Jackie Scott - Calorie Queens: Living Thin in a Fat World

PUBLISHERS NOTE: This book is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice, but as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of the author. You are advised and encouraged to consult with your health care professional in all matters relating to your health.

Copyright 2005 by Jackie Scott and Diane Scott Kellum

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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First eBook Edition: April 2009

There is no such thing as coincidence. It was providence that brought Diane and Jackie Scott into our lives after David had a TIA (transient ischemic attack). Their nurturing care and careful planning of our meals blessed us. We continue to benefit from the nutritional balance they have given us through Eucalorics.

Jackie and David Bondurant

What an easy read; full of real-life humor and experience. It was a breath of fresh air after years of being bombarded with gimmicky diets! Following a plan that encourages small steps over time is not only a good eating strategy, its a good life plan for all aspects of living.

Mary Dodds, owner, North Aire Market

I have been off and on diets for years and have a bad tendency to use food to deal with stress. As a physician I know what I am supposed to do. When I heard about Eucalorics, it made so much sense and I was glad to have a realistic calorie goal to shoot for instead of unrealistic diets of 700 to 1,000 calories. I already exercised but needed to pay more attention to what I ate. The food is great and the structure of the program is what I needed to get on the right track. My clothes fit better, my exercise endurance is better, and my blood work (cholesterol, triglycerides, etc.) improved during the 12 weeks on the program.

Melinda G. Rowe, MD,
Eucalorics Healthy Lifestyle Program participant

This multifaceted program helps you improve not only your weight, but also your health by teaching you to make permanent changes in your eating and exercise habits. Its not designed for quick, easy weight loss; its designed to help you find a balance between food and exercise that you can live with.

Pamela Treas, office manager, Eucalorics Healthy Lifestyle Program

This book would not exist without the help of many people, and were pleased to have the chance to thank some of them. The First United Methodist Church of Lexington, Kentucky, allowed us to use their commercial kitchen, and the participants in the Temple Reconstruction Project ate chef surprise night after night as we developed and perfected the recipes that appear in Calorie Queens.

Thanks to Jackie and David Bondurant for love and support, and to John Andrews for true friendship, unending patience.

Stephanie Peterson and Host Communications helped make a work in progress a finished product; Beth White and Joseph Beth Booksellers helped put that product in the right place at the right time. Special thanks to Jennifer Crusie for her excellent taste and timing, and to Christina Hogrebe and Margaret Ruley at the Jane Rotrosen Agency in New York for searching until they found us. Finally, thanks to Christina Boys and Center Street for giving us a chance to become calorie queens.

I f you pick up most dictionaries and turn to the word diet, the first definition doesnt mention weight at all. A diet is supposed to be what a person or animal usually eats and drinks; our daily fare. In todays overweight society, however, most of us are either on a diet or planning to be on a diet, and the word has become synonymous with the unpleasant, unsuccessful, and unending pursuit of weight loss. How did we get so far away from the basic concept of daily fare?

The modern diet era began in 1961, when Dr. Herman Taller published Calories Dont Count. Theres no evidence that his message descended from a mountain etched on a stone tablet, but over the last few decades this simple phrase has somehow become a fundamental diet truth that has supplied the foundation for an assortment of low-carbohydrate-based diet plans. As the steady stream of popular books echoed the calories-dont-count mantra, counting calories became old-fashioned. It was relegated to the realm of outdated and unnecessarily complex practices.

I personally dont find counting to be that difficult a process. Somewhat more involved than learning colors or knowing that a pig says, Oink, but still pretty fundamental stuff. Everyone knows how to count, right? We can count fingers and toes and money. But ask someone to count calories, and theyre suddenly counting-challenged. Suggest that someone keep track of the calories they consume, and suddenly counting becomes an unbearably intricate task. Its especially puzzling because calories are the only thing people find hard to count.

Count fat grams? Okay. Ill just sit here on the sofa eating fat-free jelly beans and practice for the Couch Potato Olympics.

Count carbohydrates? No problem. Ill just snack on these pork rinds until my 24-ounce sirloin arrives.

Count calories? Oh dear, I dont think I could possibly manage to do that. Much too complicated.

Shortly after we drop-kicked calorie counting, Dr. Irwin Stillmans The Doctors Quick Weight Loss Book appeared on the best-seller list. Everybody really liked that title, and quick weight loss was carefully chiseled below calories dont count on the stone tablet of dieting rules.

If you need to lose ten pounds, quick weight loss is possible. If, however, youre in the 31 percent of the population that is classified as obese, it requires a weight loss of more than one hundred pounds. For most of us, quick weight loss is no longer physically possible, but no one wants to admit it.

Weve all purchased, perused, and followed an amazing variety of diets that ridiculed counting calories and promised quick weight loss. But while weve been faithfully following the rules of these diet regimes, weve been getting heavier and heavier. Isnt it time to change the rules? Isnt it time for a different approach?

Calorie Queens is a book about losing weight, but its not a book about dieting. Its a book about eating. Specifically, learning to eat correctly. Every day. Day after day. Forever. Its a book that describes how to make your diet your daily fare by applying the theories of Eucalorics to your life.

Whats Eucalorics? The prefix eu- means normal, so a eucaloric diet is a normal-calorie diet. It is a diet designed to achieve and maintain a healthy weight by consistently consuming the number of calories that support that weight.

If you follow a diet that doesnt provide a sufficient quantity of high-quality food, youll never stay on it long enough to lose any significant amount of weight. If you follow a diet that says you can never eat at fast-food places and fancy restaurants or have candy, cookies, and chips, you may lose weight, but you have very little chance of keeping the weight off. This is a book about learning to live thin in a fat world so you can lose weight