Kiki Nelson - Plantifully Lean: 125+ Simple and Satisfying Plant-Based Recipes for Health and Weight Loss: A Cookbook

Expanded Edition

125+ Simple and Satisfying Plant-Based Recipes for Health and Weight Loss

Plantifully Lean

Eat More Weigh Less

Kiki Nelson

For all the beautiful souls who have struggled with their weight and health, you are valuable and capable. Lets do this!

Hi and welcome! I adopted a high-carbohydrate, low-fat, plant-based diet after many failed attempts to lose weight and recover my health, and it was just the medicine I needed. I lost seventy pounds in a little more than a year. My life has never been the same.

Im a wife and mother raising two beautiful kids in the Colorado mountains. I share my family life and health journey with plant-based eating and weight loss on YouTube and Instagram, where Im known as Plantiful Kiki. There, and as the co-creator of the Eat More Weigh Less Program, I aim to inspire others to regain their health, lose weight, and change their lives with simple and wholesome plant-based eating. I have found balance and joy in this lifestyle and I hope to impart some of that to you. I know how it feels to be overweight, and powerless to change it. At my heaviest, I carried 194 pounds on my petite five-foot-three frame. I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high triglycerides, and I was prediabetic. I was at risk for stroke and a heart attack. No matter how hard I tried, I was never able to lose any significant amount of weight and turn around my health.

In other words, I was like most peoplenot at all good at losing weight. I would start a diet and an extreme exercise program only to fall off the wagon a few weeks in. When I did stick with a program for a few months, I would lose only a few pounds. The hard work and deprivation never seemed quite worth it. I was perpetually frustrated and constantly discouraged.

Everything changed when I found my way to a whole food plant-based diet. Once I learned the mechanics of weight loss and the fundamentals of calorie density, something finally clicked. The weight began to fall off.

It did not require calorie counting.

I did not have to eat less.

I did not go on an extreme exercise regimen.

I was free from the terrible cycle of depriving and binging and from calorie counting.

I learned how to build meals with delicious, filling foods, and I finally lost weight. At last, it wasnt so hard. What I learned and what I hope to teach you is that you can eat more and weigh less. In these next chapters, I will equip you with the basic tools and knowledge, along with the practical tips you will need to successfully lose weight and keep it off with little effort or thought. The information in this book is meant to be easy to understand and simple to apply.

It just takes some self-loveand a little bit of preparation to change your diet along with your outlook.

Lets do this!

Keep food and life simple it multiplies happiness.

Everything you need already lives within you.

The Mechanics of Weight Loss

Weight loss is simple, but it never seems easy.

In the following chapters you will learn that it can actually be easy.

Youve likely heard that weight loss has to do with calories in versus calories out. This is referred to as energy balance: the number of calories you take in versus the number of calories you use. So if I take in 3,000 calories a day but use only 2,200, then the excess 800 calories will be stored on my body as fat and I will gain weight.

While this is true, its not all the way true. Our bodies metabolize calories from fat differently than they do calories from carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are our bodys preferred fuel source. If we consume an excess of calories from carbohydrates, our bodies store it in our muscles as glycogen, and the rest is burned off as body heat. This process is called thermogenesis. If we continue to consume a significant excess of calories from carbohydrates than what our body can use or burn off, it then starts the process of converting the carbohydrates to fat in a process called de novo lipogenesis (DNL).

Our bodies are not efficient at converting carbs to fat, and in fact we actually burn calories in order to convert carbohydrates. Fat, however, does not get converted to energy, or anything else for that matter. So, the excess calories from fat go straight to your problem area. Reducing fat intake, rather than carbs, is one of the major reasons I was so successful in not only losing weight but also keeping it off.

The next time you hear someone tell you to avoid carbohydrates in food because carbs turn to fat, recognize that this statement is a gross overexaggeration of the truth, is biologically inaccurate, and demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of human biochemistry and human biogenetics.

Cyrus Khambatta, PHD, and Robby Barbaro, MPH, Mastering Diabetes

Me before a plant-based diet.

Me after a plant-based diet.

Calorie Density

Understanding calorie density is the most important tool you will have to guide you when making decisions regarding what to eat. Calorie density is simply the measure of energy, or calories, in a given amount of food. In this book, I will be talking about calories per pound. If you are anywhere else in the world, you will use calorie density in calories per kilogram. The same principles apply.

For example:

• Broccoli has around 150 calories per pound.
• Chocolate has around 3,000 calories per pound.

You want to eat foods that have fewer calories per pound. You can eat more of that food and feel full with fewer calories. Just think: A plate of broccoli and whole-grain pasta will fill you up, and you wont be accumulating excess calories. A big slice of cake may also fill you up, but you will be taking in a huge amount of calories.

Calorie density does not mean that you are counting calories. There is nothing I enjoy less. But I recognize that counting calories makes some people feel confident in how they choose foods, and if thats you, then by all means keep doing it. Thats why I provide the calorie and macronutrient breakdowns in each recipe.