Eating nutrient dense foods can make a huge difference to your health and also make the difference between success and failure when attempting to lose weight.
How Foods That Lack Nutrients Make Weight Loss Difficult
One of the most common and successful ways to lose weight is to eat
less food. One of the reasons some people find this hard is that often
the food they're consuming has such low nutrient density that when they
start eating less they develop nutrient deficiencies.
Strangely enough if you eat crazy amounts of junk food you'll probably
get a decent amount of nutrients along with the crazy dose of calories
which makes you over weight. However when you reduce the amount of
food in an attempt to lose weight you'll find your self not getting
enough nutrients. This can have many effects including low energy,
increased risk of illness/disease and constantly feeling hungry. Obviously everyone is quite keen to avoid these effects so you'll have much more success with your weight loss program if you eat the right foods.
Foods With Low Nutrient Density
These are the foods you should look to avoid. Generally highly processed foods are the most likely to be low in nutrients.
- Soda Drinks
- Cake
- Pastry
- Bread (especially highly processed white bread)
- Anything with lots of sugar added.
Foods With High Nutrient Density
These foods all contain a lot of nutrients per calorie. They make great choices for any diet. You might want to have some more carbohydrate sources in your diet, many carb sources have a lot of calories and not that many nutrients
- Fruit
- Vegetables
- Nuts
- Legumes
- Lean Meat
If you only eat these foods you may find yourself lacking carbohydrates, there is a lot of debate about how much carbohydrates people should eat but we won't go into that here. What you should know is that there are several options for carbs with higher nutrient density. Try the following:
- Brown rice instead of white rice
- Sweet potato instead of regular potatoes
- Wholegrain pasta instead of white pasta
- Wholemeal or multigrain bread instead of white bread.
So when you start trying to reduce your calorie consumption, it's very important that you replace low nutrient density foods with more nutricious ones. Any example would be replacing a snack of coke and chocolate biscuits with a piece of fruit and some water. You'll be reducing your calorie intake and at the same time getting more vitamins. This should help you to feel better and the same time as losing weight.
