,

supportive immune function and a variety of other roles in our physiology.

There are 20 types of amino acids needed to fulfill all of these functions,

but only nine of them are essential.

Meaning that our bodies can't make enough of them, so

we rely on getting these from our food.

0:42
In general, animal sources of protein like fish and

eggs provide all of the essential amino acids in high enough

concentrations that these foods are called complete protein sources.

In contrast, plant based protein sources like beans, lentils,

nuts and tofu tend to be incomplete sources of protein.

It might seem that since plant-based proteins are incomplete in

their nutrient content that they're

nutritionally inferior compared with animal-based proteins.

But in fact the health benefits of substituting plant-based proteins for

animal-based ones, ideally a few days a week,

this far outweighs the risk of falling short on essential amino acids.

Plant-based proteins can be combined with other foods to provide

a complete amino acid profile.

In fact, many traditional food combinations like corn and

black beans or rice and

lentils are based on the principal of combining complementary proteins.

1:49
Meals that contain vegetarian sources of protein also contain more fiber and

less fat, especially saturated fat, than meals that feature animal based protein.

And even though saturated fat may not be as harmful as we once thought, it

can still contribute to elevated levels of LDL cholesterol if we eat too much of it.

So moderating our intake of red meat, for example, is still a sensible idea.

In general, the typical western diet

contains more animal based protein than we need to sustain good health.

>> People eat lots of plant food, eat a plant based diet, tend to have

much better health, and better longevity than people who eat a heavy meat diet.

>> So, if you're thinking of trying a low card, high protein diet,

it's important to pay attention to the kinds of proteins that are being consumed,

and in what quantities.

A diet high in animal protein, especially if it's poor quality animal protein,

like processed meat or high fat cuts of meat, this kind of diet can be

harmful to our health even if it leads to weight loss in a short term.

Processed meats often contain nitrates used as a preservative,

which can damage blood vessels and contribute to hardening of the arteries.

These meats also tend to be very high in sodium,

which can be a contributor to high blood pressure.

3:19
The most sensible diets are usually those that encourage us to

eat moderate amounts of high quality protein foods.

These should come from a variety of different sources,

including some fish if possible.

As well as plenty of vegetarian sources of protein that are combined for

completeness.

[MUSIC]
Dietary fats and their effects on human health
00
[SOUND] For decades, the relationship between dietary fats and

health was at the center of our attempts to understand

the underlying cause of the obesity epidemic.

The debates over nutrition that you will hear, should we worry about fat,

should we worry about carbohydrates, is the problem lack of fiber?

All these are attempts to understand what's the problem

in the western diet that is the culprit.

Because people like to figure that out because then you can just adjust that one

thing and go on your merry way, but we haven't gotten that down yet.

We don't know the answer to that question with any real confidence.

>> Despite the important roles that fats play in our bodies,

this entire category of food was shunned for much of the 20th century.

This led to an enormous increase in the availability of fat free and

reduced fat foods.

But in spite of this, obesity rates continue to rise.

Today, rising awareness about the difference

between the so-called good fats and

bad fats have allowed this important part of our food supply to make a comeback.

But once again, the pendulum threatens to swing too far in the opposite direction.

Dietary fats can be divided into two families, the saturated and

the unsaturated fats.

Saturated fats get their name from the fact that their fatty acids are saturated

with hydrogen molecules.

This means that they can lie flat and pack together densely so

that saturated fats tend to be solids at room temperature.

Animal fats, like lard and butter, are good examples.

In contrast, the fatty acids that make up unsaturated fats

are kinked in places where double bonds between the carbon atoms

cause the chains to be less saturated with hydrogen.

This also means that these fatty acids don't pack together as tightly,

leaving most unsaturated fats in the liquid state at room temperature.

Omega 3 fatty acids are a special kind of unsaturated fatty acid,

with double bonds in specific positions of the hydrocarbon chain

They're found in high concentrations in fish oil, and

also to some degree in nuts, flax seeds, and other vegetable oils.
Omega-3 fatty acids are the only kind of fatty acid

that the human body can't make, so they're essential for

our health and they need to be consumed via the food we eat.

2:41
Unsaturated fats can be naturally occurring

like the fats found in olive oil, nuts and avocados.

Or they can be man made or chemically manipulated to become unsaturated.

These are the fats found in some margarines and

in the kinds of oils that are often used for repeated cooling and

reheating in deep frying machines like the ones used in many fast food restaurants.

The problem with chemically engineered unsaturated fats

is that the chemical bonds between the carbon atoms are less stable, so

they easily flip into a trans orientation, rather than a cis orientation.

And this is where we get the name trans fats.

3:25
Trans fats are problematic for

our health because they increase the amount of LDL cholesterol in the blood and

they lower the amount of HDL cholesterol, the good cholesterol in the blood.

By doing this trans fats promote to formation of arterial plaques and

increase the risk of heart disease.

3:46
While saturated fats have also been shown to contribute to increases in LDL

cholesterol, they haven't been shown to lower HDL cholesterol or to

contribute to the development of arterial plaques as significantly as trans fats.

4:02
So, what's the bottom line when it comes to foods that contain fat?

Probably the most sensible food recommendation is this.

Enjoy reasonable amounts of foods that contain mostly naturally occurring

unsaturated fats like those found in olive oil, nuts and avocados.

Avoid all foods containing trans fats.

And limit your intake of foods like red meats that are high in saturated fats.

WEEK 2

0:01
Over the past 60 years, the amount of sugar

consumed as part of the typical western diet has increased dramatically.

Significant increases in sugar consumption have been documented

in most countries where heavily processed food has become a readily available.

Surprisingly, some experts estimate that only one-sixth of our sugar

comes from desserts or foods that we think of as sweets.

The majority of our sugar comes in the form of highly processed food and

sweetened beverages.

Many people are becoming aware of the need to reduce their sugar intake

in order to maintain a healthy body weight.

But what many people still aren't aware of,

is the fact that sugar under a variety of different pseudonyms is added to so

many foods that we don't expect to contain sugar.

Things like packaged breads, condiments, chips, sauces, and salad dressings.

In 2015, the World Health Organization release new guidelines

strongly recommending that all adults and

children reduce their sugar intake to less than 10% of total calories consumed.

These recommendation go on to suggest that a further reduction of sugar intake

to less than 5% of total calories would likely have additional health benefits.

These recommendations focus on free sugars, those that are added to foods by

the manufacturer, the cook, or the consumer, as well as sugars

that are naturally present in honey, syrups, and fruit juices.

But they don't apply to intrinsic sugars found in whole fruits and vegetables.

Because the World Health Organization found no reported evidence

linking the consumption of intrinsic sugars to adverse health effects.

The sugar that naturally occurs in milk is also excluded from that 5%.

For the average adult, consuming a 2000 calorie per

day diet reducing their sugar intake to 5% would mean that ideally

no more than 100 calories per day should come from free sugars.

Since free sugars offer 4 calories of energy per gram this would translate

into approximately 25 grams of free sugar, about 6 teaspoons.

Six teaspoons seems like a generous allocation

when you picture spooning it out of a sugar bowl.

But when you being to look at the nutrition labels of most packaged foods,

the numbers begin to add up incredibly quickly.

For example, a one-half cup serving of organic granola can

contain 16 grams or 4 teaspoons of sugar.

If one half of a cup of regular sweetened yogurt is added to that cereal for
breakfast, this can add another four teaspoons of sugar and

you've already exceeded your recommended sugar intake by two full teaspoons

before leaving the house.

3:05
There's a growing consensus that we need to cut down on our sugar consumption and

yet there may be a downside to

vilifying sugar the way we did with the dietary fats.

If we only emphasized the need to cut down on our sugar intake

without simultaneously emphasizing moderation and

balance in our diet as a whole, we risk a situation where fats and

animal proteins are seen by the general public as free food.

And the processed food industry, again steps in and super sizes.

>> It's been interesting to read the research and see the shift in attention

from treating fat as the evil nutrient to treating sugar as the evil nutrient.

Now, we went overboard on fat.

It turns out fat is not as evil as we thought and

saturated fat is not necessarily the thing to worry most about in your diet.

And in fact, our obsession with saturated fat led us to promote trans fat,

which turned out to actually be lethal.

So I'm very wary of focusing all our attention on a single nutrient.

Sugar's been part of the human diet for a very long time.

It's prized by people all over the world.

We have evolved to like the flavor of sugar for very good reasons, but

we are eating too much of it.

And I think we definitely need to cut down on the amount of sugar we're eating, but

I think companies need to disclose added sugar,

which they don't now have to do in processed foods.

I'm very concerned that sugars being added to foods that never were sweetened before.

Things like bread now have sugar in them, and condiments of all kinds.
because if you put more sugar in a food you will sell more of it.

So we need to be conscious of it.

But does it explain everything about our diet?

No, it really doesn't.

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In many parts of the world today, but

especially in the United States, the most pervasive

foods in our eating environment are ones that don't necessarily support our health.

One of the proposed solutions that addresses

the problem in both the short and long term is a return to home cooking.

What if we were to re-allocate a small amount of our time to cooking our food

at home, using whole food ingredients, instead of relying so

heavily on the food industry to provide us with our meals?

This may be easier than it sounds, and cooking may also have some side benefits.
>> What role do you think that a return to home cooking can play

as we try to promote the health of our nation?

>> You would think it's about the food and not the process by which it's made, but

in fact the process by which the food is made has a lot to do with our health.

And so we do have research that suggests that families who eat

food cooked by humans are eating a better diet and are healthier as a result.

But many other things follow from the process of cooking.

I mean, when you cook at home you will use the best ingredients you can afford.

You will keep it really simple.

You don't need the food to last six months on a shelf, and the odds are,

whatever you eat, it will be better than processed food.

There's something about the act of cooking that enforces,

without us even being conscious of it, a healthy, wholesome diet.

I think it's very hard to get fat on home-cooked food.

Now, the other reason though that cooking is important,

is that if you cook, you will have a meal, you will sit down at a table,

with other people, with family, you eat together.

And that has a lot of implications for our health too.

Eating alone, snacking, eating in front of the television,

all these things lead to a very different kind of food consumption.

>> Micheal, what advice do you have for

people who say they don't know how to cook or they don't have time to cook?

>> Yeah. You know I hear that a lot.

People think it's the hardest thing you could ask them to do,
to start cooking a little bit more.

And they don't have the skills or they don't think they do.

And they don't have the time.

There's a lot of obstacles to cooking right now and

different people have to deal with it in different ways.

Some people really don't have a lot of time.

And perhaps they're living alone, or perhaps both partners are working,

they have a long commute.

That's a legitimate challenge.

My advice is two-fold.

One is, involve everyone in the family in cooking.

We do not bring our children into the kitchen.

And that is an enormous disservice to them long-term.

Take turns with your partner or share the work.

A lot of the problem cooking is the work has all been dumped on one member

of the family, usually the woman.

And that's not fair and it's not realistic now that women are in the work force.

So, sharing the work is one very important way to reduce the time burden.

Another is, and I find this very useful,

is give a couple hours on a Sunday to preparing food for the week.

Freeze a couple things, or

make a dish that is going to produce lots of leftovers.

When I was researching one of my books, I was soliciting food rules.

I got a letter from a doctor, a transplant cardiologist.

And at his last meeting with patients, he would take out his prescription pad.

And they all thought he was writing a prescription for

a statin or whatever it was.

But in fact, he was writing a recipe for a roast chicken.

3:29

And on the back he turned it over and it was a recipe for making chicken tacos.

And he said this is what you need, not another drug, and

the idea was that if you knew how to roast a chicken, which, believe me,

is not rocket science, you had the makings of three good meals.

One meal rolls into the others, so you have chicken one night, and then you have

tacos, chicken tacos another night and then you make a soup from the carcass.

We've lost those skills, we've lost that sense of how to

maximize the value of food and minimize the time investment.

We erect a lot of barriers to cooking in our heads and

one of the reasons I wrote cook is to help people get over those barriers and realize

too that we've been kind of brainwashed to think about cooking as drudgery.

It's not.

It's really satisfying.

4:17

And more satisfying the better you get at it.

I mean, to handle plants and animals and

fungi and to learn how to manipulate them and make something delicious and

if you approach it more as a pastime and less as a chore, you will enjoy it more.

And you have to realize too, that we've been getting marketing messages

that are designed to get us to go out to eat or buy processed food.

And those marketing messages include a very strong message that this is

really hard and really boring, and it's neither of those things.

People over-complicate cooking.

We live in a culture that celebrates cooking, but

doesn't actually do it very much.

We watch it on television,

we watch it in restaurants where now the kitchens are all open.

And we all think that cooking means restaurant food, and it's not.

That's all special occasion food.

Everyday home cooking is throwing a fillet of fish on the grill or in a pan.

It's taking out a box of frozen spinach.

Frozen vegetables is a very healthy choice, very easy choice.

You don't have to wash anything, you can use your microwave for it.

You can dress it up with some garlic or olive oil or lemon juice.

5:31

There are a lot of really satisfying meals that you can get

on the table in less than a half hour.

Some of us don't know how to make them, and I think that that's a tremendous

problem, because the cultural transmission of knowledge about how to cook, how

to be resourceful in the kitchen has been broken by a generation that's not cooking.

>> By reallocating a small amount of our time and

energy to the preparation of simple home cooked meals,

we become empowered as we take back control over the foods we eat.

Cooking is a very practical solution to our modern health challenges that can be

put into action almost immediately using whatever resources are available.
In addition, cooking brings us closer to food rather than seeing food as the enemy.

Cooking can protect our relationship with food and

it may be one of the most powerful ways to protect our long term health.

Around the world today, more than 2 billion people are overweight or obese.

Our global obesity epidemic has been described as the most significant

preventable public health crisis in recent history.

This 48-year-old manager of a construction firm found himself fighting an uphill

battle against a disease that can effect every organ system in the human body.

0:28

Kevin's wife had convinced him to visit their local medical clinic,

because she was concerned about his weight, and

the joint pain he complained of every evening after work.

At the clinic, Kevin was told that his fasting blood sugar was elevated, and

that he was prediabetic.

His triglycerides, total cholesterol, and

LDL cholesterol were also elevated and his HDL cholesterol was low.

Standing 5'7" tall and weighing 180 pounds with predominant central obesity,

Kevin's physician calculated a BMI of 28 kilograms per meter squared.

1:08

Kevin was informed that he was overweight and suffering from metabolic syndrome,

a collection of biochemical and physiological abnormalities associated

with the development of cardiovascular disease and type two diabetes.

The physician on duty advised Kevin to make some major lifestyle changes.

By eating better, and getting more exercise.

1:33

Six months later, Kevin returned to the clinic weighing nine pounds more

than he had at the previous visit.

When the new physician on duty asked if he

had been able to make any of the lifestyle changes suggested by her colleague.

Kevin told a story she had heard far too many times before.

The first week after his last doctor's visit,

Kevin had tried eliminating all of his favorite foods and snacks.

He skipped breakfast, drank a meal replacement shake for lunch and

ate a calorie reduced frozen dinner in the evening.

He had also tried to eliminate the fat in his diet.

The first week, Kevin lost four pounds but as the weeks went on

he found it impossible to stick to this planed restrictive diet and

he noticed that he was replacing his favourite high fat foods

like potato chips and pizza with foods that were high in sugar.

In the evening he would find himself in front of the television,

snacking on multiple packages of Swedish fish.

By the time he went to bed, he would almost always feel he had over eaten.

The soda machine at work became his enemy as he tried unsuccessfully to walk

by without buying the cold soda cans that he ended up drinking usually three or

four times a day.

2:53

He and his wife both worked long hours so one of them would usually stops for

take outs on the way and they would end up sharing a pizza and

a two liter of Coke, exhausted from their long days of work.

Regular exercise was difficult for Kevin because of his joint pain and

he often felt that he just didn't have the energy to move.

3:14

The physician took notes and asked clarifying questions as Kevin spoke.

Identifying major target areas for change.

Including specific food and

eating behaviors that were contributing to Kevin's uphill battle with his weight.

She asses Kevin readiness to make dietary changes and asked if the couple had

access to simple cooking tools like a pot, a knife and a cutting board.

Then she spoke with Kevin and his wife about the importance of avoiding

highly processed foods in order to achieve their health goals for Kevin.

3:50

Together, they came up with a stepwise action plan that would allow them to
gradually reallocate a small amount of time to the preparation of simple,

home cooked meals.

In this way they could once again be in control of the fat, sugar, salt, and

total calories they were consuming.

Kevin and his wife enrolled in a free online nutrition and cooking course and

began tracking their food intake using an online food blog.

To help them control portion sizes,

their physician advised them to buy a set of affordable smaller dinner plates and

glasses that they found at a local hardware store.

The couple kept their meals simple, but made sure that each plate

was composed of one-half plant-based foods like fruits and vegetables.

WIth the other half of the meal made up of lean protein and
whole grain carbohydrates.

4:44

Over the next four weeks,

they gradually began to feel more comfortable in the kitchen.

Kevin tried his hand at making veggie omelets and

a stir fry and even a homemade tomato sauce.

He started to feel pretty good about the food that he was able to prepare at home.

On Sundays when they had more time, Kevin's wife would cook a stew or

a pot of vegetable soup and freeze these meals in smaller containers for

later on in the week.

5:12

Following his action plan, Kevin gradually replaced the sodas

he once drank daily with unsweetened sparkling water.

Six months later, and with regular follow up visits,

Kevin's weight had dropped to 165 pounds.

5:27

And his joints were no longer hurting him, allowing him to start walking regularly.

His fasting blood sugar level and his lipid profile had both improved.

And he told his physician that he had more energy and was actually enjoying his

food more now because he no longer felt guilty about his poor eating habits.

He and his wife found that they talked more

now that they were spending a bit more time in the kitchen together after work.

They sat down for meals together and

made a pact to stop snacking in front of the TV.

6:01

They even found their new eating habits to be more economical because they shopped
for groceries once or twice a week instead of buying each meal separately, and

usually buying more food than they needed.

18 months later, Kevin had managed to keep the weight off and

his fasting blood sugar had returned to normal.

6:22

Kevin told his physician that he felt better at he age of 49 than he had at 39.

Life as a healthy middle age man was treating him well and

he couldn't imagine ever going back.