Lose Weight by Eating Real Food
Americans are losing a decades long battle with obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 67 percent of American adults were overweight in 2006, 34 percent were obese, and 5.9 percent were extremely obese. While the prevalence of overweight has remained stable since 1980, the prevalence of obesity has more than doubled in that period.
There are many diet plans available to help you lose weight. The challenge is to find a plan that will work for you. It seems that most of them work for some people, but what works for your friend may not work for you. However, there is one thing that most effective weight loss diets have in common, namely, they require that you eat real food.
Why do we eat, or perhaps I should ask, why should we eat? We should eat for energy and nutrients. For the epicureans among you, it is alright to enjoy food, but the primary purpose of food is to provide us with fuel and nutrition. We must have both. If your food is nutrient dense, then you can easily eat more of it without getting too many calories. If your “food” has no nutrients, then you are eating “empty” calories, and your body will crave more food so that it can get nutrients.
Real food is what you find around the outer aisles of the supermarket. This is where you find the fresh vegetables, fruits, meats, and dairy. You also find it in the frozen food cases. The other real foods include certain breads, dried beans and grains, and canned goods. Real foods are foods that you can recognize without having to read a long list of ingredients. Broccoli is broccoli. Cheese is cheese. Milk is milk. Apples are apples. Chicken is chicken. All real foods have nutritional value.
Now that you know what the real foods are, you must restrict yourself to those real foods that are not laden with too much sugar and salt. Many canned goods are high in sodium or sugar. Too much sodium, from salt or sodium chloride, is linked to hypertension. Too much sugar adds too many calories. Furthermore, too much salt and sugar causes us to crave more food and overeat. That’s why you can’t eat just one potato chip. That’s why when you drink certain sweetened beverages, you are still thirsty.
To lose weight you must burn more calories than you eat. Professional athletes can eat several thousand calories per day and remain lean because they burn several thousand calories per day. People who sit at a desk all day don’t need to eat as much as pro athletes. If you work at a desk and you eat as much as Venus or Serena Williams, then you are going to get fat. A point of clarification is in order here: Lean and thin are not the same thing. You can be thin and fat, meaning that you have no significant muscle mass or muscle tone. Serena Williams is not thin, but she is lean. She has lean muscle mass.
In addition to eating real food, you must eat sensible portions. If you eat food without a lot of sugar and salt, it is easier to eat smaller portions. You will not be as easily subject to cravings, and you will be more easily satiated because your body will get nutrients from real food. Real foods are nutrient dense and will not ignite cravings, so begin now to incorporate them in your diet.
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