Weight loss is one of the largest challenges that we face on a daily basis. Whether you’re trying to lose some weight for your friend’s wedding, or you simply want to take off a couple of pounds, making the lifestyle changes needed to lose weight is something we all struggle with.
Losing weight is not as simple as eating less. Chances are if you’ve been eating unhealthy food for the past couple years, your body has adapted to poor sources of calories. Simply switching your intake to cleaner, whole foods may make a big difference.
The difficulty is: how do you determine which foods are best for weight loss? How do you know what’s going to work best for you from day one?
Here are some of the most effective ways to ensure you are losing weight and keeping it off.
Emphasize Balance in Your Diet
One of the biggest mistakes that many people make when they start a new diet program is to remove a specific food from their diet. Whether you try a high-fat diet and remove most of your carbs or try a high-carb diet and limit your intake of fat ‒ both can be harmful to your health and weight loss.
Although these methods may work in the short-term, helping you lose some weight in a couple of weeks, as the months progress you may see a plateau. For this reason, it is always best to emphasize a balance of all food groups.
Consistent weight loss will come when you create a caloric deficit – that is, taking in less calories than you burn off.
After you’ve found balance in your diet, consider keeping a few, more harmful foods out of your diet whenever possible. Check out these top 5 foods to avoid for weight loss.
5 Foods to Avoid:
- Fatty meats. We all love bacon and ribs ‒ but to a certain extent, these foods come with a high caloric value and a low nutritional yield.
- Limiting your intake of fatty meats like beef and pork and substituting fish, turkey, beans, and other lean meats can help to lower your intake of saturated fats and total calories.
- Processed sweets. Halloween is the only exception to this rule. Processed sweets like candy, donuts, muffins, and cakes all contain high amounts of calories with low nutritional value.
- They are also loaded with trans fats, perhaps the worst fat you can consume for overall health.
- Processed grains. Humans have developed over thousands of years to eat whole grains, yet the past generation of food processing has stripped grains of nutrition and can lead to weight gain.
- Limiting your intake of foods such as white bread, flour tortillas, ready-made cereals, and other processed grains can lead to stronger overall health, faster weight loss, and better digestion.
- Whole creams. Many people enjoy a nice cappuccino, but the extra amount of high-fat dairy is detrimental for your daily calorie needs.
- Limiting your consumption of high-fat dairy products like ice cream, whole milk, and full-fat yogurt could be a step in the right direction if you are looking for long-term weight loss.
- Fruit juices. Eating whole fruit will never be an issue, yet fruit juices are loaded with added sugar and preservatives that have no place in your daily calories.
- The added sugar can cause inflammation which leads to weight gain, and the extra calories are not needed. For best results, try making your own fruit juice smoothies. You’ll likely find no need for the added sugars.
Emphasize Moderation
These food recommendations are foods that are generally quite high in calories. At the end of the day, your weight loss will come down to the total amount of calories you consume and your ability to maintain a calorie deficit throughout the weeks.
Do your best to emphasize moderation in your food. Simply put, all food is good when it is consumed at the right time and the right amount.
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