THE SANE WAY TO EAT

You've heard that old dieting adage "a calorie is a calorie." You've probably also heard "all foods are fine in moderation," But the truth is, putting 2,000 calories of low-quality food into our metabolic system will have a radically different effect on our weight than ingesting the sanne quantity of high-quality calories, And manyhighly processed foods can set us up for trouble even in moderation.The quality of calories isdetermined by four factors: satiety, aggression, nutrition, and efficiency. A "SANE" approach to eating considers them all.

Satiety refers to how quickly calories satisfy our appetites and hunger. Most of us can easily consume copious amounts of beer and pizza, but if we tried to eat the same amount of calories in another form — say, five cans of tuna or 30 cups of broccoli — we'd be uncomfortably full. That's satiety in action.

Aggression refers to how likely calories are to be stored as body fat. To keep calories from being shuttled into our fat cells, we don't need to worry about eating less food. We just need to eat less aggressive food.

Body-fat storage is triggered as a response to eating food that causes us to have more glucose in our bloodstream than we can use at one time.

The more aggressive calories are, the faster they increase the levels of blood glucose and the more likely that our bodies will lock up that glucose as stored fat.

Nutrition refers to how many macro- and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, es¬ sential amino acids, essential fatty acids, phytonutrients) your calories provide.

Fewer nutrients per calorie (as found in most starches, sweets and fast foods) means low nutrition quality.

Lots of nutrients per calorie (as found in nonstarchy vegetables, high-quality proteins, low-sugar fruits, and nuts and seeds) means high nutrition quality.

Effficiency is how easily calories are converted into body fat The more inefficiently calories are stored as body fat, the better.

Fiber, for example, is not digested and therefore can never be stored as body fat, The body tries to digest fiber, but after burning a bunch of calories trying to break down and absorb fiber, it gives up and passes it through the digestive system.

Refined sugars and starches are quite efficiently converted to body fat, while protein is very inefficiently converted. Fats are easily converted but many have other redeeming "SANE" charactehstics that make them desirable.

The more "SANE" foods we eat, the simpler it becomes to achieve and maintain our ideal weight.

The more "inSANE" foods we eat, the more our metabolism is disrupted, and the more inclined we are to overeat.

Foods with a low SANEity rating provide few nutrients and are easily converted into body fat. They trigger the release of body-fat-storing hormones, and they raise our set-point weight.

Here's a look at my SANEity ratings and serving recommendations for various foods.