At any given time, something like half of all Americans say they’re trying to lose weight, surveys show. With New Year’s resolutions still freshly minted and the start of swimsuit season not that far away, that number may be even higher.

Wannabe losers know there’s no shortage of advice out there, from Caveman diets to the latest low-carb regimens. A lot of the tips on offer are, well, pretty light-weight. Susan B. Roberts, author of The Instinct Diet: Use Your Five Food Instincts to Lose Weight and Keep it Off Workman Publishing, 2009), enters the crowded weight loss arena with some hefty credentials. She’s a professor of both nutrition and psychiatry at Tufts University. And while her diet plan won’t guarantee success, it represents just about the best scientific approach to smart weight loss you’ll find.

Roberts’ premise isn’t groundbreaking (despite her breathless description of when the idea first hit her: “Bingo!” she writes. “There it was. Eating and weight control are all about our food instincts.”) People get fat because they eat too much of the wrong things, she goes on to explain, and eating is driven by the five basic “food instincts” that give her book its title. Hunger (natch). The availability of food. The calorie density of many of the foods most readily available. Familiarity (her term for comfort food). And finally, variety. 

Some of the advice she offers as she explores these five instincts will be exasperatingly familiar to many dieters. Serve up smaller portions. Eat slowly. Keep a food diary of everything you eat. Adapt favorite recipes to lower their calories.

But some of her advice, especially relating to taming hunger, is to the point and worth repeating. In her chapter on hunger, she emphasizes the importance of eating high fiber foods, for example. Citing research she’s conducted at Tufts, she notes that volunteers who consumed 35 to 45 gams of fiber per day felt more satisfied during weight loss and lost more weight than those who ate less. (That amount of fiber is almost three times what the average American diet includes.) She also makes a fresh pitch for choosing low-glycemic carbohydrates, acknowledging that “even if you don’t lose more weight, there’s more body fat in the weight you do lose.” Both pieces of advice add up to a healthier diet, which is ultimately more important than pounds on the scale.

Roberts also makes a pitch for creating healthy rituals to supplant those that lead us into temptation around fattening foods. Here, too, the details aren’t rocket science. Her examples include getting into the habit of serving raw vegetables with a low-fat yogurt as a snack before dinner and dishing up berries instead of pie for a weekday dessert. But the point is a good one, and chances are you can think of a few personal tweaks that will work for you. We are all creatures of habit, after all, and with a little bit of patience it’s possible to replace bad food habits (a sugary pastry for breakfast) with good ones (a bowl of oatmeal), and to make those healthier habits second nature after a while.

The rationale and outline of Roberts’ diet program occupies the first third of the book. The remainder is devoted to meal plans and recipes. Admittedly, most of us don’t turn to weight-loss tomes for recipes. But many of the dishes included here are surprisingly appealing. And they cover a wide range of different cuisines, from Mexican to Middle Eastern. Examples include crisp fennel salad (with red radishes and arugula) and a mushroom and barley risotto that sounds just right for a cold winter night. Almost all are abundant in vegetables and fruit, and even the meat dishes often include vegetarian alternatives.

In the preface of the book, Roberts boasts that some of the volunteers in her studies have lost up to 50 pounds and kept most of those pounds off. They’ve also seen substantial decreases in cholesterol levels and blood pressure. Good for them. Unfortunately, findings from dozens of studies published in the past few years suggest that most people can’t expect to lose that much weight. The data are even more discouraging when it comes to maintaining weight loss over time.

But there is solid evidence that the healthier food choices promoted here really can lower the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and perhaps even some forms of cancer. That’s important no matter how much you weigh. If you’re overweight and you manage to shed even a few pounds following Roberts’ advice, consider that the icing (sugar-free, of course, and low-fat) on the cake.

© 2009 PDQhealth

Tags: diet, hunger, weight loss