Keri Glassman - The Snack Factor Diet: The Secret to Losing Weight—by Eating MORE

CONTENTS

To my family:

Brett, Rex, and Maizy

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could never thank all of the special people who have contributed to helping me write this book. The pages arent long enough. You all know who you arethank you to my incredible extended family and friends.

A very special thanks to Julie Merberg for her vision for this book, her brilliance, and her patience. Without Julies drive and passion, this book would still be inside of me. Julie helped me at every step and held my hand through this entire process. You are the very best!!

Id like to thank Heather Jackson (and the team at Crown) for seeing the value of this book. You got it from the very beginning, and I appreciate your support.

Thank you to my two incredible associates Lara Englebardt Metz and Margaret Levy for being incredibly loyal employees, and for your hard work, devotion, and commitment to this project. The field of nutrition is lucky to have the two of you. This book would not have happened without you.

To Sarah Mahoney, who understood this book from the beginning and was simply a pleasure to work with. Thank you for hearing and translating me. You are wonderful!

Thank you to my clients, who have inspired me to be a better nutritionist and have helped me formulate this book so others can enjoy and learn from it. I take great pleasure in seeing you become healthier people.

A special thank-you to my incredible parents for their support of my education, career, goals, and dreams.

Most of all, thank you to my husband, Brett, for your unconditional support and love, and for reminding me of what is most important. And to my children, Rex and Maizy, who inspire me daily. Your smiles make every day a good day.

Introduction

Eat Up! Its Healthy

I know what to do; I just dont know how to do it! This is what nearly all of my clients tell me during our first meeting. And these days, its truethere is no shortage of information about how to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet. In fact, when it comes to food, my typical client is incredibly smart. He or she has usually read dozens of books and magazine articles on health and nutrition, spent hours examining the ingredient labels on the food he or she consumes, and agonized over what counts as a good or bad fat. Shes had more conversations about carbs than most people have had about politics, religion, or where to go on their next vacation. Whats more, my average client has triedand usually given up onupward of five diets!

And I dont just mean formal diets from the bestseller lists, from grapefruit to cabbage to all-protein to blood type. (Trust me, Ive seen refugees from every diet known to man.) These busy, on-the-go people, who are usually very happy and successful in most areas of their lives, have poured amazing amounts of time and energy into developing their personal eating systems, too. You probably know the kinds of eating plans I mean: Ill only eat pretzels. Or Ill be good all week, and eat what I want on weekends. Or Ill be good all day, and then splurge at dinner. Or when imagination fails them and they completely run out of ideas, they vow to not eat anything. Then they wonder why they collapse in a frazzled heap in front of the office vending machine at 4:00 P.M., and find themselves tearing through a bag of Doritos.

The belief that well finally hit on the perfect diet just for us is why dieting has become a multibillion-dollar industry. But if theres one thing I think all of us can agree on, it is that those plans just arent working. Thats why people hire me to help them change the way they eat and why youre looking at this book right now. Chances are, just like my clients when they first come to see me, you want to lose weight and havent been able to do it on your own. And chances are, youre more than a little ticked off about it. But please understand that youre not alone: 60 percent of America is overweight. Now, go back and reread that last sentence. I know its a statistic youve already heard a million times. But what that 60 percent means is that, even though were armed with all this great information about nutrition, being overweight is more common than being healthy. Put another way, only four out of ten American adults are able to control their weight.

So what makes all these smart peoplewho are so successful in other waysfail? When I take a look at my clients diets, I notice two major errors, both part of a common theme that I believe is undermining Americas effort to get back into its thin jeans. Despite all their knowledge about dieting, theyre lousy snackers. They are making two mistakes:

1. Snacking poorly. Maybe they choose seemingly harmless foods, such as pretzels or granola, which turn out to deliver plenty of empty calories and leave them hungry again before they know it. Or they eat junk foodstuff they know is bad for them but is easy and available. And these poor snack choices dont just affect their weight and caloric intake. They contribute to fluctuating blood sugar and crashing energy levels, all of which set people up to make self-defeating food choices the next chance they get.

And beyond the day-to-day damage of poor snacking, there are long-term health consequences, including heart disease. OK, I know it may sound pretty doom-and-gloom of me to say that your 3:00 P.M. M&M habit is affecting your life expectancy, but its true. After all, its the little habits we have that add up to our overall health picture and contribute to future heart disease! And it is the small changes you make daily that have the most profound effects.

2. Not snacking at all. By not snackingeven though it may make them feel virtuousthey are disrupting their blood sugar levels, which almost always results in overeating at their next meal. This, in turn, affects their weight (which goes up) and energy level (which goes down). They end up eating whatever is available first, which often means nutritionally bankrupt food choices. (Anyone whos ever consumed double helpings of a food he or she doesnt even like knows exactly what I mean!) And whats worse, because overeating feels so normal, these people often blunt their awareness of the number-one weight-loss tool all of us have: the ability to recognize when were no longer hungry and stop eating.

THE RIGHT SNACKS ARE JUST RIGHT

Wait a minute, youre thinking, So, snacking is not good and not snacking is not good? No! The Snack Factor Diet will show you how the right snacksnutrient-dense foods, eaten at the right times of daywill anchor your health, steady your mood, and make weight loss as easy as possible. Thats what this book is all aboutchanging the way you think of the word snack. Right now, to you, snack probably means a tasty extra, something good dieters should do without, even if it is only a 100-calorie pack!

And who could blame you for misunderstanding the word? After all, the snack food industry is a multibillion-dollar industry; Americans spend about $6 billion a year on potato chips alone and $37 billion on soft drinks! For most of us, snack foods have been guilty pleasures, whether our tastes run to salty foods (chips and pretzels) or to sweets (cookies and candy). Either way, weve gotten used to thinking of them as plain old calories, and we dont expect anything more from them than a false sense of fullness that will maybe last us to the next meal, when well eat