Losing weight is not always as easy as it seems. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), while approx 17 percent of American adults lose weight Every day, 42.4 percent of American adults are still alive classified as overweight. But the reasons why you do not succeed in a diet are not always as obvious as hanging on to too many cheat meals or skipping the gym. Read on to find out why experts say your diet may fail you. And if you’re ready to lose weight once and for all, check out these 15 underrated weight loss tips that actually work.
Even if your diet looks nutritionally balanced, if you are still consuming too many calories of healthy food, you may still see your weight loss plateau – or maybe the numbers on the scale are rising.
“Whether you eat 100 calories of vegetables or 100 calories of sweets, in terms of weight, you still eat 100 calories,” he says. Christen Cupples Cooper, Ed.D., RD, founding director and chairman of nutrition and dietetics at Pace University.
But that does not mean that all foods are created equal when it comes to your health. “When it comes to nutrition, the vegetable with its vitamins, minerals and fiber outweighs the sweets, which are basically just sugar and chemicals,” says Cooper.
And for some foods that are not what they seem, check out these 20 “healthy” foods that ruin your weight loss goals.
If you eat the same low-calorie, high-carbohydrate foods over and over again in the hopes of shedding a few pounds, you can make yourself a bite.
“Eating too little protein to keep your body in good health can grind weight loss to a halt,” says Cooper. “Adding protein and shaking up your diet a bit – adding certain unknown foods that contain different types of nutrients – can sometimes help start weight loss.”
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If you try, but fail to lose weight on your diet, it may be the key to breaking that plateau to add high-fiber foods to your meal plan.
“When trying to lose weight, it is important to eat plenty of fruits, vegetables and cereals at all meals because they are not only nutritious, full of important vitamins and minerals but also because they help you feel full – and therefore less probably snacks on high-calorie sweets – between and after meals thanks to the fiber and water content “, says Sylvia Melendez-Klinger, RD, a scientific advisory board member of the Hispanic Food Communications and Grain Foods Foundation.
In fact, a study from 2019 was published in Journal of Nutrition found that dietary fiber intake was significantly associated with both weight loss and continued compliance with a low calorie diet among overweight and obese subjects for adults.
If you want to make your diet more nutritious and replenish for a while, check out these 20 easy ways to add fiber to your diet.
An imbalance in the intestinal bacteria can have serious consequences when it comes to your weight loss success.
“The microbiome plays a role in weight loss. If someone has many bad bacteria [in their gut]Digestion of protein and fat can be affected, says Jeanette Kimszal, RDN, NLC, of Thyroid nutritionist.
“Microbial imbalances can also affect hormones that increase hunger,” she adds, citing a 2020 study published in Preventive nutrition and food science, who found it bacterial changes that alter peptides in the gut can increase hunger. And if you want to change your microbiome for the better, check out the 20 best foods for gut health.
While reaching your weight loss goal, it can be a good feeling, if you stop paying attention to your food intake and your exercise habits as soon as you have lost weight, you will see those pounds return.
“Instead of thinking of your diet as a short-term fix, keep in mind that it changes your life permanently and for the better,” says Mir Ali, MD, a bariatric surgeon and medical director for MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA.
Ali explains that if you do not see a change in eating habits as a permanent one, it will inevitably make the pound crawl back.
“You get all that weight back and often more,” says Ali. “The only way to succeed is to stop that cycle.”
Are you ready to do this for the year you drop the extra pounds for good? Check out our 200 best weight loss tips.
