Losing weight and making sure that it stays lost is an arduous process and a life-long commitment. We don’t know whose idea it was to make sure that the best-tasting food was the worst for your body, but it was a very cruel joke! Even with the best exercise regime in the world and a carefully planned diet, many of us still occasionally get taken by surprise by unexpected weight gain. We don’t know why it happens, and it’s very upsetting when it does.
When you’ve worked as hard as you can to shift weight, and it isn’t going anywhere, it’s frustrating and demoralizing. It can make you feel like giving up on your healthy lifestyle choices completely. After all, what would be the point if weight loss methods appear to be no more reliable in terms of outcome than online slots are? Think about everything you put in your mouth, and pretend its a coin going into a game on an online slots website. Some of those coins might give you a ‘payout’ in terms of extra weight, and some of them won’t. If you could work out which coins brought you a jackpot and which coins didn’t, you’d be walking away with a profit every time you played casino slots UK – but you can’t know that. That’s why payouts happen at random – and so it feels like weight gain happens at random, too.
What if there was a way to know which ‘coins’ did what, though? What if we told you that some of the foods you thought were doing you good were doing you harm? We all know not to eat too much junk food, chocolate, or cake if we want to lose weight, but far fewer of us are aware that some far more innocuous food choices can be just as bad for our waistlines. Here are five common food items that might be to blame for your unwanted extra pounds.
Coconut Oil
We know we’re starting off with a shocking announcement, but coconut oil is a long way from being the magic cure-all that it was once touted to be. We all fell for the marketing, and we all might have failed our diet goals because of it. Scientific thought on the benefits of coconut oil has changed a lot in the past two years, and one leading academic has gone as far as calling it ‘poison.’ When you look at the facts, it isn’t hard to see why. In the average tablespoon of coconut oil – just one single, solitary tablespoon – you’ll get 120 calories and 14 grams of fat. Twelve of those grams are saturated fat. That’s more than half of your recommended daily allowance per tablespoon of coconut oil. Some of us were using multiple tablespoons a day before we heard this news. For all of the other health benefits it may or may not bring us, half of our daily fat allowance is way too high a price to pay.
Smoothies
Everybody has a friend on social media who ‘works from home’ selling smoothie or juice diets to their friends, families, and acquaintances. They almost certainly don’t know that they’re doing anybody any harm – and yet they are. The majority of pre-packaged smoothies come with far, far too much sugar to be healthy. Not only are they building up deposits of fat in your body, but they’re also rotting your teeth at the same time. You should only consider buying a smoothie if you can guarantee that it contains fewer than twelve grams of sugar. The only way to know that for sure is to make it using your own blender, inside your own house. That’s bad news for your smoothie-selling friend, but at least it gives you the option to carry on drinking them if you enjoy them.
Tomato Sauce
If you eat your fries without tomato sauce, are you really eating fries at all? The answer to that question ought to be ‘yes,’ because if you’re adding tomato sauce to your fries, you’re taking a foodstuff that’s already fairly unhealthy and then adding an extra layer of unhealthiness to it. If you think tomato sauce is made from nothing other than tomatoes, you’ve missed a memo somewhere. Always check the label and find out what else the manufacturer added to their mixture before they put it in a bottle and sold it to you. More often than not, you’ll find a worrying amount of sugar and even more sodium. Sodium ups the calorie count of the source, and also leads to bloating. It’s time to put the bottle back on the shelf!
Vegan Cheese
Are vegan and vegetarian diets better for the body than carnivorous diets? In some cases, yes, but not in every case, and not with every type of vegan or vegetarian food. To illustrate our point, let’s talk about vegan cheese. In fact, let’s talk about every kind of non-dairy cheese on the market. For a start, you’ll usually find that the calorie count of cheese doesn’t vary from one type to another, no matter what the ingredients. You will, however, find a lot more undesirable content in vegan cheese. Things like starch and xanthan gum come with extra calories, and so you’re getting all the same negative input without the protein boost that comes with eating real cheese. Continue eating vegan cheese if it suits your ethics, but don’t kid yourself that it’s doing any more for you than the real thing.
Keto Products
Our fifth surprising food selection is one that’s been very popular with celebrities when it comes to the diet fads of the past few years. You might have seen and heard a lot about the ‘keto diet.’ You might even have tried it yourself, and then given it up when you realized you weren’t losing any weight on it. Allow us to reveal why you weren’t losing weight. The average keto product comes loaded – and we do mean loaded – with saturated fat. There’s no way to avoid the saturated fat – without it, you don’t have a keto product at all. Keto food can be marketed as low in sugar – and it is – but the saturated fat content outweighs any benefits you might be getting from cutting back on sugar. They’re almost totally fiber-free as well. Consider a wholemeal vegetarian option instead. You’ll look and feel better for it.
How many of these products have you tried in the past? How many do you have in your cupboards right now? If you’re pushing hard to drop weight, it’s time to throw them all out, go back to the drawing board, and come up with a new plan!
