Diets, like fashion, have trends that come and go, and lately the world of weight loss has been all about counting … everything. Between counting macros on IIFYM, points on Weight Watchers, carbs on keto and just about everything possible on the Economists’ Diet, we don’t blame you one bit if you’re numb to the numbers. For those of you who want a more intuitive approach to nourishing your body and slimming down in the process, meet the Scandi sense diet: the breath of fresh air in your food prep that you’ve been waiting for.
Some things you won’t encounter on the Scandi sense diet: points, macros, grams or ounces, or, brace yourselves, calories. That’s right; there isn’t even calorie counting on this plan.
Calorie counting works — but so do other approaches. If calorie counting is easy for you, stick with it and keep slimming down. If it doesn’t, or you want to lessen your reliance on measurements and the food scale, you might want to give Scandi sense a spin. Even for diehard macro counters, the Scandi sense diet plan might be a good way to ease off the stress for a week without letting things slide out of control. How? We break it down.
How do you follow the Scandi sense diet?
The founder of the Scandi sense diet, Suzy Wengel, wants you to use only one tool for her method: your hand. You’ll use your hand to measure out different types of food for each meal — and it’s really as simple as that. You’ll see a lot of similarities to the 21 Day Fix, except there are no branded containers or booklets you need to buy, and no waiting for your tools to arrive in the mail. You can start as soon as your next meal.
Wengel, Denmark’s diet guru and a fit mother of five, came up with the system after years of failed diets — and, surprise surprise, she lost 88 pounds. Leave it to a mom to come up with a no nonsense plan that works. By following her simple suggestions, Wengel claims you can lose an average of between 0.8 and 1.8 pounds per week. Even better, there’s no cutting out your favorite foods.
How the Scandi sense diet works
So what are the basics of the Scandi sense diet? Wengel suggests you first fill up most of your plate with one to two handfuls of vegetables, then add one handful of protein and finally one handful of starchy carbs like pasta, potatoes, rice or fruit. The fat you will have to measure since it packs more of a caloric punch, and Wengel says to stick to between one and three tablespoons of fat.
There’s only one catch: the way you shape your hand when you’re measuring. We know you can fit more food on your hand when it’s stretched out flat, but that’s not the point here. You should use a gently cupped hand to measure with this method.
Watch the handy (pun intended) video below made by Wengel herself that explains the basic of the Scandi sense diet, or handful diet.
So, the Scandi sense diet is basically the handful diet?
Absolutely! The Scandi sense diet asks you to roughly measure your food with your hands as guides, so it’s essentially a handful diet. If you stick to Wengel’s guidelines that’s how you’re able to eat and lose weight without counting calories.
Wengel says it’s not a matter of giving up any of the foods you love, but of making tweaks to how you dish it up on your plate. If, for example, you love serving stir-fries because they’re fast, cheap and kid-friendly, you’ll add more veggies to your plate than before and cut down on the amount of noodles or rice you serve yourself.
Since the handful diet, or Scandi sense diet, harkens from Scandinavia, you can rest assured that your fika isn’t off the table. (Fika is a Swedish concept for having coffee, which is frequently accompanied by sweets such as pastries and cookies.) Wengel merely suggests you practice moderation and keep them to a minimum — but you knew you were supposed to do that already.
Wengel’s book, The Scandi Sense Diet: Lose weight and keep it off with the life-changing handful method, is available through Amazon.
