SpringfieldNewsSun.com

More on SpringfieldNewsSun.com: • Cheap exercise • Cold weather exercising • Microwaved veggies • Strength training • Vegetarian dieting • Exercise tips • Sprains and strains • Pushing the pedometer • Armchair quarterbacks • Arthritis and weight training • Cycling tips • Resistance training • Sports and risky behavior • Diabetes and exercise • Food labels • Fitness contract • Exercise burnout • Fat camp kids • Exercise, aging and vitamin E • Online fitness • Mirrors and exercising • Natural antioxidants • Swimming safety rules • Easing exercise pain • Avoid dehydration • Team exercise tips • Summer exercising • Kraft Foods & health • Bicycling racing & age • Power bars and nutrition • Weight management • Workday exercise • Halle Berry & fitness • Botox and boomers • Celebrity sportswear • Benefits of gardening • Weight Watchers and kids • Too little exercise • Diet books philosophies • School lunches • Fasting and dieting • Exercise consistently

'Picture Perfect' more than weight loss gimmick

DAYTON, Ohio - At first glance, Dr. Howard M. Shapiro's "Picture Perfect " books on losing weight look like a gimmick aimed at a generation more stimulated by pictures than words.

But nothing can be more graphic than seeing the either/or choices presented in full color.

• Just two ribs, lonely on the plate — or a whole grilled pork chop with peach chutney.

• A single piece of sausage, less than 2 ounces — or a modest serving of steak pizzaiola with peppers and onion, the meat fanned out on the plate to fool the eye.

• A single Buffalo chicken wing with blue cheese dressing — or a pan-grilled chicken breast with grapes and wine sauce.

It's a morsel or meal option, and the pictures tell the story vividly. As the doctor knows, the image lasts longer than memorized lists of calories and fosters an attitude that may be more dieter friendly than trying to count fat grams.

The pictures are just a tool for Shapiro's approach to weight loss. It is a philosophy rather than a diet, and though he has been dealing with weight loss in his New York City practice for 24 years, his program became one of the buzzes in diet circles with his first book in 2000, "Dr. Shapiro's Picture Perfect Weight Loss." Now he has authored the "Picture Perfect Weight Loss Cookbook " (Rodale, $24.95). It, too, has pictures, though not as many as the first diet book, and has 150 recipes for the better choices.

Initially, Shapiro says, recipes weren't a big part of his practice. The visual food comparisons sell the concept. But his approach has remained steady.

“Our concept is that diets don't work, because people think they have to eat less, that they have to give up their favorite food. “They can eat as much food or more if they choose wisely and choose lower-calorie food.”

And it is calories that count. Always have and still do, despite an American focus on fat and carbohydrates.

“Americans have become obsessed with low-fat food,” Shapiro says. “They think if they go on a fat-free diet they would lose weight. You can have tons of low-fat foods that have a lot of calories. Fat is not the bottom-line answer.”

Nor, he says, is giving up carbohydrates, though in recent months some studies have given credence to variations on the Dr. Atkins low-carbohydrate diet.

“Giving up carbs is not the answer,” Shapiro says. “If you go back to eating carbs, you gain the weight back.”

Shapiro stresses eating a variety of foods — some carbs, some fats, some low-calorie food that you like.

What works, Shapiro says, is changing your relationship with food. That may sound vague, but he is talking about a lifetime commitment.

His eat-until-you're-satisfied mantra also sounds reassuring. But the emphasis is on making smart food choices, and like a growing number of doctors, he emphasizes meals long on vegetables. For an American population that has never eaten the recommended amount of vegetables, that can be a hard sell. Shapiro urges expanding food horizons and trying foods never tasted.

His pictures help sell the idea.

Instead of a grilled cheese sandwich, make a meal of a bean and bell pepper burrito and fresh salsa plus a bowl of tomato avocado soup — all for the same amount of calories. Instead of a fourth of a tuna melt, have curried shrimp and vegetable kebabs with cucumber raita. Instead of one cup of gnocchi with butter sauce, have grilled polenta with grilled gazpacho, and cut the calories by almost 80 percent.

He also stresses eating when you are truly hungry. Feeling hungry, of course, can be a state of mind rather than a reality. “There are certain triggers, not necessarily hunger, that cause people to think they need to eat,” Shapiro says. Stress and boredom are triggers that are often mistaken for hunger.

“If you're snacking every night at 9 p.m., you're not hungry, you're probably bored.”

Shapiro has developed a food diary for patients to record the usual what-and-when they eat, but adds another entry.

“If they are eating something that is ridiculous for the program — chocolate eclairs for breakfast — we have them write down why they are doing it.”

Facing it may open the door to making better choices.

The Doctor says

“But alcohol has a lot of calories. You have two or three drinks and your blood sugar will drop and you will get very hungry. Your sense of responsibility drops, and you will eat anything.”

When you go to a party, his advice is to have a glass of club soda first. Then turn to a glass of wine. “And put a bottle of sparkling water on the table in addition to wine so you go back and forth.”

• While no foods are forbidden, the doctor recommends avoiding what he calls “saboteur foods.” Those are packaged foods such as sugar-free candy and fat-free cookies, yogurt-covered pretzels and “natural” cereal.

“These are high-calorie foods that only pretend to help you lose weight. Behind your back, they're actually hindering you from achieving your weight-loss goal.”

• “When you crave a chocolate cookie, think first of the caloric consequences. Then consider some lower-calorie chocolate alternatives — a Tootsie Pop, a frozen chocolate yogurt . . . or a chocolate sorbet bar —not a fat-free chocolate cookie, the classic saboteur.” If that real chocolate cookie is the only thing that will satisfy your appetite, then have it with enjoyment — mindful of the consequences, he says.

• And if you go to a restaurant that makes the best chocolate cake in the world, go ahead and enjoy it. Just don't take it home, put it in the kitchen and eat it mindlessly. And don't do it every week.

“With this method you haven't blown anything, a couple extra hundred calories, it's no big deal. There's no guilt.”

It's all about choice. Informed choice. Your choice.

Ann Heller writes for the Dayton Daily News.