As a Christmas present I got a rice cooker, with the recommendation to use for things other than rice.
For those unfamiliar with this kind of device, it basically heats the water until it evaporates, and then it automatically turns itself off, so the food is actually cooked in the vapor rather than in hot water. (With the rice it provides instructions on how much water for how much rice to get it right. With other food, you are on your own, but in my experience 1 dl water was enough for everything.)
Turns out, vegetables cooked this way are super delicious. (Also, according to doctors in my family, more healthy than vegetables cooked in water, because the nutrients stay inside, and fewer vitamin C is destroyed compared to traditional cooking. Of course, raw vegetables would be even better, but whatever.) The recipe is to take some subset of {potato, carrot, beetroot, onion, celery, broccoli, cauliflower}, peel and cut to smaller pieces, sprinkle with salt and oil, add 1 dl water, and turn the cooker on. Twenty minutes later, the meal is ready and delicious. (I typically eat it with some meat or yogurt, for proteins.)
For the last month, I am using this almost every day. Never before I have eaten so much vegetables. Not only I have eliminated sweets from my diet (I used to eat sweets a lot), but I even mostly stopped eating bread and pasta (not on purpose, I just like the vegetables more now).
And… uhm, my weight remains exactly the same. (Too bad, because I would need to lose about 20 kg.)
This is not exactly what you wrote, because I use the oil, and the yogurt also contains fat. Perhaps I should go further in this direction, e.g. eliminate the oil from cooking (not really needed in the rice cooker). There would still be oil in the yogurt, but hey, you need some to dissolve vitamins A and D.
I guess I wanted to make the following points:
you can make surprisingly tasty meals from mostly vegetables;
switching from very unhealthy diet to a diet consisting mostly of vegetables can have surprisingly little effect (in my case, zero) on your body weight.
Turns out, vegetables cooked this way are super delicious.
Remember: under the hyperpalatability hypothesis, it is the “super delicious” that’s the enemy when it comes to weight loss. So it’s not surprise that this wouldn’t help.
Very interesting anecdote. This is exactly the sort of change I would expect to have some immediate and noticable effect. Oil might be the culprit but probably not. One reason to do it for 100% of food is just to get rid of the confounders.
As a Christmas present I got a rice cooker, with the recommendation to use for things other than rice.
For those unfamiliar with this kind of device, it basically heats the water until it evaporates, and then it automatically turns itself off, so the food is actually cooked in the vapor rather than in hot water. (With the rice it provides instructions on how much water for how much rice to get it right. With other food, you are on your own, but in my experience 1 dl water was enough for everything.)
Turns out, vegetables cooked this way are super delicious. (Also, according to doctors in my family, more healthy than vegetables cooked in water, because the nutrients stay inside, and fewer vitamin C is destroyed compared to traditional cooking. Of course, raw vegetables would be even better, but whatever.) The recipe is to take some subset of {potato, carrot, beetroot, onion, celery, broccoli, cauliflower}, peel and cut to smaller pieces, sprinkle with salt and oil, add 1 dl water, and turn the cooker on. Twenty minutes later, the meal is ready and delicious. (I typically eat it with some meat or yogurt, for proteins.)
For the last month, I am using this almost every day. Never before I have eaten so much vegetables. Not only I have eliminated sweets from my diet (I used to eat sweets a lot), but I even mostly stopped eating bread and pasta (not on purpose, I just like the vegetables more now).
And… uhm, my weight remains exactly the same. (Too bad, because I would need to lose about 20 kg.)
This is not exactly what you wrote, because I use the oil, and the yogurt also contains fat. Perhaps I should go further in this direction, e.g. eliminate the oil from cooking (not really needed in the rice cooker). There would still be oil in the yogurt, but hey, you need some to dissolve vitamins A and D.
I guess I wanted to make the following points:
you can make surprisingly tasty meals from mostly vegetables;
switching from very unhealthy diet to a diet consisting mostly of vegetables can have surprisingly little effect (in my case, zero) on your body weight.
Remember: under the hyperpalatability hypothesis, it is the “super delicious” that’s the enemy when it comes to weight loss. So it’s not surprise that this wouldn’t help.
Very interesting anecdote. This is exactly the sort of change I would expect to have some immediate and noticable effect. Oil might be the culprit but probably not. One reason to do it for 100% of food is just to get rid of the confounders.