Thursday, July 2, 2015

The Plan Z Diet Truth about Popcorn

The Plan Z Diet Truth about Popcorn

By: Zola
Chief Dieter
Plan Z Diet





Today I want to play a little game of Plan Z Diet ZEat This NOT That! (Yes I totally stole this from TV except I added a Z on the front of Eat. The Z is for Zola. Clever eh?).

My research came about because I had a dieter on the Plan Z Diet who was gaining weight back at an alarming pace and he could not figure out why. He thought he was following our Plan Z Diet maintenance program. He was in error, but to his credit what he was doing seems pretty innocent on the surface. He let me know what he was eating. One thing he was really proud of was that he was eating a ton of popcorn for snacks.

Well…………………here’s the alarming data on popcorn:

1 cup of popcorn = 7 grams of carbs. That doesn’t sound bad but who eats 1 cup? Come on! So let’s say you go to the movies and get a smallish bucket with butter. 8 cups of popcorn with butter (and the butter is NOT the bad part) = 56 grams of carbohydrates. No human likely needs more than 90 grams of carbs in a FULL day. And that includes the carbs in veggies and fruits!

What else could this person have eaten?

14 Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. (I’m not advocating that you eat 14 Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. That would be just as bad, but you’d certainly NOTICE if you ate 14!) On the other hand 8 cups of popcorn just pops in your mouth and down it goes! Slosh all of that with a 20 oz Coke and you just added ANOTHER 45 grams of carbs. You have now exceeded your healthy allotment of carbs for an entire day.

Or this person could have eaten:

2 whole Snicker Bars. Now that’s a lot of caramel stuck in your teeth and a major sugar hangover!

You put 8 cups of popcorn in your body and your liver has the same reaction! It’s screaming for HELP!

Get this. For the same 56 grams of carbohydrates that 8 cups of popcorn provides, guess how much cheddar cheese you could have eaten? ….drum roll please….2 and a half POUNDS! No one can EAT two and a half pounds of cheese in one sitting but do you get my drift? There are other options that are satisfying and won’t crank up your carbohydrate count so high your digestive system goes into overload and packs on pounds.

So I profess to be the Queen of Diets that Didn’t Work.

Confession time.

Without knowing it I had put myself on The Cheddar Cheese diet when I was in college. How? When I got home at night after classes and work it was easy for me to sit down to a block of cheddar cheese. I cut off bite-sized pieces and sucked on them when I studied. I rationalized that I had no time for dinner. This was dinner. Diet Coke was my beverage of choice.

I am not saying this is a healthy lifestyle. I was nuts. I was nuts to stay thin. Interestingly I did. I was no more than 120 pounds that year of college. I was model thin.

Fast forward. More confessions.

In my early 20’s I was “enlightened” that fat makes you fat. Cheddar cheese was out. Carbohydrates were in. Popcorn was “free calories”. The stuff was considered air and nothing else, as long as it didn’t have butter on it. Butter was fat. Fat was Bad. So I decided I had to fit into one of those “handkerchief” dresses for a big outing. (A handkerchief dress is a dress so flimsy it could be used as a handkerchief and probably fits easily into a mailing envelope. You get my drift. ) The dress was so sheer that nary a bump, bulge or cellulite dip could be tolerated. This dress would show it all and I was determined to walk in looking magazine perfect. I was already thin but this event was something special.

So I went on a self-inflicted popcorn diet. For two weeks I starved myself at work. I ate nothing for breakfast or lunch. I drank the evil Diet Coke all day long to stay awake. Then at night I went home and ate a huge bowl of popcorn with salt on it. Nothing else.

I fit in that dress. During that special dinner I spent most of the time in the bathroom because my body was so wrecked I could not tolerate food. So much for the popcorn diet. Was I successful? I’d say NO.

The moral of this movie story?

Here’s a plan (a Plan Z Diet plan!):

If you are watching a movie at home: Take a block of cheddar cheese and cut it into little cubes. Sit down with a pitcher of Plan Z Diet Cranberry Lime Iced Tea (which is plenty sweet) and suck on cheese cubes during the movie. You won’t eat that many before you are full and your body will be satisfied, happy and healthier. Remember it’s not FAT that makes you FAT. It’s the carbohydrates. Popcorn is killer. It’s fluffy, it’s light and it’s dangerous.

Enjoy!

Cheers,

To read more of Zola's blogs CLICK HERE or head over to https://www.planzdiet.com/blog/

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