5 Not So Healthy ‘Health Foods’!

If you are attempting to improve your eating habits, this is a useful read in order to make the right adjustments to your meal plans. It may surprise you that some of the ‘health’ foods are in fact not going to help you lose weight.

Here are our 5 foods you may be eating to slim down but are in fact not helping.

Soy

I wanted to start with this as it is one of the biggest cons of all. Multinational food conglomerates decide that they want to make lots of money from something which is basically a worthless commodity. Using some very questionable research and ignoring anything that goes against their view they somehow manage to convince people that soy is a health food. Well its not…It messes with your thyroid (your body’s thermostat of fat burning), blocks the uptake of many essential minerals and causes GI problems.  It will cause your body to store fat around the hips, bum and legs. Avoid whenever possible.

‘Low fat’ products

The fat you eat in your diet has for decades been labelled with an unfounded bad reputation and lead to the creation of endless artificial ‘low fat’ products. Firstly we need fat in our diets and without it you will become ill and a lack of it can be life threatening. That fundamental point aside dietary fat doesn’t make you fat. Even a very high fat diet won’t make you fat without an accompanied dose of carbohydrates. Many people imagine when eating a steak that somehow the fat in the meat morphs itself onto ones hips. Well if you look at the actual mechanisms of fat storage our bodies aren’t quite that simple!

Eating fats keeps you fuller for longer stopping hunger pains, and they are great for insulin management, the secret to long-term weight management. Also when foods have the fat processed out of them they lose their palatability, so sugar is often added to make them taste good again. And it’s sugar that makes people fat, not dietary fat.

Far from eating ‘low fat’ products, eat good sources of fat including organic/grass fed meats and wild game, fish, olives, avocados, coconut, raw nuts, seeds, and organic/raw dairy if you want to slim down.

Fruit

Fruit does have its qualities; vitamin and mineral content, fibre, and phytonutrients. But it is essential to recognise that it is not beneficial for all people all of the time. Indeed despite it’s reputation as a health superfood it can, in some situations, hinder weight loss. Yes, hinder weight loss. Fruit is not essential for health and longevity as vegetables are a better source of everything you get from fruit. Fruit breaks down into fructose or glucose, or a combination of the two. Both of these sugars in excess can hinder weight management. My advice if you are trying to slim down is to use fruit as a dessert or a snack, it is not a meal and will create sugar cravings if it is all you eat for breakfast.

Wholegrain bread & pasta

All starchy carbohydrates break down to sugar or glucose. Glucose ingestion spikes blood sugar, leading to a cascade of insulin production. When insulin is high more calories are stored as body fat. The mechanism talked about above in the fat discussion.

Furthermore both of these products, and indeed any wheat product, contain gluten. Gluten is disastrous for humans and causes so many problems in the body including GI problems, auto immune disease and thyroid problems. All these will not only make you gain weight, they can also make you sick. This one is easy…. Again like soy, don’t eat gluten if you can avoid it. Replace bread and pasta with rice or better still fibrous veg; drink red wine instead of beer; use rice, almond or coconut flour instead of wheat flour.

Fruit juices, smoothies and veg juices

Again we are talking about blood sugar and insulin. All the above may be marketed as a quick and easy way of getting your ‘five a day’, a way of increasing vitamin and mineral intake and generally making yourself healthy. But they have a huge negative effect on insulin. As soon as fruit and veg are blitzed up they lose the benefit from the fibre in the original form and what you are really drinking is basically liquid almost empty calories in the form of sugar. Above I was happy to discuss the benefits of fruit for some people some of the time… well with these it is no one at any time. Drink herbal teas, water with fresh squeezed lime or lemon, coffee before noon, or just plain old water.

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