The SANE solution is a program that was created by Jonathan Bailor which is based on The Calorie Myth book. I recommend to anybody who thinks that to lose weight we should eat less, and exercise more. In his book, Jonathan Bailor shows with scientific evidence that eating less, and exercising more does not help us to lose weight in the LONG term.
Most of us already tried to eat less, and exercise more and we lost weight at first, but then our body fought back to make us gain the weight back. Why? Because most of the time when we focus on eating less, and exercising more we do not focus on the quality of what we eat, but rather on the quantity. When we start restricting calories we are going to look for low-calorie foods but not necessarily for high-quality foods. For example, if you look at a 12oz can of coke, and 12oz of a homemade smoothie there will be way more calories in the smoothie, but does that mean you will be better off drinking a diet coke every morning rather than a smoothie? No! There is no calorie in a diet coke, but there also no nutrients, and it is full of artificial ingredients that are bad for you. Your body is also going to react differently; when you drink a can of diet coke your brain is going to respond to the sweet taste, but there is aspartame in it which will make you hungrier, and make you want more sweetness. When you drink a smoothie full of vegetables, and some fruits your body is going to get nutrients, and will be satisfied from it. You will also be satisfied from the water, and fiber content in the smoothie.
The principles of the SANE program is to eat foods that are SANE.
– S for Satiety, by eating high-satiety foods we can eat food that are more nutritious and become full faster, and longer. High-satiety foods are foods that contain a lot of water, fiber, and protein. The intention here is to feel full and satisfied with high-quality food, so we are no longer hungry for inSane foods.
– A for unAggressive calories because the more aggressive calories are the faster they will rise the level of glucose in our bloodstream. If we have more glucose then our body can handle at one time the more likely it will be store in our fat cells. SANE foods are unAgressive, so we do not have to worry about the glycemic index or glycemic load of foods.
– N is for nutrition which is why we do not need to count calories because instead we are focusing on nutrients, and the quality of the foods we are eating. Calories are not merely as important as we make us believe because 200 calories of spinach are not equal to 200 calories of wheat bread. Your body will process them differently because bread is low in nutrient, fiber, water, and protein, so we will need to eat more bread to get close to the nutrients spinach could have brought us. For example, if we eat 250 calories of spinach we will get 46g of fiber, and to get that amount of fiber by eating bread we will need to eat 2,000 calories of bread.
– E is for Efficiency which is how efficiently is our metabolism to convert calories into body fat. Fiber is inEfficient because it is not digested, and our body will burn a lot of calories trying to break it down, and absorb it. Protein is also inEfficient because our body burns 5 to 10 times more calories to digest protein than it does for carbohydrates or fat. After the initial digestion, the protein is converted into glucose in our liver which also burns calories, and then even more calories are burned to convert the glucose into body fat. Another reason why a calorie is not a calorie is because calories from starch are very efficient so it is easy for our body to convert it into body fat. If you eat 1,000 calories of starch your body can store 700 calories as body fat. This is why the SANE solution is about eating more, but smarter because we eat high-quality food that are satisfying, nutritious, unaggressive, and that are less likely to be stored as body fat. By going SANE you will eat more, but smarter and you will be able to lose weight.
Another principle of the SANE solution is to exercise smarter , but I will get to that in another post. In the meantime, you can check the list of foods, and servings that are recommended in the SANE program.
Non-starchy vegetables (leafy vegetables, eggplant, carrots, radishes, broccoli etc. basically veggies you could eat raw): 6-12 servings/day
Protein (seafood/meat/eggs/protein powders/non-fat greek yogurt/non-fat cottage cheese): 3-6 servings/day
Fats (chia seeds, flax seeds, avocados, coconut, cacao, nuts): 3-6 servings/day
Low-sugar fruits (citrus, and berries): 0-3 servings/day
Legumes (chickpeas, peanuts etc.): 0-3 servings/day
Dairy (milk, cheese, full-fat yogurt etc.): 0-3 servings/day
Oils (coconut oil, olive oil, MCT oil, avocado oil etc.): 0-3 serving/day
Other fruits: 0-1 serving/day
For more infos -> Go here
Or check out Jonathan Bailor’s book
