Mary-Ann Beltran eats an average of 6,501 calories every day. And she never gains weight.
How is this possible? After all, the more calories you eat, the more weight you gain, right? Not necessarily!
Mary-Ann has stumbled upon a way to eat a high-calorie diet and not gain weight.
What’s Mary-Ann’s Secret?
Does she exercise all the time? No, Mary-Ann lives a relatively sedentary lifestyle. Plus, consider this:
The average marathon runner burns about 2,500 calories. Mary-Ann would have to run almost 2 full marathons daily to get down to 2,000 calories. That’s the average calorie intake for a woman her age and size.
So her secret isn’t exercise.
Maybe she’s on a low-carb diet? No again.
Mary-Ann eats plenty of carbs, including fruits and starches.
So what’s the reason Mary-Ann can eat so much and not gain weight?
Mary-Ann eats a ton of fiber!
In fact, if all you do is add enough fiber to your diet, you could lose weight without doing anything else.
In fact, researchers in one study from the University of Massachusetts Medical School proved this. They found that making one change in your diet – eating 30 grams of fiber a day – will cause you to lose weight. It’s so effective, this one change works as well as other more complicated diets.
That’s because your body can’t digest fiber. And fiber slows the absorption of some foods and prevents some calories from being absorbed altogether.
More Fun Than It Sounds
Fortunately, fiber doesn’t have to taste like cardboard. There are many forms of fiber that are delicious. For instance, avocados are very high in fiber (10 grams/avocado). So are artichokes, almonds, and pistachios.
And they’re easy to incorporate into your meals. For instance, in the morning, enjoy some oatmeal with whole milk and butter, eggs with spinach and broccoli, or Greek yogurt with berries and granola.
Later in the day, try some brown rice and beans, split pea soup, or some popcorn popped in coconut oil and served with butter.
And Here’s Great News for You Starch Lovers
Did you know there’s a way to eat starchy foods like potatoes, pasta, and rice without digesting them? Here’s how:
These foods are high in a starch called amylose. Amylose is a resistant starch, meaning it has a crystal-like structure that makes it resistant to digestion.
But once you cook amylose in water, that crystal structure melts into a gelatin-like form. That gelatin form is much easier to digest.
Since most of us like to eat our pasta, potatoes, and rice cooked, all of those calories and carbs are digestible. For a long time, we thought this gelatinization of starch was irreversible.
But in recent years, science has discovered something really exciting: When you let these foods cool, the amylose structure turns back into its indigestible crystal form. So you can eat cold potato salad, cold pasta salad, and cold brown rice without adding to your calorie and/or carb count.
In fact, when you eat these foods cold, they are keto friendly because you don’t absorb them. And, if you’ve been eating a keto-type diet and it’s not working for you, it’s probably because you’re not getting enough resistant starches and fiber.
What if you like to eat your pasta hot? Then I recommend miracle noodles (or Shirataki noodles). These Japanese noodles are 97% water and 3% glucomannan fiber. They’re also very low in calories. And they contain no digestible carbs.
Another great-tasting food that contains a lot of fiber (11 grams) is Smartbuns. In addition to all that fiber, this amazing food contains zero carbs and zero sugar.
You can find miracle noodles and Smartbuns online.
Finally, remember that the more fiber you eat, the more calories you can eat. You probably can’t eat 6,500 calories a day and not gain weight like Mary-Ann (I suspect she’s got good genes). But you can enjoy more foods than you thought you could.