6 Foods to Avoid if you Want to Lose Weight
30th Jan 20
Losing weight is never easy, especially if you don’t know what foods to avoid and what foods you need to get more of to help you do it. Dieting is always going to be a complicated subject with many different viewpoints, but that doesn’t mean there are a few useful things you need to be aware of. We’ve put together a list of notorious diet ruining progress stopping foods to avoid if you want to lose weight. These could seriously ruin your weight loss progress if you don’t know to avoid them. It’s need-to-know stuff.
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1. Unnatural sugar
It always has and always will be the best place to start with looking at food things you need to avoid for weight loss since it’s such a combination of diet-busting factors. The biggest thing to remember is that two things happen when you consume a lot of sugar.
The first is that you get a load of calories that you don’t need that have very little nutritional value in energy and satiety. The second is that they cause a spike in blood sugar. That crashes pretty soon after, leaving you feeling tired, unhappy, and craving more food more often than not. So that’s even more calories still.
2. Smoothies & Juices
Although smoothies and juices are packed full of nutrients and vitamins, these are still one to watch if you’re trying to lose weight. They’re an awesome treat since they taste so good, but sadly because of the sheer concentration of fruit that goes into them alone (without added sugar), you’re looking at a load of natural sugar. It’s much better than the unnatural sugars from sweets etc., but it’s still full of the stuff.
3. Fat-Free Products
Moving things to a different level, too much fat in your diet is often the first port of call for people looking to lose weight, and it’s the first food type people avoid. The problem is that they usually jump straight on board with the healthily branded fat-free products. The intention is good. We get that.
The problem, however, is that these foods often have a hidden ingredient. You guessed it again; it’s sugar. To make up for the taste of boring fat-free yoghurt, it’s filled with fruit and sugar instead. That’s precisely the same problem as before, but you don’t even know about it this time.
4. Trans Fats
While we’re on the subject of those hidden foods that we don’t want in our diets, trans fats are one of the worst too, and you need to know about them. They’re put in lots of different processed foods (often called emulsifiers) as a way to keep things glued together, preserve shelf life, and even taste better (like with fast food). But, unfortunately, they are seriously bad news for your health, and if you’re trying to lose weight, you need to avoid these foods too.
5. Simple Carbs
On a much lighter note, another good call is to try and cut down on the number of simple carbohydrates in your diet. We’re not saying cut carbs because that’s not a good plan, but minimising simple carbs especially can be really useful. Simple carbs get broken down and digested quicker, meaning you are not full for very long, and you end up eating more calories. They get turned to sugar after all, so a lot of the points from no.1 apply here. Try and substitute with complex carbs where you can! (here’s the difference).
6. Processed Foods
This one is more of a blanket statement to make things a little clearer. It’s one of the most prevalent points you need to take away in all of this, and that’s because usually, in some form or another, all processed foods with have a cocktail of the things we’ve looked at in there somewhere. These things are all awful for losing weight on their own, and when you add them together, things get even worse. It really needs to be something you actively do if you want to truly lose weight in a way that is healthy in the long term.
Bonus: Alcohol
We need to mention one last thing before we leave you to your awesome new diet plan. If you are trying to lose weight, consider avoiding alcohol where you can. We’ve dedicated a full article to how alcohol and weight loss are a cocktail for failure, but we’ll sum it up here. Alcohol has more calories per gram than any other macro. So drinking a lot of it, mixed with the sugar in alcoholic drinks, and you’re looking at a very unhealthy surplus of calories in your day.
Cook whatever you can do yourself whenever you can. Get the freshest and most natural ingredients possible with the least preservative and try your best to cut away from all of these processes that make food so much easier but so much unhealthier.
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