The Truth About Fruit, Veggies And Fat Loss

I’m here again with the author of Eat Stop Eat, Brad Pilon, and in this particular interview series we’re going to debunk some metabolism myths that continue to misinform so many of you out there, as well as  discuss a whole whack of basic nutrition information.

So let’s get started with today’s portion –  2 foods you need more of in your daily diet…

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Craig Ballantyne:    Hey, everyone, this is Craig Ballantyne from TurbulenceTraining.com, and I’m here with Brad Pilon from EatStopEat.com. We’re gonna start off with things that we believe that everyone can agree on for fat loss.  So, Brad, welcome to the call.

Brad Pilon: Hey, no problem.  Thanks for having me.

Craig Ballantyne:    Let’s talk about what I think people can agree on, which is, first of all, that people need to eat more FRUITS and VEGETABLES.

Can we at least agree on that?

And when I say let’s talk about things we can agree on, I wanna talk about stuff that every nutritionist out there, no matter if they’re low carb or vegetarian or whatever, I mean, there’s gotta be some things people can agree on and make things LESS CONFUSING for the average person.  So, the first one I’m gonna go for is fruits and vegetables.

Brad Pilon: Fruits and veggies.

And I think with fruits and veggies, you’re on to something.  I mean, you’re never gonna get 100 percent.  I’m sure there’s the odd person out there who is convinced that fruits and veggies are actually what’s making everybody fat.  I mean, people are crazy –

Craig Ballantyne:    Well, with fruit, yeah, some people would talk about fruit that way.  I think at least everyone will say at vegetables.

Brad Pilon: Very true, very true.  But in general, if you look at both fruits and veggies, what you get there is a great volume to calorie ratio, right, which just simply means that you could eat a ton of them without taking all their calories, right.  So, right away, they get really big bonus marks.  You can have a cup of blueberries and barely hit 100 calories, that’s a great deal, or you can have less than a half a Snickers bar that’s 100 calories.

So, just based on the fact you get a nice amount of volume from fruits and vegetables in relation to how many calories you’re getting, that makes them kinda high off my list.

The other thing is you get a great taste to calorie ratio, right, because obviously, especially with fruit definitely, you don’t need to eat a lot of them.  They taste great, you know, somethin’ like a strawberry, if it’s in season, ripe, whoa, fantastic.

And it’d be very hard to sit down and go, “I’m gonna eat three, four cups of strawberries,” to possibly get it up in the calorie range of your typical treat or snack.  So, they also have a fantastic taste to calorie ratio.

So, those two things alone can make fruits and veggies really, really useful for anybody trying to lose weight.

And I think that the majority of the people listening to this call would agree that, regardless of your kind of thoughts on fruits and veggies, those two principles alone make sense and are good reason enough for people to include them in a weight loss program.

Craig Ballantyne:    Cool.  Yeah, I mean, I think that if someone’s tellin’ you to avoid fruits and vegetables, they’re pretty far out there, and certainly, we can all agree that we need to do that.

Now, the PROBLEM is most people, I would say 99 percent – well, I wouldn’t say that much, but a lot of people, 80 percent of people probably know that they need to eat more fruits and vegetables.

So, what’s stopping them and how can they do better at it and –

Brad Pilon: It’s mostly variety, right.

If you look at the USDA, so the United States food database, they have this great, great database of sort of food statistics.  And one of the things that sounded really interesting is that if you looked at the vegetables that made up the majority of a typical American vegetable intake, potatoes, tomatoes, and corn make up 60 percent of the veggie intake – potatoes, tomatoes and corn.  So, I mean, there are –

Craig Ballantyne:    And tomatoes are probably coming from sauce or from catsup.

Brad Pilon: Exactly.  So, the key here is VARIETY, right.

I mean, the other thing I found really interesting about this data is that really since about 1909, our intake of fruits and vegetables or the US intake of fruits and vegetables per capita, it hasn’t really gone up, it hasn’t really gone down.  So, we know we should be eating more, and to tell you the truth, our grandparents probably knew they should be eating more, too, it just wasn’t as available, right.

So, we all have, almost everybody on this call, has food available to them at a fairly decent cost and with a fair amount of variety. So, the key to enjoying fruits and vegetables, try somethin’ new, right, get more than just – I mean, I think you can account 50 percent of the fruit intake in America being apples, oranges, and bananas.  Go banana mango, right.

Like, the more things you try, the newer things you experiment with, the easier it’ll be to get more fruits and vegetables into your diet.

Craig Ballantyne:    And just little tips on getting more in there is gonna help people get more volume into their diet, they’re gonna be full, they’re gonna eat fewer calories, and overall, just if they can start with that, they should start to lose some weight then.

Brad Pilon: Absolutely.  At least, if anything, you just made it a heck of a lot easier to start losin’ weight.

Craig Ballantyne:    Okay, cool, all right.
Head to Part 2 where Brad shares two simple, yet often overlooked dietary changes you can make to start seeing results right away.