The Whole Food Way of Losing Weight
The Whole Food Way of Losing Weight
February 1, 2025
Joy Stepinski, MSN, RN-BC
Developing a healthier lifestyle is often an effective strategy that avoids weight cycling, fad diets, and calorie counting. Instead of focusing on losing weight, paying attention to the quality of health may be the key. One significant aspect is nutrition. A large body of evidence points to a substantial improvement in chronic disease and health through consuming a whole food plant-based diet, including obesity.
According to popular news articles like NPR, the average American consumes 1,996 pounds of food annually [1]. That one ton profoundly affects the ability to fuel the human body properly. As more diet and health foods are advertised and promoted, health has worsened through the decades. The public has veered away from the food that the body most requires, whole foods close to their natural state [2]. This includes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and other starches like potatoes and sweet potatoes. Instead, food is processed with oils, fats, sugars, salt, and other unrecognizable ingredients.
T. Colin Campbell, a researcher and author of The China Study, states that the healthiest diet is high-carbohydrate [3]. High carbohydrate!? This may seem contradictory to advice that is familiar to you. Many diets claim that low-carbohydrates, like the keto diet, lead to weight loss and better health. We can visit the keto diet at another time. What does a high-carbohydrate diet entail? Unrefined and unprocessed foods from vegetables, fruit, and grains are naturally packed with fiber and nutrients the body can easily process.
In the 1990s, a health intervention called the Waianae Diet Program was implemented in a community of 21 native Hawaiians. The participants within the population exhibited high rates of obesity, chronic disease, and mortality [4], influenced by Western diet. A traditional Hawaiian diet was consumed over the three-week course of the study. The type of food included the greens, shoots, and root vegetables of taro, yams, and sweet potatoes. In addition, the people ate fruit, seaweed, chicken, and fish. The dietary pattern was primarily whole food and plant-centered, low in fat and high in carbohydrates, consisting of 75 to 78% carbohydrates and less than 10% fat. During the intervention period, the subjects lost an average of 17 pounds.
A longer study was initiated with 173 participants from the native Hawaiian population [5]. Eighty-two of these subjects were available for an average follow-up of 33.7 months. After implementing the dietary pattern, the mean weight loss was 15.1 pounds, with the greatest weight loss of 174 pounds. Over the follow-up period, 67% (n = 55) maintained weight less than their initial weight. The rationale for this success was the low-fat and high-carbohydrate food makeup, greater satiety experienced, and the low energy density of plant food.
In his book The Starch Solution, Dr. John McDougall highlights that starch has been the key food staple in cultures across the world [6]. In Latin America, meals focus on beans, rice, potatoes, and corn. In Asia, rice is synonymous with food. Sweet potatoes are consumed by people of all countries, along with various grains (i.e., millet, barley). These complex carbohydrates are easy for the body to digest, providing energy, feelings of fullness, and pleasure (otherwise known as “comfort food”).
Eating starch has the potential to heal the body. As McDougall discusses, the abundance of refined, fatty, and animal-based food has brought on a host of chronic diseases that are little seen in cultures that consume traditional diets centered around starch. Chronic conditions like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer may very well be reversed, halted, or prevented with the proper starch-based and plant-centered diet.
The body’s main source of fuel is glucose, which is broken down from complex carbohydrates. The modern popular belief that starch contributes to obesity is a myth [6]. Carbohydrates are beneficial for many reasons, including serotonin release, which is important for sleep, blood pressure regulation, and mood [7]. They also provide a source of fiber, fermented by gut microbiota, which provides energy for cells lining the digestive tract, improves glucose tolerance, and contributes to weight management [8].
The foods contributing to the Western diet often lead to chronic diseases, including obesity, and are especially high in fat [6]. These are mostly animal-based foods, oil, and some plant-based foods (i.e., avocado, nuts, olives). Although the body requires fat to function, too much fat can be harmful. Excess fat is absorbed from the digestive tract and is stored in adipose (fat) cells.
In the book The Forks Over Knives Plan [9], the authors state that if we “eat the foods that are appropriate for our species – whole, plant-based foods – then we …will be able to eat without portion control and will naturally reach a comfortable weight” (p. 17). If most of the food consumed were optimal for all of the body’s functioning and processes, health would be positively impacted without the need for calorie counting and fad diets.
References:
Aubrey, A. (2011). The average American ate (literally) a ton of food this year. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2011/12/31/144478009/the-average-american-ate-literally-a-ton-this-year
Esselstyn Jr, C. B., Gendy, G., Doyle, J., Golubic, M., & Roizen, M. F. (2014). A way to reverse CAD?. Journal of Family Practice, 63(7).
Campbell, T. C., & Campbell II, T. M. (2006). The China Study: The most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted and the startling implications for diet, weight loss, and long-term health. BenBella Books, Inc.
Shintani, T., Beckham, S., O'Connor, H. K., Hughes, C., & Sato, A. (1994). The Waianae Diet Program: A culturally sensitive, community-based obesity and clinical intervention program for the Native Hawaiian population. Hawaii Medical Journal, 53(5) 136 – 141.
Shintani, T. T., Beckham, S., Tang, J., O'Connor, H. K., & Hughes, C. K. (1999). Waianae Diet Program: Long-term follow-up. Hawaii Medical Journal, 58(5), 117 – 122.
McDougall, J., & McDougall, M. (2013). The Starch Solution: Eat the Foods You Love, Regain Your Health, and Lose the Weight for Good!. Rodale.
Wurtman, R. J., & Wurtman, J. J. (1995). Brain serotonin, carbohydrate‐craving, obesity and depression. Obesity Research, 3(S4), 477S-480S.
Hornick, B., Liska, D., Dolven, C., & Wrick, K. L. (2011). The fiber deficit, part I: Whole grain contributions to health and fiber intakes. Nutrition Today, 46(6), 293-298.
Pulde, A., Lederman, M., Stets, M., & Wendel, B. (2017). The Forks Over Knives plan: How to transition to the life-saving, whole-food, plant-based diet. Simon and Schuster.