Butter Busters

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Recipe Analysis:

Recipes Computer-Analyzed by:
The Cooper Clinic
Nutrition & Exercise Evaluation Software,
Aerobics Center, Dallas, Texas

and

Jo Ann Carson M.S., R.D., L.D.
The Department of Clinical Nutrition
at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical
Center at Dallas, Texas

PREFACE: G. Byron Kallam, M.D.

Photos of Author: Madearis Studio and Steve Pettit Photography—January 1994

Copyright

Copyright: © by Butter Busters Publishing, Inc., 1991, 1994

All Rights Reserved.

Warner Books, Inc.,

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First Ebook Edition: June 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-56292-8

HOW I GOT STARTED

My name is Pam Mycoskie, and I want you to know how happy I am that you have purchased my cookbook. By doing so, I feel quite sure that you are ready to enjoy a new healthy life-style, the low-fat life-style.

Everything we are reading in newspapers and magazines these days tells us that this is the way of the '90s. Over the years, we have all tried the different diets as they became popular. I, too, was right in there trying the grapefruit diet, the high protein diet, the water diet, the rotation diet, the Beverly Hills diet, the Cambridge diet, the Slimfast diet, etc. I could go on and on. The point I am trying to make is that these are all diets. Diets are temporary and only something we stick with long enough to lose the pounds we desire. As soon as we have lost the weight, we all return to our old eating habits, and therefore gain the weight right back. This syndrome is usually referred to as the yo-yo diet syndrome. Most of us are quite familiar with this eating pattern.

You will notice that I did not say you would be starting a low-fat diet. I called it a low-fat lifestyle. There is a big difference. Through my recipes and cooking ideas, you will be able to eat all of the foods you love and are used to eating. Through substitutions and modifications, you will be able to prepare all of the foods you like. I hope to teach you how easy it is to make this a plan that you can stick with for the rest of your life. As I said before, this is not a diet. It is a life-style change that does not deprive you of the foods you are used to and enables you to eat almost everything you have always enjoyed.

A few weeks ago, my husband asked me, "Pam, if you went off low-fat eating tomorrow, what would you choose to eat?" I honestly could not think of one thing to say. You see, I can have the pizza, nachos, casseroles, desserts, cookies, breads, and everything else I want, simply through modifying my recipes. As long as you can eat the foods you like and not feel deprived, there is no reason ever to go back to your old high-fat eating habits. Therefore, you don't have to worry about going back to something you don't really miss.

I want, you to know that I haven't always eaten low-fat, and I have dealt with all kinds of diets in my lifetime. I have never been a naturally slim person. I stayed slim for many years through depriving myself of food, along with an excessive amount of exercise. In fact, I lived this way for close to 25 years. The only problem was I felt deprived and didn't enjoy living this way. I felt like I was always on a diet. If I ever went off the diet, I felt guilty and miserable. It was a constant battle for me. I never felt that I could eat like a normal person and not gain weight. In fact, the only time I did eat normally, as an adult, was during my pregnancies with my three children. When I was pregnant, I ate three meals a day and enjoyed a variety of food. My weight gains in my three pregnancies were quite low. I was also exercising aerobically at that time. I ate a large amount of food, exercised moderately, and experienced low weight gains of 14,18, and 22 pounds respectively. You would think that I would have figured out that this system really worked after seeing how well my body metabolized this greater amount of food without my experiencing a large weight gain. I did not see it that way unfortunately and returned to my old eating habits after each pregnancy with food deprivation and excessive exercise to control my weight.

About two years ago, I went in for my regular yearly exam. They proceeded to do a cholesterol profile on me as part of my physical. My cholesterol was found to be in the "high risk" range. It was 242. Anything over 200 is considered to be approaching the dangerous level. My doctors suggested I first try cutting the fat in my diet to see if that would help in lowering my levels. I was already exercising aerobically, so that wasn't a problem. I'm not a big meat eater, so I didn't even miss the red meat. I did, however, love cheese and dairy products. I loved cream sauces and egg dishes. I began by switching to frozen yogurt in place of ice cream. Now I actually prefer yogurt over ice cream. I then proceeded to use Egg Beaters in place of eggs. I gradually changed from whole milk to skim milk. I tried cutting the cheese in my diet, but had a little trouble doing this. I was lucky, however. Shortly after I switched to low-fat eating, Frigo, Kraft, Sargento, and Alpine Lace came out with low and non-fat cheeses. These really saved me. I couldn't imagine life without cheese! In six months, my cholesterol dropped from 242 to 146 with my low-fat eating and my regular exercise program.

Learning To Read Labels

I became a real detective at the grocery store. My time spent reading labels and searching for new low-fat alternatives did make my grocery shopping quite an ordeal. I would find myself in stores for two or three hours and not even realize where the time went. It was at this time that I realized how interested I was in this new low-fat way of cooking. It was on some of these grocery store trips that I became aware of how deceptive labels can be on food. Sugars are often disguised by calling them by their real names. Whenever you see a product that ends in "ose," you can be quite sure that it is really sugar. Sucrose (cane sugar), fructose (fruit sugar), and dextrose (simple sugar) are a few. Other ways of describing sugar products are by calling them corn syrup, honey, molasses, and natural sweeteners. If you see these ingredients near the beginning of the label, you can be quite sure it has a very high sugar content. There are also other ways of describing fats. Some examples are vegetable oil, soybean oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, and cocoa butter. Other labels confuse us by stating "cholesterol free." The manufacturer tries to make us think the product is fat free, simply because it is cholesterol free. This is simply not the case. Cholesterol comes from animal products, period. However, there are a few vegetable fats that are saturated and tend to raise our LDL levels in our total cholesterol. The LDL stands for low-density lipoprotein-particles. These are the particles that clog the arteries leading to our heart. This has been dubbed the "bad" cholesterol. These are the fats that we really need to be aware of. They are palm oil, palm kernel oil, cocoa butter, hydrogenated oil, and coconut oil. (Learn to read the labels carefully.) Ingredients are listed in descending order according to weight. Pay particular attention to serving sizes when comparing foods or determining their contribution of saturated fat. Only animal products contain cholesterol; but many plant oils can be high in saturated fat. Foods advertised as "light, lean, or low-fat" may be high in saturated fat. If coconut oil, palm oil, palm kernel, cocoa butter, or hydrogenated vegetable oil is found on the label, try to avoid the product. Always choose mono or polyunsaturated fats over saturated fats!

Fat Grams Versus Fat Calories

This is another time you need to be aware of reading labels. There are 9 calories in one gram of fat. If you want to know what percentage of a particular food is fat, simply multiply the fat gram content by 9. For example, one cup of whole milk contains 150 calories. It contains 8 fat grams. You can multiply the 8 fat grams times 9 and find out one cup of whole milk contains 72 saturated fat calories. You can see by this that almost half the calories in milk come from saturated fat. This also shows you why it would be to your advantage to switch to skim milk. In fact, many authorities feel children over the age of two should drink only skim milk.

Modifications And Substitutions

I was a Home Economics major in college and have always enjoyed baking and cooking, so it was logical that I would find this idea of substitution and modification a real challenge. The more I shopped, the more I learned. It really became a game to me. I slowly started changing my old favorite recipes through substitution, making them low-fat. The more I experimented, the more I realized how easy it was to make the foods and recipes I loved low or non-fat. I have always loved sweets, so once I learned I could make cakes, cookies, and breads low-fat. I really felt I was onto something big. I started making some of my recipes for my family and friends with a very positive response. It was then that I decided that there was a need for a low-fat cookbook of real food changed to low-fat through substitutions. There are plenty of diet and low calorie cookbooks on the market, but the problem with most of them is the food tastes like diet food. In my opinion, this is still deprivation and not something you can stick with for a lifetime. Hopefully, you will find the recipes I've included to be food you can live with forever. That is my intention.

Metabolic Rate

I would like to go over the metabolic rate in detail because so many people sabotage their own weight loss program by going about it the wrong way. I know this is true because I did it to myself for 25 years. The way of eating I am about to describe is the way I ate most of my adult life. See if this doesn't sound familiar to you. I usually had one or two cups of coffee in the morning upon arising. I skipped breakfast, simply because I wasn't hungry. I attended an aerobics class around 9:00 or 10:00 and then went on about my day. When noon time came, I usually skipped lunch because I preferred to have a big dinner. I knew I couldn't have both, so I saved up my calories for dinner with my husband. Around 4:00 in the afternoon, I would finally get really hungry. I guess 4:00 was my true hunger time. For some reason, this was the magic time of day when I finally gave myself permission to eat. By figuring I had deprived myself of food all day and had engaged in a fair amount of exercise, I decided it was finally time to reward myself with food. I also thought I should be able to eat anything I wanted. Unfortunately, what I wanted was usually very high in fat. Some examples of my 4:00 snack were chips, peanuts, cheese and crackers, a piece of cake, or maybe a few cookies.

What I didn't realize was that my body had thought it was starving all day. When the food finally did come, my body would do everything in its power to hold onto the fat I had eaten. Since I was eating high fat foods at this time, my body simply sent the fat I was eating directly into my fat stores. The body is quite efficient at storing fat. Even though I was exercising and not eating all day until 4:00, my body was not using its fuel efficiently. The problem was my metabolic rate. Your Basal Metabolic Rate determines the rate at which your body burns calories. If you do not keep your body fueled at a constant level, it will react by conserving fat whenever possible. Your body doesn't realize that you are only trying to diet but instead thinks it is starving. This is the only way our bodies know how to deal with food deprivation. It is simply saving up for the famine, so to speak. This can be very discouraging to the dieter trying to cut down on food in a dramatic way. This is also why the very low calorie diet (under 1200 calories a day for a woman or 1400 calories a day for a man) simply doesn't work if you are trying to lose body fat. It is possible to lose weight on a very low caloric diet, but you are losing water and lean muscle mass, not fat.

Yo-Yo Dieting Syndrome

This is where the old Yo-Yo dieting syndrome happens. How many of you have gone on a very low calorie diet for say two weeks and lost 5-10 pounds? I know I have. What happens when we go off the diet? I know what happened to me every time. I gained back the weight, plus a few extra pounds. After being deprived for those two weeks, I felt I deserved to eat whatever I wanted now that I was off the diet. I also craved high-fat foods because I had been deprived of them. I made up for this by going back to my high-fat food choices which resulted in gaining the weight back along with a few new added pounds. We know diets don't work, so why do we all continue to go on and off them? Why do we continue to put ourselves through this deprivation, reward, guilt, and miserable low self-esteem process? I don't know why we do, but I was as guilty as anyone for a long time. I finally decided I couldn't go on like that another day.

A Change For The Better

It was at this point that I found myself in August of 1990 when I was given the opportunity to attend Shape Magazine Camp in Malibu, California. When I received the information in the mail, I noticed we would be attending lectures on metabolic rate, why diets don't work, yo-yo dieting, and why dieting makes you fat. I decided at this time, which was a big step for me, to give someone else the control of my terrible eating habits. I decided to follow what they had to say even if I gained weight. I realized my way wasn't working, always feeling like I was deprived and on a diet. I figured if it didn't work, it would be their fault and not mine. This is when I decided to give up this control that I had over myself and give it to someone else. This was the smartest move I ever made. I'm just sorry it took me so long to learn something this simple that had made me miserable for so many years.

One of the first lectures was on metabolic rate and why dieting makes you fat. The more they said, the more I realized they were talking about my life and my eating habits. I realized how wrong I had been eating all those years. You see, our bodies are very similar to a car. If you were to go out in your garage and try to start your car and the gas gauge was on empty, you wouldn't get very far. The same is true with our bodies. If you get up in the morning and skip breakfast, your metabolic rate will simply shut down. It will slow down to a level that allows you to maintain all your normal body functions, and that is about it. So in order to get your body working and your metabolism going, you must give it some fuel to get started. You should also keep your body fueled on a constant basis so it continues to work and not slow down.

This is exactly what I did when I was at Shape Camp. I consumed more food than I had ever eaten in my life, aside from my three pregnancies, exercised aerobically every day, and came home from that trip about six pounds lighter. For the first time, my body was using its fuel efficiently because my gas gauge was never on empty. This was the proof I needed. I had finally found a system that worked, and I could eat like a normal person and not gain weight. We were, of course, eating low-fat food along with our aerobic activities THIS COMBINATION OF LOW-FAT FOOD AND AEROBIC ACTIVITY SEEMED TO WORK, NO MATTER HOW MUCH FOOD I WAS CONSUMING It felt so good to eat normal meals like other people. I had always had it in my mind that I would be overweight if I ate three meals a day. I felt that the only way I could stay thin was simply not to eat very much. I found out the exact opposite to be true.

Eating More Food Can Actually Help You To Lose Weight

This may sound crazy, but it's true. As long as you cut down on the fat in your diet and increase the complex carbohydrates, you can consume a much larger amount of food for the same amount of calories. One gram of fat contains 9 calories. One gram of carbohydrate and protein contains 4 calories. When you consume fat, you have consumed a large amount of calories. An example would be 1½ ounces of potato chips. This is the same amount of calories as two medium potatoes or twelve ounces of potatoes. You can see by this if you make wise low-fat choices, you will be able to consume a much larger amount of food for the same or lesser amount of calories.

Complex Carbohydrates Are Filling

One reason it is hard to overeat complex carbohydrates is because carbohydrates are so filling. Think about how filling bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, fruits, and vegetables can be. You will usually fill up on these foods before you have a chance to consume that many calories. As I said before, fats are so densely caloric that you can eat just a small amount, and you will consume a large amount of calories.

Fats Go Straight To The Fat Stores

The good thing about carbohydrates is that our bodies are quite efficient at burning them off as energy but quite inefficient at storing them. Our bodies have a limited capacity to store carbohydrates. We can store about 800 calories of carbohydrates or about a normal day's intake. The rest is temporarily stored and then burned off to make room for the next day's intake. This is not true with fats. Fats are immediately and completely stored in our bodies in the adipose tissue. The adipose tissue can contain as much as 145,000 calories of fat in our bodies. In order to lose weight, we must raid the fat stores found in the adipose tissue.

EXERCISE

Regular Aerobic exercise in conjunction with a low-fat Diet is a system destined to succeed! Be sure and get your physician's OK before starting any NEW eating or exercise programs.

NOW… Let's Get Started!!!

Why Aerobic Exercise?

You may wonder how we go about doing this. The only way to burn fat is through aerobic exercise. This is not to be confused with anaerobic activity. Aerobic exercise means with oxygen. In order to be beneficial, you must engage in an aerobic activity for at least 35-45 minutes, three to five times a week. You must also have your heart rate in its target zone during your aerobic activity. Your target zone would be determined by your age and fitness level. Anaerobic exercise would be activities such as weight training, tennis, bowling, or an activity which involves starting and stopping or using spurts and bursts of energy. During these activities, you are burning carbohydrates or glucose, which is simple sugar for fuel. Weight training does build lean muscle mass which assists in burning calories and fat at a much faster rate when you are engaging in your aerobic activities.

If your only concern is to be fit cardiovasuclarly and not to burn fat from the fat stores, then twenty minutes of aerobic activity three times a week would be adequate. However, to burn fat from the fat stores requires at least thirty-five minutes of continuous aerobic activity in your target heart rate zone. The first 15 minutes of your aerobic activity you will be burning glucose or simple sugar. The fat burning mechanism doesn't kick in until you are engaged in the aerobic activity for at least 15 minutes. If you are looking for an even more rapid fat loss, it would be more beneficial to engage in an aerobic activity for two 35 minute segments rather than one long segment, say 1-1½ hours at a time. One 35-45 minute workout, however, should be sufficient for most people.

Aerobic Exercise And Weight Training Build Lean Muscle Mass

It is possible to lose weight on a low-fat diet alone. If you do not exercise aerobically as you eat a low-fat diet, you will lose lean muscle mass and water. The easiest fuel for our bodies to burn is actually not fat at all but protein. We don't want our bodies to burn protein. We want our bodies to burn fat. Through aerobic activity, you protect your lean muscle mass and force your body to burn fat from the fat stores. Another plus is that muscle is metabolically active. This means if you develop lean muscle mass through aerobic exercise and weight training, your body will burn calories and fat at a much greater speed. Weight training or resistance training not only builds lean muscle mass, but has been proven to help reduce the risk of osteoporosis in post-menopausal women.

Exercise Helps To Make Our Hearts Healthy

Exercise, along with a healthy low-fat and low cholesterol diet, can be quite effective in keeping our hearts healthy. Exercise can reduce the risk of developing heart disease in the first place. Exercise strengthens the heart so that it can pump more blood to all parts of the body. Exercise helps to lower blood pressure. It helps to prevent hypertension by keeping the arteries elastic and increasing their diameter. Exercise lowers blood cholesterol levels. Just as aerobic exercise burns fat, it also burns dietary cholesterol. Too much cholesterol irritates and damages arteries, prompting the build up of artery-clogging plaque. Aerobic exercise stimulates the production of beneficial high-density lipoproteins (HDLs), which transports excess cholesterol from the blood vessels to the liver, where it can be broken down and eliminated. By increasing your body's oxygen during a workout, you stimulate the growth of small blood vessels. As a result, more blood can be pumped with every beat. Aerobic exercise lowers adrenaline. Adrenaline increases heart rate. It damages arteries, which result in plaque formation, makes blood stickier, contributes to clots, and increases anxiety, which raises stress, another risk factor for heart disease. Finally, regular workouts can help you maintain a healthy weight, eliminating the unnecessary strain extra pounds put on your heart.

For cardiovascular conditioning, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends exercising 35-60 minutes (not including a 5-10 minute warm-up and cool-down) three to five times per week. During the workout, you should be using large muscle groups, such as the muscles in your legs and upper body, in a continuous, rhythmic fashion. Walking, jogging, dancing, bicycling, and swimming are all good choices. The exercise should increase your heart rate up to 60 to 90 percent of its maximum capacity, which is approximately 220 minus your age in beats per minute. For example, if you are 35, your maximum heart rate would be 220 minus 35 or 185; 60 percent of 185 is 111; 90 percent is 167. Therefore, your target heart rate (THR) would be somewhere between 111 and 167 beats per minute. It is important to check your pulse quickly since your heart rate will begin to slow as soon as you stop exercising. Because it is sometimes difficult to find your pulse right away, some people prefer the "talk-sing test." You're probably within your THR range if you can carry on a conversation but can't sing while exercising.

Choosing An Exercise Program And Sticking With It

Exercise is the other important aspect of your new healthy life-style that goes along with your low-fat diet. Aerobic exercise is the only way to burn fat from the fat stores, so let's find the right activity for you. Not only do you need to find something you enjoy, but it must be something you will stay with and not become bored with or burned out. This is why cross-training is a phrase you are hearing a lot of these days. This means doing different activities each day of the week. Some examples would be running on Monday, taking an aerobics class on Tuesday, riding a stationary bike on Wednesday, resting on Thursday, stair climbing on Friday, walking on Saturday, and resting on Sunday. This would be an example of a cross-training week. There are other activities you could also incorporate into your program. Swimming or a water aerobics class would be a couple of examples. Aerobic exercise can change the way your body works. We all know the benefits of a stronger heart, increased lung capacity, better circulation, and a lower blood pressure, but what about the changes we acquire regarding fat utilization in our bodies as a result of aerobic activity? If you are on a weight reduction program, this can be very beneficial to you. Aerobic activity also increases bone density, improves sleep patterns, and gives you a better mental image about yourself and the world around you. It is a wonderful stress release. Sometimes I think of my aerobic exercise as a mental help as much as physical. This would really hold true for mothers of small children or a person with a lot of stress in his life. You need to do your aerobic activity for at least 35-45 minutes, three to five times a week, keeping your heart rate in its target zone. This would be determined by your age and fitness level.

Choose An Exercise Program You Can Live With And Enjoy

DO YOUR OWN THING. Only you know if you are a people person or a loner when it comes to exercise. Think back when you were a child. Did you enjoy team sports or did you excel in a one person sport, such as tennis or golf? Chances are, what you enjoyed then will hold true now. Do you enjoy following the leader or being the one in charge? It doesn't matter if you like to reflect on your day as you run by yourself, or lose your thoughts as you forget everything going on around you in an energetic aerobics class. The important thing is that you find an activity you enjoy and one you will stick with.

PICK YOUR OWN PRIME TIME.