5 Foods to Toss if You Want to Keep the Weight OFF
Everyone knows to eat more vegetables, lean meats, and healthy fats when trying to lose weight. But which foods should you avoid? After you’ve lost weight, can you reintroduce those bad foods? Having an occasional treat is fine, but any more than that and you could start putting weight back on. Avoid the following five foods if you want to keep the weight you’ve lost off for good.
- Frozen TV Dinners
Foods that don’t require any processing are perfectly healthy to freeze and eat, like fruits and vegetables. Other foods, especially those that have been processed, can’t be frozen without preservatives. Frozen TV dinners are guilty of using salt and other additives to keep the ingredients fresh while frozen. The extra salt in these meals causes you to bloat from water weight.
Instead, opt for homemade meals or takeout from restaurants that focus on serving whole foods.
- White Pasta Noodles
To produce white noodles, cereal, and bread, the grains must be heavily processed. This process removes most of the nutrients from the food, namely fibre. We need fibre to slow down the digestion process so that we feel fuller longer. When white pasta digests, it causes the body to release insulin which then stores the calories from the pasta as fat.
To continue losing or maintaining your weight, opt for whole grain pasta, cereal, and bread.
- Sugary Drinks
Excess sugar from any source, even fruit, is bad for the body. Sugar addiction has become an epidemic in Canada. Some of the main culprits of this epidemic are sugary sodas and juices. In fact, Health Canada has officially removed fruit juice from its food guide. This is due to the intense and substantiated link between sugary drinks and obesity.
Instead, drink water sweetened with whole fruits.
- French Fries
The body depends on unsaturated fats to support cell structures, maintain cognitive function, and promote heart health. The fat you ingest from French fries is not the healthy kind. This kind of fat, trans fat, has zero health benefits. It’s known to increase LDL cholesterol in the bloodstream and increase your risk of type 2 diabetes. Trans fat can lead to obesity and weight gain, so avoid it.
You can maintain your weight by eating healthy fats like omega-3s and 6s from salmon, nuts, and safflower oil.
- Some Alcohol
No one’s saying you have to cut out alcohol altogether. However, it’s important to understand how that margarita could contribute to your weight gain. When you enjoy a drink or two, you aren’t aware of how many grams of sugar you’re consuming. It’s too easy to exceed the limit and lose motivation to stay healthy. Even worse, when there’s alcohol in your body the liver puts all its energy into removing it. In this intense toxin-removal phase, it doesn’t burn fat.
Imbibe on special occasions with a low sugar drink but avoid drinking more than one.
If you’re excited about your weight loss, don’t throw it all away for some fries and sangria. Keep up your motivation and stay on a healthy path. Avoid the five foods listed above because they can halt the momentum you’ve worked so hard for. Keep those extra pounds off by eating non-processed, whole foods.