The Square Meal Diet
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The Revolutionary Diet That
Features Comfort Foods
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No Food is Forbidden
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Mark L. Collins
Copyright 2011 by Mark L. Collins, Ph.D.
e-Book – Third Smashwords Edition
ISBN-10: 0983204055
ISBN-13: 9780983204053
Table of Hyperlinked Contents
Weight Loss is Not the Main Goal of a Proper Dietary
Nutritional Sufficiency is the Goal
The Major Source of Degenerative Diseases
Is “Fast Food + One Square Meal” a Marketable Solution to Our Health Problems?
Two Habits That We Need to Change
Definitions: Square Meals, Iso-nutritious Meals, and the Calorie Bank
Principal Uses of Square Meals
The Balance of Calories: Anything Within Reason
Two Critical Research Problems
Are Two or Three Square Meals Over-Nutrition?
Two Key Problems With Our Major Protein Sources
The Top 25 Most Nutritious Foods
The Most Nutritious Whole Food Groups
A Formula to Create Square Meals
Square Meal-Specific Vitamin Supplements
How to “Square” Your Favorite Meals
A Cookbook to “Square” Your Favorite Recipes
Popular diet books have had a common recognizable format. They were hard to follow, yet all were labeled “simple.” They assume that since weight loss is so intrinsically healthy, nothing could possibly counteract that. Really? This book makes the opposite assumption. Improper nutrition during dieting can cancel most of the benefits of weight loss.
Though austere, denial diets are embraced as “quick fixes” for rapid weight loss. They are popular, yet our common sense tells us that quick fixes never last, and they do not. They are a waste of time, money, and energy, and since denial diets increase cravings for the “forbidden” foods, they make it hard to stick to them. Denial diets also weaken the body, and thus they make it harder to sustain the weight loss, and they increase the odds of succumbing to other health problems.
The Square Meal Diet is not a quick fix, but a genuine, long-term solution to weight and health problems. The Square Meal diet curbs cravings and strengthens the body during weight loss, and thus it makes maintaining the new weight easier, and it decreases the odds of succumbing to other health problems.
In the Square Meal Diet, there are no Commandments. There are no forbidden foods. The meals are so filling that some people find it hard to finish them in one sitting. The point of this diet is to support good health for the maximum enjoyment of life.
§1
In Plain English: You CAN enjoy comfort foods, fast foods, snack on chocolate, skip workouts, and drink alcohol - and be healthy! What’s the catch? Treat yourself to at least one delicious “square meal” per day.
Scientific formulation: Essential to the maintenance of overall health, “global sufficient nutrition” requires consumption of the proper level of all of the nutrients that the body must have. This can be achieved in one “square” meal. For the rest of the calories, no food is “forbidden.”
“Global nutrient sufficiency” means that almost all enzymes in the body are sufficiently loaded with their cofactors. In theory, this is attainable with top-notch nutrition, and the proper digestion, absorption, and distribution of nutrients. “Comprehensive nutrient sufficiency” means that all enzymes in the body are sufficiently loaded with their cofactors. This is probably impossible because of “biochemical individuality” (Roger Williams). For example, a single deleterious polymorphism in any of the cofactor binding sites of any of the vast number of enzymes would prevent it.
§2
There are two types of nutrients: “Essential” and “V3”
•“Essential” nutrients keep us breathing.
–Without sufficient vitamin C, we get scurvy and die painfully.
The US government tracks about half of the essential nutrients in foods. How we are doing on the other half? Who knows? Not even the government. It is left to chance. In fact, the government requires that food labels contain only a few bits of information, most of it as irrelevant to our health as our medical exams are.
No, the whole process of nourishing ourselves is a crap shoot. What if it were a sure bet? Then we could simply forget about it, be healthy, and enjoy eating whatever we want.
The average person has no idea how many nutrient deficiencies he suffers from each and every day, because the body can borrow nutrients from its “stores” and substitute less optimal nutrients that are in excess to hide the deficiencies for a long time. Two-thirds of us will die from complications of degenerative disease. Obviously, average health is not good enough: a person with average health and the average dietary has no idea what painful medical consequences await him.
–V3 nutrients give us “vim, vigor, and vitality.” A person who receives calories and the essential nutrients intravenously does not thrive. He survives and by force of will even does well, but he lacks the raw power -the vim, vigor, and vitality- of anyone on whole foods nutrition.
–Enzymes in raw whole foods are V3 nutrients that aid digestion.
–Beneficial bacteria in fermented foods like yogurt are V3 nutrients that also aid digestion.
–Fiber is a V3 nutrient that is so important to health that many nutritionists consider it “essential.”
–Some V3 nutrients, found in herbs, have “medicinal” properties that make us “feel good.”
–Other V3 nutrients have medicinal properties whose presence we do not sense. For example, the anti-cancer compounds in broccoli.
–Some V3 nutrients “spare” or stretch our supply of essential nutrients. Taurine, choline, and carnitine spare methionine. Whenever we cannot make enough of these V3 nutrients for optimum health, they become “conditionally essential.” Choline is now considered essential for this reason.
–As we age, more and more V3 nutrients become “conditionally essential” because we can no longer make enough to meet our bodies’ needs. Fish oils (DHA and EPA) are the best studied examples.
–Other V3 nutrients are “co-nutrients” that enhance the action of essential nutrients. For example, bioflavonoids, lipoic acid, CoQ10, and carotenoids (non-Vitamin A-producing compounds such as lycopene) are V3 nutrients that enhance the activities of vitamin C and vitamin E. All of these V3 nutrients are so important to health that they are now available in supplements.
These V3 nutrients are part of an extensive “antioxidant network” (Lester Packer) –including powerful antioxidant enzymes- that limit the damage to the body done by oxidative stress so efficiently and thoroughly that no single compound could ever compete with the network.
Scientists have found that high doses of vitamin C or vitamin E do not prevent cancer or other degenerative diseases. Neither does the combination. Is this a surprise? The antioxidant network is the only functional antioxidant in the body. Individual antioxidants are neither here nor there. A proper (whole foods) dietary must contain the entire antioxidant network (or their precursors).
Like the antioxidant network, the body’s extensive methylation network (including methionine, the folates, vitamin B12, choline, carnitine, dimethylglycine, trimethylglycine, other betaines, and dimethylaminoethanol) similarly reduces the risks associated with dietary (or synthetic) deficiencies in any one component.
The human body is a network of networks of networks, etc. The advantages of the body’s networks are legion, in reducing the risks of deficiency in any single compound, in efficiency, in coverage, and in the increase of signal-to-noise by decreasing the side effects (the noise) that inevitably attend the overuse of any one or two compounds (well illustrated by the side effects of “high” dose, single compound drugs).
V3 nutrients are “network extenders” in the human body, and thus V3 nutrients increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the body’s critical processes.
§3
To thrive we need whole foods to supply all of the V3 nutrients
When foods are processed, some V3 nutrients are damaged or discarded. The more processed foods we consume, the more we have to make up for the loss of those V3 nutrients with V3-rich square meals.
•Hypothesis 1: Only whole foods can supply the complete set of V3 nutrients for maximum vim, vigor, and vitality.
Weight loss should not be the main goal of “dieting”
•Permanent weight loss, when necessary, is the end result of gradually but permanently reducing portion sizes, while gradually but permanently increasing physical activity. However, restricting calories in any diet that does not provide proper (essential and V3) nutrition is a serious mistake that weakens our constitutional health.