“Dr. Elisa Lotter, who has been a nutritionist for 13 years, had her own ideas about the best kind of approach to food.
According to Lotter, “the best kind of diet is a low-fat light diet.”
So guess what?
No cheese. No regular milk (too many people are allergic to cow’s milk). She recommends rice milk or soy milk instead. No fried foods. So, stay off the fried chicken, folks. But that doesn’t mean all chicken is off-limits. Pollo Loco, for example, grills theirs and it’s pretty healthy.
Lotter, who works in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, recommends eating “”whole foods,”” foods that have not been whipped, powdered and processed a lot. When I told her I ate Captain Crunch cereal, for example, she said I could try oatmeal or grits instead. They don’t have added sugar, salt and flavors.
Lotter said that drinking water can help dieters lose weight. “I recommend a lot of water. You definitely eat much less.”
However, you should lose weight slowly, at about a pound a week.
If you’re fat as a child, you won’t necessarily be fat as an adult, she said. It depends on your eating and exercise habits and your physical makeup.
Fat-free foods might not help you lose weight
Some people think they can eat whatever they want as long as it is sugar-free or fat-free. Does this sound good? Well it’s not.
“I don’t believe in ‘fat free’ or ‘sugar free’ because in reality, you end up eating much more. I would rather have a chocolate chip cookie instead,” Lotter says.
It is true, she said, that some people can eat whatever they want and never gain weight. “I think that those people are extremely lucky, but again, it all depends on your parents and what kind of fat and metabolism that they have.”
Lotter also recommended that any diet or meal plan should be accompanied by a consistent exercise program for overall fitness. She noted that you should exercise at a level that feels comfortable. It’s great to push a little harder sometimes, but if your muscles are sore after exercising, it doesn’t mean you lost weight. “Nope. It just means you got a good work-out.””