I’ve been lying to my WeightWatchers members all week. I keep telling them “there are no foods that magically cause weight loss.”

What I really mean to say is that there are no foods which “burn fat” or which you can eat endless amounts of and not gain weight. Not even celery, as far as I know.

But there is something “magical” about certain foods — the ones we call “Power Foods”.  Having spent four days focusing on these (lean proteins, whole grains, fat-free dairy, fruits, and vegetables), I’ve discovered something. When you manage to spend at least 24 hours eating mostly “clean” stuff, it suddenly becomes easier to say “no” to the food cart or the bakery store temptations. It’s not that treats lose their appeal. Rather, it feels easier to resist them because you’ve been meeting your body’s health needs and your digestive system feels fully engaged.

It seems to me that highly processed foods, no matter how awesome they taste, just kind of melt into the body and bypass the hunger and fullness mechanism. If anything, the more processed and refined the food is, the hungrier we get and the sooner we want more.

My experience tells me that it’s easier to slip up and get back into old habits than it is to fully live into new ones. So I hesitate to say that having an apple is going to cure the desire for cookies. But there is nevertheless something magical about apples that I don’t fully understand.

Maybe it’s the crunch. Or maybe it’s the time it takes to chew, swallow and digest them. Whatever it is, when I eat (good, ripe) apples, it can be an effective antidote to mindless snacking and can leave me feeling physically satisfied for quite some time.

Same is true for fat-free yogurt, steamed veggies, turkey burgers, fat-free popcorn, etc. etc.

Now all we need to do is figure out how to jump-start that critical first day….