From the most militant vegan to the most carnivorous paleo practitioner, the one thing that everyone in the world of nutrition agrees on is that your mother was right: Eat your veggies! In fact, according to a report published in Food and Chemical Toxicology, if just half of our population ate 1 extra serving of vegetables every day, 20,000 cases of cancer in this country could be prevented every year (Reiss et al. 2012). Just imagine what magic we could see in our world if we all “go SANE” and conveniently and deliciously devour double-digit servings of veggies daily!
Please don’t skip the rest of this chapter. Here’s the gist (Warning: It’s the furthest thing from sexy but it’s the one thing you know will work if you do it): The more veggies you eat, the lower your setpoint will be. Similarly, if you are not happy with your results at any point in time, eat more veggies. If you know anyone who isn’t enjoying the body and health they desire, help them eat more veggies.
And we’re not talking about just any vegetables. The SANE plan emphasizes “non-starchy vegetables.” These are generally vegetables that grow aboveground and that you could eat raw. You do not “have to” eat them raw, but you could. For example: spinach, kale, romaine lettuce, broccoli, mushrooms, peppers, zucchini, cucumber, cabbage, and generally vegetables you find in salads.
The best of this bunch are green leafy vegetables. I know that Kermit the Frog thinks that it’s not easy being green, but I promise that if you take away nothing else from this book other than eating a lot of green veggies daily, you will lose more weight faster than you ever thought possible, and keep it off forever.
What about other vegetables such as corn, potatoes, and many root vegetables? Applying the “eat raw” standard, these cannot be eaten raw. They are starches, which are extremely easy to overeat because they are dry, relatively low in fiber, and protein poor. When you swap these vegetables out for non-starchy veggies and other water-, fiber-, and protein-rich SANE foods such as seafood, humanely raised meats, low-fructose fruits, nuts, and seeds, your setpoint will be lower and weight loss will be amazing—and lasting.
Non-starchy vegetables are the single most important dietary aspect of this plan—for several reasons.
First, they’re loaded with super SANE water, fiber, and, surprisingly, protein.6 Together, these qualities leave you fuller and less likely to crave starches and sugars—which explains why studies show that people who eat generous portions of a wide variety of vegetables tend to be thinner than people who avoid vegetables.
The specific types of fiber in non-starchy vegetables deserve honorable mention here. Not only do they create a feeling of fullness and stave off hunger pangs, but they also help keep insulin levels in check. In fact, these types of veggies are unAggressive (good), and when you eat them with other foods, they reduce the Aggression of the other foods! The fiber in non-starchy vegetables also helps keep food moving through your digestive tract, while helping to feed the setpoint-lowering form of bacteria in your gut and reducing the inflammation in your brain. Fiber also has the unique ability to bind to and eliminate toxins from the body, including bile acids, which are forerunners to colon tumors and cholesterol formation.
At the risk of stating the obvious, non-starchy vegetables are the most Nutritious (i.e., most nutrients per calorie) foods in the world. Orange vegetables like carrots supply generous amounts of vitamin A, which is important for vision, bone growth, tissue repair, and cellular health, among other benefits. Green vegetables, such as kale and collards, supply iron and calcium, both involved in metabolic health. All vegetables provide health-building phytonutrients.
Also, since they are basically water, fiber, and protein, plus a bunch of setpoint-lowering vitamins and minerals, non-starchy vegetables are essentially impossible for your body to store as fat and are thus the most inEfficient (good) foods in the world. The net effect is that non-starchy vegetables (or “NSV,” as we like to call them in the SANE program) optimize and unclog your hormones, reduce inflammation in your brain, and heal your gut. That’s why they are your number-one dietary key to lowering your setpoint.
The more vegetables you eat, the lower your setpoint and the thinner you’ll be. It is impossible to become obese or diabetic if you consistently focus on eating NSVs daily. If after I die, the legacy I leave is that the average daily intake of NSVs increased, I will consider my life a success. Seriously. That’s how good they are for you. They can and will save your life while slimming you down.
Back to Kermit: I especially want to emphasize the glory of green vegetables—especially when it comes to diabesity and diabetes. Several years ago, researchers at the University of Leicester reviewed six studies involving more than 220,000 participants. They were searching for a link between eating fruits and vegetables and type 2 diabetes. What they found was that eating more leafy green vegetables, not fruits or any other vegetables, reduced a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 14 percent (Carter et al. 2010). The explanation for the power of vegetables to prevent diabetes has largely to do with the fact that these veggies are packed with the mineral magnesium, which is typically low in people with diabetes. Interestingly, the amount of greens it took to shrink a person’s risk for diabetes in this study was just 1½ extra servings a day. That’s only as much as one small salad!
For NSVs, the SANE plan categorizes them into “optimal” and “normal.” Optimal means that the vegetables in this category have the strongest potential to lower your setpoint. Normal vegetables are other veggies you can eat raw, and, like optimal vegetables, they pack maximum nutrition value with minimal calories, while also helping to lower your SANE setpoint.
Here are some great non-starchy vegetable choices:
Deep green vegetables such as those listed below are the best of the best when it comes to NSVs. The reason? Among all vegetables, they are the most Satisfying, the most unAggressive, the most Nutritious, and the most inEfficient. So try to get the bulk of your non-starchy vegetable intake from deep greens. The deeper, the better, too. For example, light green iceberg lettuce isn’t as healthy as the deeper green romaine lettuce or the very deep greens such as spinach or kale.
Arugula
Bok choy
Barley grass*
Brussels sprouts
Chard
Greens (beet, collard, mustard, turnip, etc.)
Kale
Kelp
Mixed greens
Moringa*
Neem
Romaine lettuce
Seaweed
Spinach
Spirulina*
Watercress
Wheat grass
With a few exceptions (such as cauliflower, garlic, and white onions), the richer the color of the NSV, the better it is for you. Choose the colors red, deep yellow, orange, and, of course, dark green. The pigments that make these foods visually appealing contain antioxidants and phytonutrients that help protect against diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and many other health problems.
Alfalfa sprouts
Artichokes
Asparagus
Bean sprouts
Beets
Bell peppers
Broccoli
Cabbage
Carrots
Cauliflower
Celery
Cucumbers
Eggplant
Endive
Garlic
Leeks
Mushrooms
Onions
Peppers (all varieties)
Sugar snap peas
Summer squash (zucchini, yellow squash, crookneck, pattypan)
Tomatoes
Zucchini
The next most important issue is: How many servings of non-starchy vegetables should you eat each day?
The answer is at least 10 servings per day. Now let me stop and guess what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking there is no way you can eat that many veggies. If we just stopped here, you’d be 100 percent correct because nobody has given you the tools you need to make eating that many veggies practical. However, I promise that this can be easy if you do three things:
1. Cover at least half of your plate with NSVs at each main meal.
2. Read Chapter 7, where you’ll learn how to make SANE smoothies, which will give you 6 to 12 servings of optimal NSVs daily. This is easier than you ever thought possible.
3. When eating out—or in—replace starches with NSVs. For example, ask your server to hold the starch and double the veggies, and do this at your dinner table as well.
Be sure to ease your way into eating this many NSVs. Please do not go from no veggies to 12 servings overnight. That will cause all sorts of digestive issues. Add a serving or 2 daily until you reach 12 servings or until you start to have digestive issues. If this happens, add in veggies more gradually, and then when you eat them, eat them more slowly and spaced out over the day.
When thinking about serving sizes, approximations are more than fine. Generally, a serving is about the size of your fist. There are a couple of exceptions: A serving of raw leafy greens is two or three handfuls, and a serving of whole-food veggie powder is only 1 tablespoon. If cooking makes the vegetables shrink (spinach, mushrooms, etc.), then a serving of the cooked NSV is about half the size of your fist.
When we talk about serving sizes, we always frame them in terms of the size of your hand. Why? Because it’s ridiculous to think that a serving would be the same size for a giant professional athlete as for a small child. Common sense and science say that serving sizes must be relative to the body they are going into. Because your hand is proportional to your ideal body size, that’s how you’ll calculate serving sizes.
Again, please free yourself from the stress of precise serving size measures—remember if calorie counting and precise portion control worked, it would have worked already—and focus on eating as many NSVs as possible. Here are some examples of a single serving of NSVs for a 5′4″ woman whose ideal setpoint keeps her at a fit and energetic 140 pounds:
2 to 3 heaping cups of raw leafy green vegetables
6 asparagus spears
8 baby carrots
5 large broccoli florets
1 Roma tomato
4 onion slices
5 cherry tomatoes
5 celery sticks
1 whole carrot
½ cup cooked spinach
1 tablespoon of whole-food veggie powder
Both fresh and frozen NSVs are great. Sometimes frozen NSVs can be even better options than their fresh counterparts. This is because frozen vegetables are often flash-frozen in their prime, when their nutrient content is at its peak. If possible, skip canned veggies. They are still better than no veggies, but the way they are typically processed can greatly reduce their Nutrition.
I am often asked if we should eat only organic vegetables. My honest answer? Do whatever works for you and your budget to ensure you get more than 10 servings of NSVs into your body enjoyably every day. If you can afford organic, awesome. If not, fine. The one thing you must not do is eat fewer veggies because of the cost of organic veggies. Ten servings of conventional veggies will always lower your setpoint more than 5 servings of organic veggies. Eat more veggies… whatever it takes!
The scientifically unquestionable answer is no.
I am going to let you in on a little secret: Carbohydrates—which includes starches (along with sugars)—are not essential. There are essential fats. There are essential amino acids (proteins). There are essential vitamins and minerals. But there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Remember that during digestion, carbohydrates are converted into glucose. If you never ate any carbs, your body would simply create glucose from other nutrients you eat, such as protein.
Even our own carbohydrate-loving USDA noted it in its Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids: “The lower limit of dietary carbohydrate compatible with life apparently is zero, provided that adequate amounts of protein and fat are consumed.”
I am not sure why they stuck the word apparently in there, but oh well. The point is that there is no biological reason to eat carbohydrates unless they help you to consume required vitamins, minerals, fat, or protein. Guess which forms of carbohydrates do that better than any other? Non-starchy vegetables.
Also, free your mind from the simple carbohydrates versus complex carbohydrate complexity. This distinction causes confusion. For example, SANE low-fructose fruits contain simple carbohydrates, while inSANE starches contain complex carbohydrates. Oh no! Not so fast. The complex carbohydrates in rice, cereal, crackers, potatoes, and wheat bread are all more hormonally harmful (they all raise our blood sugar more) than the simple carbohydrates found in low-fructose fruits. You can avoid all this confusion by forgetting about simple vs. complex carbs completely and focusing instead on enjoying more water-, fiber-, and protein-rich SANE foods.
Finally, let’s cover “low-carb” real quick. There’s nothing wrong with low-carb diets, and this isn’t a low-carb diet. SANE eating is an optimal carb diet. You are eating A LOT of the forms of carbs that are most effective at lowering your setpoint. This generally amounts to between 70 and 125 grams daily of the most therapeutic carbs in the world. Low-carb or ketogenic diets specify under 50 grams of carbs daily. Just like you could be SANE paleo, SANE kosher, or SANE vegetarian, you could be SANE low-carb/ketogenic, but SANE “out of the box” isn’t low-carb/ketogenic.
Your goal here isn’t to adhere to any diet dogma. Your goal is to lower your setpoint using the foods proven to do that. As you’ll see, the tremendous flexibility around which of those foods you choose make SANE living compatible with just about any other dietary lifestyle. However, one thing is nonnegotiable when it comes to your health, happiness, and lowered setpoint. By now I bet you know what it is: lots of non-starchy veggies!!