Pescetarian Plan (eBook)

Jibran / THE PESCETARIAN PLAN

Chapter 1

Your Fabulous Pescetarian Figure

In the beginning, I didn't plan on writing a weight-loss book. When I initially started, my primary purpose was to guide you through a way of eating that keeps your brain sharp and your heart healthy and also reduces your risk for cancer, diabetes, and other conditions. But guess what? The more I researched, the more it became crystal clear that this is the ideal diet to help you lose weight--and lots of it, if you need to do so. The research simply confirmed my real world experience: This is the diet I've been giving my clients for decades, because it's the one that produces the best long-term results.

What if you don't need to lose weight? Stay with me here, don't go anywhere! Being a pescetarian may very well be your best bet for preventing unwanted pounds from creeping on.

The Pescetarian Weight-Loss Edge

I've found that it's easier to lose weight on a pescetarian diet than on a vegan or vegetarian one. The reason: seafood. Seafood is a low-calorie concentrated protein source, just what you need when you're trying to lose weight. That's because protein, compared to carbohydrates and fat, is particularly appetite-quelling. Meaning, after a meal containing a high-protein food, you last longer before getting hungry again.

Vegans and vegetarians do have tofu--also a healthy concentrated source of protein--but how much tofu do you feel like eating? And vegetarians also have eggs, but again, they're a little limiting. Legumes, which I recommend highly in this book as a healthy carb, aren't the best protein source if you're trying to lose weight. That's because you have to rack up a lot more beans--and calories--than seafood to get substantial protein levels. For instance, three ounces of cooked trout offers up 18 grams of protein for just 113 calories. To get that much protein from beans, you'd have to eat about one and a half cups of beans, for about 300 calories.

Loads of research from across the globe--the United States, Europe, northern Africa, or anywhere else--shows that people who eat along the lines of the Pescetarian Plan are slimmer. How much slimmer? Pescetarians are, on average, about 20 pounds lighter than regular eaters, according to a study tracking 89,000 Seventh-day Adventists in the United States and Canada. Adventists are an ideal group to study because their religion advocates a vegetarian diet (only about half are actually vegetarians, while another 10 percent are pescetarians, the rest are 'regular eaters,' eating meat, poultry, and everything else). Vegetarians and pescetarians also had about half the risk for diabetes and high blood pressure.

A Mediterranean diet is also slimming. As I've explained already, the Pescetarian Plan is basically a Mediterranean diet that takes a pass on poultry and red meat and embraces the form of animal protein favored in Mediterranean countries: seafood. A Spanish study tracking university students for five years after graduation found that men and women who closely followed a Mediterranean diet were only half as likely to gain 11 pounds or more compared to their classmates whose diets were furthest from a Mediterranean pattern.

How's this for a triple threat: The Pescetarian Plan rolls all three fat-fighting diets into one. It's Mediterranean and basically vegetarian with the addition of seafood.

You'd think that the words diet and painless would go together about as well as socks and sandals. But my clients tell me that the Pescetarian Plan is the most painless way they've ever lost weight. There are lots of...