People trying to lose weight are faced with an endless supply of helpful advice. Cutting through the bad advice is almost as hard as cutting calories. However, there is some simple knowledge that can be proven time and again to help you lose weight.
When trying to lose weight there is one rule of thumb that is a safe bet to follow to make sure you’re losing weight and staying healthy: Avoid the white foods. The white foods that I’m talking about are white flour, salt, sugar, pasta and white rice.
Unlike the natural, unprocessed fruits and vegetables that are provided to us by nature, foods that has been run through several layers of processing have lost a great deal of their vitamins, minerals, fiber and phytonutrients. When you compare whole wheat against foods made with white flour like bread and pasta you see that over half of the fiber, zinc, vitamin E and folic acid have been removed. Even though the white flour used to make these products has been enriched to make up for the nutrients that were taken out, typically only about 5 are put back in compared to over 100 that were lost.
Processing foods makes them tastier and more visually appealing but also causes most of the nutrition to be lost. The difference between whole grain and white flour is so stark that food made with white flour can barely be called food anymore. An even more serious problem is caused by removing so much of the fiber. Fiber slows down how fast glucose is absorbed into your blood stream. If it gets in there too quickly your pancreas has to go into overdrive to produce enough insulin to deal with it. This creates even more body fat and over time leads to diabetes.
Lack of proper nutrition contributes to cancer, heart disease and diabetes. This has been proven in study after study. Eating processed carbohydrates puts us in a nutritional deficit along with a surplus of empty calories. The end result is overweight, poorly fed people. Ultimately, the lack of nutrition is the cause of an epidemic of disease and obesity.
The bottom line is, if you’re trying to lose weight the most important foods to avoid are processed carbohydrates. This includes baked goods like bread, pasta, bagels and cake. Make it a point to avoid all low fiber carbohydrates and the battle to lose weight is almost won.
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