Roger Snow was 90 pounds overweight when he started eating hemp hearts.  “Everywhere you go all day, up and down stairs, in and out of the car; everything you do, you’re packing a 90 lb. tool box,” says Roger.  Hemp hearts satisfy hungry longer and provide an even flow of energy which allows users to reduce food intake and avoid energy boosters, and thus easily lose weight.  Since Snow dropped his tool box, he has become a strong advocate for healthy eating and weight maintenance using hemp hearts.  In an interview, Roger Snow, Owner and Operator of Rocky Mountain Grain Products, described to me his fervent weight loss philosophy stemming from his own experience and the three modes of consumption he uses to control his weight.

At some point you have to make a choice, either I’m going to eat healthy or I’m going to just keep getting fatter and fatter.

Mode 1 – Taking It Off

Roger explained how to some degree weight is an issue for most people coming to him seeking health benefits from hemp hearts.   “In the beginning, most of the time a person is in the weight losing mode, until they get their weight down where it should be.  Maybe they don’t need to lose 100 pounds.  Maybe they need to lose 10.   Then after, a person is in the 'hold your own' mode.”

“So what do we need to do and eat to turn it around?”  I asked.

Roger answered, “You have to eat at least 5 heaping tablespoons of hemp for breakfast with whatever else you like to eat for breakfast.  Roger suggested eating the hemp hearts on top of fruit and yogurt, mixed into large flake oatmeal, or eggs.  “You’ll notice right from the first day that you can easily avoid sweets, soft drinks, coffee, and other energy boosters.  You’ll also notice that you’re not hungry at lunch time.   If you find yourself getting hungry at about 3 o’clock, just have a big pot of tea.  Drink tea until six and a big salad.  Salads do bring a lot of calories with them, but they do bring a lot of bulk and are hard to digest.  So if you fill yourself up with raw vegetables at 6 o’clock, your stomach will rumble away on those all night and you won’t find yourself significantly hungry.  It isn’t that it’s giving you a lot of energy, but you don’t need a lot of energy at 6 pm, your day’s over.  So at 6 o’clock just have a big vegetable salad, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, celery, but no dressing.

“People always say, ‘Oh I can’t possibly do it with no dressing.’  So I say, ‘Well, if you want a little contrast taste or something, squeeze some lemon on it or a little bit of cranberry sauce or a few berries or something.  There’s a million way to make a salad, a little more interesting than putting tablespoons of oil on there.’  So if you do it this way, you can lose a pound a day easily.  If you are hugely overweight, you’ll lose 2 pounds a day.  Even if you’re skinny you can lose a pound a day.

“You’ve taken in some calories in the morning, and you’ve had all day to burn those off, and you haven’t been significantly hungry, because what you took in in the morning was high in protein, so it satisfied your hunger. You haven’t been short of energy because what you had supplied you with energy slowly, so you’ve had an even supply of energy all day and not felt like you were on a roller coaster.

“I’ll tell people this diet and they’ll say, ‘I couldn’t live that way forever,’ and I’ll tell them, you don’t have to live this way forever.  You want to lose 50 pounds, you can do that in 50 days or you can do that for 10 days and then not do it for 10 and then do it for 10 again and so on. Just ratchet your weight down, until you’re where you want to be.”

Mode 2 – Holding Your Own

“That sounds great, Roger,” I said, “but what do we need to eat afterwards?  I know I couldn’t do that forever either.”

Roger assured me, “After you’ve lost your weight, you can eat a whole lot more in the evening without gaining weight…as long as you stay away from bread, potatoes, pasta and rice!”  Roger explains how the energy that is quickly released in carbs often does not get fully used and is stored as fat.  “So forget about eating bread potatoes, pasta and rice, ever again in your life as a regular thing.  You might eat it on special occasions, but certainly not everyday.  If you’re just going to go back to eating bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, and sugar, you might as well just keep growing until you pop because that is exactly what will happen to you!”  Roger and I had a laugh, but as a carbohydrate addict I secretly cringed at the thought of giving up bread, cookies, and pasta.

“But after I’ve lost weight,” Roger continued, “and I just want to hold my own and enjoy my food a whole lot more, then I’ll still have my hemp and fruit in the morning; there’s nothing that tastes better anyway.  I still won’t eat lunch because I still won’t be hungry at lunch.  If you eat enough hemp in the morning, you’re not hungry at lunch time so why would you want to eat lunch?  Then, I might get a bit hungry at 3 pm, so I’ll just have a pot of tea because I know I’ll probably want to eat something in the evening and if I eat something at 3 pm and something in the evening I’ll gain weight so I’ll still have a pot of tea at 3 o’clock.  At 6 o’clock I’ll have a salad, a steak and a beer.  I won’t gain any weight on that diet.”

Mode 3 – You Know You’re Going to Gain…and that’s ok!

“So what’s mode 3, Roger?” I inquire.

“Mode 3 is sometimes I just eat whatever I feel like.  Like if someone invites me out for dinner.  I decide at some point, am I in a weight loss mode?  Am I in a hold my own mode?  Or am I in a mode where I don’t mind gaining a few pounds because I’m willing to lose it later.   But I don’t lie to myself about which mode I’m on.

“So it’s Christmas, and people are inviting me out for dinner and so on and I think alright I guess I’ll gain a few pounds, I’ll pig out and eat whatever I feel like.  I’ll enjoy myself.  But I’m not going to pretend that I’m not going to gain weight, because I will.  Then after, maybe the next week I’ll have to go back into my weight loss mode and lose 5 pounds.  But I don’t do that very often because it’s always a pain to lose ground.

Don’t Kid Yourself

“You have to be a fanatic to lose weight and I tell people, ‘Don’t be dishonest with yourself.’  If you are not going to be a fanatic on a particular day, don’t even start and you know that on this particular day you’re going to go out for dinner or you’re going to have a few beers with the boys after work.  Eat your hemp in the morning, but don’t pretend to yourself that you’re going to lose weight.  Just try to avoid the bread, the pasta, the rice, so you don’t gain weight.   If you go out for dinner, eat the meat and the fruit and the vegetables, but stay away from the potatoes, pasta, and bread. If you’re going to have a few beers with that, then have a few beers with that, just don’t pretend that you’re trying to lose weight that day because you’re not.  You can always lose weight the next day.”

Getting down to an ideal weight and then practicing moderation and avoiding foods that cause weight gain seems like a reasonable weight solution anyone can apply, especially when balanced with the realistic expectation that no one wants to watch their weight all the time and that that is ok.