The best calorie restriction is based on total daily caloric intake and more frequent, smaller meals.  Starving is not the answer because it shuts down your metabolism as well as the essential nutrients you need.  Plan the three customary meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) with snacks in-between so that you eat five times in intervals each day.  Should you subscribe to the maximum caloric intake recommended by Life Extension Foundation (LEF.org) of say 1900 calories daily, you could plan for 500 calories for each meal and 200 calories each for two snacks.  The lower your weight, the lower your recommended daily caloric intake.  Calorie charts are available for sale or free on the internet.

There are always exceptions, for example Michael Phelps; a world-class athlete must consume much higher amounts due to the tremendous expenditure of calories for his training regimen.  Remember that fast food meals are much higher calorically and restaurant meal portions have continuously increased in size over the past few decades.  Some fast food places list calories for their menu and you'll need  good luck figuring the calories from the menu at your favorite spot to eat out.

Since most so-called normal people do eat out, remember to count drink calories while trying to get a doggy bag for your menu choice thereby reducing the portion that you consume.  Chew your food at least 25-30 times before swallowing and you will feel full faster.  Calorie counting requires that you read labels and use real math addition to calculate your intake.  If you regressed yesterday, stay the course today and tomorrow.  Consistency and perseverance are the keys to calorie restriction.

Those who want to lose weight through calorie restriction should have a goal of two to three pounds lost weekly as any more is unhealthy.  Usually fad diets that promise ten pounds a week reduce metabolism and nutrition while at the same time guaranteeing that when the diet is over you will gain the weight right back.

My definition of diet is the type of food we eat in lieu of food restriction.  How one defines food depends on who you ask.  For the purposes of this blog, food is defined as whole food absent of drugs, trans-fats, sugars and overt processing.

The lowest calorie foods with the highest nutritional content are organic whole raw foods such as vegetables.  Organic locally grown foods are more nutritional because they are picked later since they are not transported hundreds or thousands of miles before arriving at the market place.  The longer the food grows the more nutrients it can acquire from the environment.  Using chemicals such as pesticides adds a huge toxin load to any food.  Organic dairy is free of drugs such as antibiotics and/or growth hormones. 

Eggs are probably nature's most perfect food despite what ever propaganda that comes from the AMA or pharmaceutical industries.  According to Dr Campbell on the Health Sciences Institute (HSI) panel, the best way to eat eggs is raw!  According to Dr Mercola, we should be eating everything raw, including any meats included in our diet.  He opines that organic meats are actually perfectly safe to eat raw.  Personally, the barbeque seems the only edible option for meats, so the next best thing after raw is to cook at the lowest heat possible.  This is because higher temperature cooking produces carcinogenic compounds in food meaning the faster you cook it the more cancer causing chemicals produced from the process.

Red meat is good for you if it is drug free, eaten raw or slowly cooked.  Examples of drug free red meats are organic bovine, buffalo, ostrich and caribou.  Red meat is nature's best source for folic acid and conjugated linoic acid (CLA, liposuction omega six fat).  Clean, free-range poultry is another good choice for a meat while most fish is mercury laden.  Fish from the arctic, like Alaska, are the lowest in mercury and a fabulous choice for getting omega three fats (the essential fatty acid[EFA]; EPA is found in most fish).  One case of my vital choice salmon from Alaska has one-millionth the mercury content of a single can of albacore tuna!

The key with fatty protein sources is to balance your EFA's to a one to one ratio (some are now opining it is better to have a 2[omega three] to one [omega six] ratio) of omega three to omega six fats.  The typical American or Western Diet contains about a 25 (omega six) to one (omega three) ratio.  Omega six fats come from meats, dairy and trans-fats.  Omega three fats come from fish, eggs, legumes and avocados.  Seeds and nuts have saturated omega six, monounsaturated omega nine and polyunsaturated omega 12 fat. 

Dietary cholesterol, demonized by mainstream medicine, seems to present in foods high in omega three EFA's like fish and eggs.  There is no scientific evidence of a link between artery diseases and the intake of dietary cholesterol.  The evidence supports this as statin drugs are used to reduce ones over all cholesterol by repressing the livers ability to produce cholesterol.  My dad's cholesterol, as well as my brothers was off the charts and they eat nothing containing cholesterol yet still must suffer with statin medications. 

The fat flush plan by Dr Gittleman is the best book I have seen for recipes that contain whole foods while restricting calories and carbohydrates (relying on Dr Atkins ketosis theory).  Dr Mercola would like you to take his quiz to determine your food type and develop your diet accordingly.  All alternative practitioners think you need to supplement your diet because of eating out and the challenge of obtaining locally grown organic whole foods.

While supplementation requires another blog entry, it becomes more important as you age.  Because aging is defined as the degeneration of your organs you need less calories and more densely nutritional intake to reverse the decades of toxic loading from our deadly environment. 

If you want a diet that restricts so called food the following is for you:

·         No sugar, high fructose corn syrup or other high glycemic index sweeteners (glycemic index meaures the foods contribution to blood glucose level, 0-100 ).

·         No trans-fats or foods containing heavy metals like mercury

·         No artificial sweeteners like sucralose, splenda, etc.

·         No processed carbohydrates like white rice, enriched breads, pasta, etc.

If this sounds impossible here is an easy solution.  Use xylitol or stevia to sweeten the recipe.  Use coconut oil, olive oil or macadamia nut oil to cook.  Use whole brown rice, whole grain bread and pasta made from whole wheat or whole brown rice in your recipe.  Yes, it takes a little longer to cook and requires that you chew before swallowing but you can adapt to avoid type two diabetes and maybe live a few decades longer!