Volumetrics: Fill Up Your Plate and Lose Weight

Fill Up Your Plate & Lose Weight

Every dieter knows that empty feeling in the pit of her stomach, not to mention the growling and gurgling that erupts when we decrease our food intake in the name of dropping a few pounds.

One of the biggest problems with dieting is the constant hunger. No matter how much water we drink, how many salads we munch or how much sugar-free gum we chew, the hunger is always there. Hunger makes us blow our diets, pure and simple.

But there's a new way of eating that promotes weight loss without feeling hungry. Instead of tiny little portions of food, enjoy large, full plates. The trick is figuring out the energy density of foods.

Energy density
Energy density is more exact than calories. According to Barbara Rolls, PhD, nutrition professor at Penn State and author of numerous research articles and The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan, increasing the fiber and water content of foods lowers the energy density while increasing our sensation of fullness. A double bonus! Rolls' research shows that the key to weight loss isn't deprivation and hunger, but rather choosing foods that make us feel full while simultaneously reducing calorie intake.

Calculate energy density by dividing the calories by grams of weight. For example, 1 cup of Cheerios has 110 calories and weighs 30 grams. 110 divided by 30 equals an energy density (ED) of 3.7. Add 1/2 cup skim milk to those Cheerios, and the ED drops to 1.1 while the total calories are only 150. Compare that breakfast to one Pop-Tart, with an ED of 3.8 (200 calories and 52 grams weight). You get more volume and more fullness from the Cheerios and milk than you do from the Pop-Tart.

Rolls divides foods into four categories:

Category 1: Very low energy dense foods, ED < .6. Includes most fruit and vegetables, skim milk and broth-based soups. Adding fruit or vegetables to meals increases your fullness without adding a lot of calories.

Category 2: Low energy dense foods, ED .6 to 1.5. Includes cooked grains, cold breakfast cereal with skim milk, low-fat meats, legumes and salads. Most of the foods we eat should come from this category, especially when combined with fruit and veggies from category 1.

Category 3: Medium energy dense foods, ED 1.5 to 4.0. Includes meats, cheeses, salad dressings, and snack foods. It's easy to overeat these, so portion control is a must. But if you combine small amounts of category 3 foods with foods from categories 1 and 2, you'll have a full plate of food ‑- and you won't leave the table hungry.

Category 4: High energy dense foods, ED 4.0 to 9.0. Includes crackers, chips, candy, cookies, nuts and butter. These are foods we often overeat.

How does energy density work?
We feel full on a number of different levels. Meals begin with our eyes: If we serve a tiny portion of food, we're setting ourselves up to feel unsatisfied. A big, heaping plate of food makes us believe right from the start that we're going to be full. Face it ‑- we're happy when we get to eat a lot of food, and miserable when portions are smaller than we're used to.

Other senses play a role in satiety. The smell and taste of food adds to our enjoyment of a meal. That's why we often lose our appetite when we have a cold; without being able to smell or taste food, it's just not worth eating. With a bigger volume of food, we get more of these delightful sensory inputs. A larger portion of food takes longer to digest, and fills up our stomach, which sends messages to our brain telling us it's "full." Finally, a variety of hormones help signal fullness, and the more food we eat, the more of these satiety signals are sent. Fullness doesn't rely just on calories ‑- all these other mechanisms are even more important. Rolls has shown that we can trick our senses into feeling full with fewer calories, which means we'll lose weight without being hungry!

Volume tricks

Start meals with a broth-based vegetable soup or a salad packed with a variety of veggies.

Enjoy a piece of fresh fruit, fruit salad or even fruit canned in its own juice as part of most meals. Dried fruit has a much higher energy density, because the water has been removed.

Just drinking water with a meal doesn't make us feel more full; the water has to be in the foods we eat. Foods with a high water content are (you guessed it!) fruit and veggies.

Nonstarchy veggies (green leafys, salad veggies, green beans, summer squash, onions) are category 1; starchy veggies (corn, potato, peas, winter squash, lima beans) are category 2.

Choose fat-free or low-fat dairy products (milk, yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese).

Legumes have the lowest energy density of any protein food, so include them often. Here's a great tip: Add chick peas to a green vegetable salad, enjoy lentils in your veggie soup, or make a brown rice pilaf with black beans.

Frying foods increases their energy density. To learn more
The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan by Barbara Rolls, PhD, and Robert Barnett includes complete listing of the energy density of numerous foods, plus recipes and meal plans to get you started.