5 Shocking Health Foods That Are Making You Fatter :
It’s true.
Some of the foods you have been told are healthy…
The foods that you have been told to eat by diet experts…
Are actually making you fatter!
In this short handout I am going to tell you exactly what these foods are, why they are making you fatter, and what to substitute instead of them.
Buckle up, grab a drink (of something healthy, of course) and get ready for the ride.
The Struggle
It’s hard enough to lose weight as it is, right?
Knowing what you’re supposed to be eating. Avoiding some of your favorite snack foods. Struggling to find the time to go to the gym. Not reaching into the cookie jar late at night.
It’s a daily battle that we all go through to stay in shape.
The last thing we need is for the difficulty to be compounded with bad advice.
Unluckily for you, there is as much bad advice in the fitness and diet industries as anywhere.
But I am here to dispel some myths for you and set the record straight.
The 5 Shocking Health Foods That Are Making You Fatter
In continuation we are going to look at 5 foods that are often claimed to be “healthy” and “good for weight loss”, but may actually be stopping you lose weight, or even making you fatter.
Not all of these foods are bad for you, but simply not appropriate for your goals.
Foods are rarely absolutely good or bad. Rather, it is how any particular food fits into the bigger picture of your entire eating patterns.
These foods are particularly shocking because they are believed to be healthy. The last place you would think to look for what might be holding back your weight loss results.
1. Breakfast Cereal
Breakfast cereal is the healthiest way to start the day right?
Unfortunately the answer is no, probably not. Despite what advertising tells you, cereal is not a healthy and nutritious way to start your day.
It is often high in sugar, and low in protein. This leaves you with an energy crash a couple of hours later, getting hungry again quickly and setting off a chain of crashing and using sugar as a pick me up which often continues all day long.
A breakfast based on protein, such as eggs or fish, is more filling, satisfying and will give you a slow release of energy throughout the day. Ensuring your performance stays high and your hunger stays in check.
Eating cereal – especially sugary cereal – will often set off cravings that last long into the day. What you are eating in the morning might just be responsible for the urge to eat biscuits in the afternoon.
It’s important that you are eating protein at every meal. It keeps you feeling full, gives steady energy and is the most important macronutrient to eat if you are working out and looking to lose fat.
Skip the breakfast cereal and opt for some boiled eggs or smoked salmon instead.
2. Fruit Smoothies
A fruit smoothie must be healthy? It’s just fruit!?
It’s not that fruit is bad for you, but a smoothie is not the best way to take it in. For one thing, it’s much easier to drink a lot of calories than it is to eat a lot of calories.
With a smoothie you’re taking in lots of calories, without any protein or fat – or even having to chew – to slow down how quickly you digest them.
That means you’re going to get a blood sugar spike, followed by a crash and end up hungry and craving food again soon after.
A homemade smoothie is full of nutrients, but a store bought smoothie is probably not even high in vitamins and minerals. Fruits degrade quickly and do not keep well. Cut an apple in half and leave it out on the counter for a day and you will see what I mean. Fruits quickly lose their nutrients and go off.
Plus, smoothies often have added sugar to make them taste better, along with preservatives and chemicals to allow them to keep on a supermarket shelf.
These are not conducive to your weight loss efforts, which should focus on a whole foods diet.
A better alternative to smoothies are homemade vegetable juices. Blend greens, carrots, beetroot, with a little fruit for flavour. Greens drinks are much lower in sugar and higher in nutrients.
Take a greens drink alongside a protein based breakfast for best satisfaction of hunger and energy.
3. Low Fat Products
Fat is not the enemy. The health/diet industry is finally starting to catch up to what a lot of people have known for a long time – eating fat does not make you fat.
Fat is actually essential for many reasons. Your brain and nervous system requires mostly fat, as does the production of hormones. A diet too low in fat will leave you low in energy and not optimally healthy.
Even saturated fat – so long maligned as the cause of illness – is essential for a healthy body.
The real cause of obesity is excess calories, easily over-consumed in the form of sugar. Low fat products are marketed as being healthy under the premise that fat is unhealthy. It is not.
When fat is removed from a product, it is left bland and tasteless. Sugar is often used in place of fat to add back in taste and make products more palatable. As discussed above, a diet high in sugar is not going to help you lose weight.
Eating full fat natural products in moderation and within the limits of your daily calorie intake is actually a healthier, and tastier alternative to low fat products.
4. ‘Healthy’ Desserts
A healthy diet should be a lifestyle choice, not a short term fix. Of course, you might want to be a little more controlled in your eating if you are working on a specific goal, but over the long term it should become a lifestyle choice.
An important part of a healthy lifestyle is enjoying it. If it feels like a choir, like you’re deprived from the foods you enjoy, what are the chances you will maintain it for the long term?
That means you should be able to enjoy a dessert without guilt. However, if you are trying to lose weight, you have to be aware of your calorie consumption.
It is all too easy for a food to be labelled as ‘healthy’ and people to think that gives free reign to eat as much as they want.
Now, if it’s spinach leaves we are talking about, this isn’t a problem. If it’s calorie dense desserts, it is a problem.
Not because these foods are ‘bad’, but simply because you will be consuming a large number of calories that are going to hold you back from achieving your weight loss objectives.
Slapping the word ‘healthy’ on a package doesn’t mean you can eat as much as you want without consequence.
5. Nuts
Like the desserts, nuts are a food often labelled healthy and recommended as part of a weight loss diet. You can eat nuts as a snack or dessert and still lose weight…
The problem is; nuts are very dense in calories.
Again, nuts are not ‘bad’, and you can eat them, but you need to control how many calories you are eating. A small handful of nuts might be a couple of hundred calories. Half a bag might be 1000+ calories; and it’s very easy to mindlessly keep dipping your hand into the bag.
A key to success in your weight loss efforts is awareness of the foods you are eating. Most people eat mindlessly and simply do not realize what they are consuming.
This is why you can eat all of the ‘right foods’ and see no positive results.
By all means eat a handful of nuts, just make sure you know what you are eating and how energy dense they are.
What If I Don’t Know What To Eat?
Having told you the key foods to be aware of that might be sabotaging your weight loss efforts, it’s important to leave you with an idea of what you should be doing instead.
There is no perfect diet, and no food is inherently good or bad. It all depends on how it fits into the bigger picture of what you are doing.
I cannot tell you exactly what to do in writing, because I do not know your specific situation. Your age, height, weight, activity level, goal and many other things are going to determine what you should be doing, and that can only be determined on an individual basis.
However, I can give you a framework to follow.
Work out what you are aiming for in your diet, and then keep yourself accountable to meeting that. Awareness of the foods you eat will have the single most positive effect on your weight loss efforts.
Knowing what you are doing gives you the information you need to make changes as required. Therefore, my top tip is to educate yourself on what you are eating and ensure you are keeping on top of tracking what you do.
This gives the insight and control to make appropriate changes, depending on your situation and goal.
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About Author:
Zack Miller is a personal trainer from Cranford, New Jersey. Zack writes about exercise, nutrition and other fitness related topics. To read more from Zack, visit his blog Tone Body Fitness.
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