It’s the $64 million question isn’t it? What to eat to lose weight? It’s a question i’m often asked so I’m going to shed a bit of light on the subject.
What should you eat to lose weight? Should you reduce your carbohydrate intake, cut out fat, start taking diet supplements to ‘burn fat’ because you saw it worked for someone else? The simple answer is none of these things.
Within the last 40 years carbohydrates and fats have both come under fire as foods to avoid if you want to lose weight. In the case of fat it was a popular theory that if you ate fat it made you fat and carbohydrates have been vilified because people associate them with the growing epidemic of type 2 diabetes.
Eating fats in your diet does not cause you to become fat. The body needs a certain amount of fat in the diet to keep us healthy and for some functions in the body to be performed effectively. In much the same vein eating carbohydrates in the diet is not solely responsible for either making you gain weight or causing you to develop diabetes.
We now live in a world where we are surrounded by information about diet and weight loss 24 hours a day. Whether this is via government guidelines, sensationalist press articles lacking evidence based proof or diet and supplement companies claiming that if you buy into their product you will miraculously lose weight, no wonder people are confused.
So what should you eat to lose weight? Unfortunately the true answer isn’t sexy and it’s an answer that many people don’t want to hear. If you eat more calories than you burn you will gain weight, if you eat less calories than you burn you will lose weight. Whilst it isn’t this simplistic, and a lot of variables come into play, weight loss is about energy balance.
The removal of entire food groups such as fat or carbohydrates, eliminating dairy and gluten if you’re not diagnosed as intolerant or buying into expensive quick fix diets are unrealistic and sometimes dangerous.
Eating a healthy diet that consists of unprocessed foods and putting your body in a calorie deficit is the best way to lose weight.
If you want to lose weight the best advice I can give you, from growing up in a family where close family members have battled with their bodies their entire lives, is stop dieting. Don’t give the meals you eat on a daily basis a name with an expiry date. Have an honest look at what you eat and make a few changes if you feel you need to, but make the changes a habit……………………and if you need some help drop me a line.
Your health is your wealth
Leigh x
