One of Jeff Novick's best posts ever

Many people are invested in the idea that recovering your health is very complex.  It isn't.  Recently, Jeff Novick posted a summary of how to go about it in his McDougall forum.

The advice given by Jeff is virtually verbatim  the same advice he gave me when I hired him as a nutritionist to reverse my own health problems.  It is really simple, and all you need to know.  If you follow these guidelines, you can't help but be trim and restore your health.  Here are Jeff's words:

Here is a quick review:
- Focus your diet on unrefined unprocessed fruits, veggies, starchy veggies, intact whole grains and legumes.

- Start meals with soup, and/or salad, and/or fruit as they will fill you up for less calories and help to reduce your consumption of other more calorie dense foods

- Avoid all liquid calories as they provide little to any satiety for the calories

- Dilute out meals based on intact whole grains, and/or starchy vegetables and/or legumes with fruits and vegetables. Make sure 1/3 to 1/2 of the bulk/volume (by eye) of all your meals are low calorie dense vegetables

- Salt - the less you salt your food, the less people tend to eat

- Variety- the less variety, the less consumption

- Raw Foods - Foods you can eat raw tend to be lower in calorie density and you may not digest as efficiently. Cooking begins the digestion process.

- Make sure you are avoiding all higher fat, calorie dense plant foods, nuts, seeds, oils, avocados, tofu, etc

- Make sure you are avoiding all refined processed grains and starches, (breads, bagels, crackers, cookies, dry cereal, etc and anything made from ground up flour) even if they are whole grain

-Avoid all refined concentrated sugars/sweeteners, even if they are natural and organic.

In regard to sodium, while tracking may be of some value, tracking is nearly impossible as most of the sodium is hidden. However, if you follow the program, the recommended foods are all naturally low in sodium. For any packaged/processed foods, make sure the amount of sodium per serving is no more than the amount of calories per serving.

If you do this, and make adjustments as necessary, you will hit all the numbers automatically and lose weight and lower your cholesterol and BP.