Nutrition

The Worst Things to Avoid if You Are Overweight

No matter how religiously you diet or how intensely you have been exercising in your endeavour to get rid of that stubborn weight, all it takes to counteract your weight loss goals is a tiny mistake that can tilt the way scales against your favour. In spite of the fact that you are trying to make healthy choices in food, picking up healthy groceries, and watching what you are consuming at every meal, there may be times when you are unaware of those little mistakes that you are committing, which could be the reasons for the inflexible weight gain.fat-guy-eating

In today’s food industry, producers and marketers of food have cramped their food products and offerings with so much salt, unhealthy fats, high fructose corn syrup and others chemical additives that any single food product we are going to reveal to you will ruin all the efforts you are putting into losing weight and all the right intentions you have in your weight loss attempts.

If you have been consuming any of these food-bombs in your diet, even if once a month, you are unintentionally adding over eight pounds of fat or flab to your structure for the next 12 months. Fortunately, we have rounded up the 6 worst things that you need to avoid like the plague if you want to lose excess weight for life. Better still, we also give you tasty alternatives that have extremely low calories while at the same time not compromising on taste. If you make these good food choices each time you dine out, you are likely to lose 15, 20 or even 25 pounds in one year.

Here are the top worst foods that you need to stay away from:

  1. Canned fruits. Fruits in its natural form are one of the best things to happen to a healthy diet. But most dieters are of the opinion that fruit in any form is still fruit, even if it comes laden and dripping with sugar syrup. There is little need for food manufacturers to package, can and bottle an already sweet product into a sweeter processed food with excessive sugar. This is one area of debate where health food experts are at a loss to understand why fruits need to be canned or bottled as it loses all its nutritive flavour and elements, and in turn becomes highly unhealthy. All canned fruits have sugar syrup soaked in them and contain unnecessarily high calories without any nutritive value. If you are looking for high nutritive value in an area where fresh produce is unavailable, choose frozen food products rather than canned foods. Frozen fruit is flash frozen which preserves the nutrients in it while at the same time is easy on the pocket and great for health.
  2. Buttered popcorn. Any form of popcorn that claims to have butter, cheese and other flavours is laden with trans-fat and artery clogging dangerous cholesterol, which is sometimes more than 10 times of your recommended daily limit. Opt for freshly roasted popcorn if available, or roast corn kernels at home in the microwave with a dash of natural butter. Food companies load popular popcorn varieties with as much sodium and margarine as possible in order to maintain the flavour and encourage the eater to consume in copious quantities.
  3. Packaged chocolate pudding pies. This is the kind of snack that you pick off the fast food shelf or of a gas station in a split second, as you are rummaging to find change to pay for any other items in a hurry. The amount of saturated fat found in packaged chocolate pudding pies that are commercially available at any grocery store or a gas station shelf is almost your days' worth of fat that your body might require. Although these packages look tiny and cute, and you might wonder how much a buck worth of pudding pie can damage your weight loss goals, it actually qualifies as one of the cheapest sources of harmful calories for your body. If you are at a gas station and you are looking out for something to eat, opt for fresh fruit if available and beef jerky.
  4. Gravy biscuits. One of the most certifiably horrible ways of starting your day could be to consume sausage gravy biscuits dripping with artery clogging saturated fat. If you have commenced your day with this particularly dangerous meal, you would have consumed more than three fourths of a days' worth of sodium even before the day has begun. High sodium content is not only a dangerous precursor to high blood pressure but it can also set things in imbalance within your body. The problem with consuming gravy biscuits is that you are having such a great deal of sodium without any potassium. There needs to be an equal amount of sodium and potassium combined for a reasonable level of blood pressure to be maintained throughout the day. In addition to the excessive sodium in the gravy biscuits, you are also having unnecessary saturated fat and an abundance of empty calories, that you might have been better off having nothing at all. Opt for a croissant containing egg, cheese and ham instead.
  5. Meat Wraps with French fries. For some strange reason, a number of people of the opinion that wraps are considered to be a healthy upgrade from sandwiches. On the contrary however, these massive wrappings are filled with nothing but saturated fat and densely harmful calories. And the condition gets even worse if it is laden with dripping white sauce thick with cream cheese and bacon drippings. To add to the damage, almost all wraps come with French fries and you suddenly find yourself tacking on an additional 500 whopping calories with this meal. If you have an option stick to grilled chicken and Portobellos that contain a mere 400 calories and a little over 5 g of saturated fat.
  6. Tuna melt sandwiches. As a natural food, tuna is a powerhouse of nutrition and can flavour up any form of main meal with its rich flavour and taste. Taking advantage of the national obsession with tuna, food marketers have twisted this wonderful superstar into one of the worst foods for dieters. Blended with an absurd amount of mayonnaise, tuna paste is laden on open sandwiches and foot longs with additional sauces and cream drippings to make it beyond a 2000+ calorie food product. To choose a healthy sandwich while eating out, opt for chicken flatbread sandwiches.

Joe Bianchi is a fitness and lifestyle expert and a prolific writer on matters related to healthy weight loss and overall wellbeing.

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