Zinczenko David - Grill this, not that! : backyard survival guide

Youve heard it said hundreds of times, in spin classes and workout DVDs and gyms of every kind. If you want to lose weight, get in shape, and feel your best, youve got to feel the burn. You have to burn off calories, and maximize your burn rate.

Well, thats all well and good, but its not always fun. Wouldnt it be easier if, instead of feeling the burn, you could melt off pounds by applying the burn? And rather than burning off the calories from the foods you eat, what if you could burn the calories off before you eat them? And what if the only burn rates you had to worry about involved making sure you brought enough sunscreen?

Wouldnt that be a heck of a lot more fun?

It is. And thats what this book is all about. In the following pages, youre going to learn how to save hundreds, if not thousands, of calories at each meal, simply by using the easiest, most enjoyable, most tasty cooking method ever invented. Youll eat great, youll look greatand youll have a great time doing it.

Ready to get started?

In the beginning, there was fire.

Paleolithic man wouldnt have survived without it. He used it to heat his home, light his way, mold his tools. But most important of all, he used it to cook. The open flame tenderized his food, made it more appetizing, and even made it more delicious.

And if youve ever tried Woolly Mammoth Tartarenot good.

But besides making his food more palatable, the open flame made it healthier by melting off unwanted fat and making nutrients more accessible. Primitive man worshipped fire and kept it constantly burning, feeding it kindling and tending to it the way Taylor Lautner tends to his abs. And when wood wasnt plentiful, our ancestors used alternative fuels like weeds, moss, and even animal dung.

Nowadays, were lucky enough not to have to cook with animal dung (although if we could actually harness all the animal dung tossed around in election campaigns, wed have enough energy to power all of the Kardashian family hair dryers into eternity). Instead, we have grills: Eighty-two percent of American households own a grill, whether its a propane-fueled combustion machine eating up a parking space in the garage or just a little bucket of charcoal hanging out on the terrace. And if you can learn to fire it up right, youll discover that it just might be the most effective weight-loss tool in your arsenal. In fact, our research shows that you can save, in some instances, as many as 1,500 calories per meal just by choosing to grill dinner instead of driving to the local restaurant.

Hows that, you ask? Isnt the backyard barbecue the sort of place for King of the Hill type potbellied dads to gather round like priests worshipping at the altar of beer and hot dogs? Sure, it can be. But it can also be a perfect place to start stripping pounds from your body. When you drop a piece of meat on your grill, much of the fat bubbles out and burns up on the coals below. A study in the journal Meat Science found that grilling a pork chop could actually decrease its fat content by nearly a third!

Okay, sure, but there are plenty of grilled foods available at the chain restaurants that anchor your local mall. Why not just swing by one of those? Well, heres where things get tricky. In many cases, restaurant grills are actually grill plates, or hot slabs of flat metal that lock fat in instead of cooking it out. Plus, restaurants routinely paint their meats with hot oil and clarified butter, effectively ramping up the fat count to flab-inducing levels. In fact, a USDA study found that people eat about 107 more calories each time they choose to eat out instead of eating at home.

But often, the reality is much worse. For instance, lets say youre hankering for a nice, meaty dinnerbut you want to make sure youre eating healthy. So youd naturally opt for chicken over red meat if its white meat, its light meat, right? Well, in some cases thats true. But take a close look at some of those healthier alternative dishes out there. Outbacks Alice Springs Chicken entre might sound like a healthy choice, but wherever Alice Springs is, we think its probably polluted with runoff from a lard factory. For the $14.49 youll spend for that healthy option, youll be getting 1,468 calories and a heart-stopping 2,220 milligrams of sodiumnearly two whole days worth of salt! If you ask them to hold the Aussie fries, youre still getting 784 calories and a days allotment of sodium. By comparison, youll find a recipe in this book for something very similar: We call it . It comes in at only 230 calories, and has less than one-third the sodium. (And the ingredients will cost you about $1.83 a serving.) If you stayed home and grilled just once a week, a swap like this would save you 18 pounds this year alone! Just by eating the same food from your own backyard grill!