While reaching your ideal body weight enhances your health, how you lose the weight is also important. It is a common myth that simply lowering your daily calorie intake is the best way to lose weight. Here are 3 reasons why just focusing on calories is not the best idea for long-term health.
-
Inflammation
The level of inflammation in the body is directly related to the risk of many diseases. While losing weight does decrease inflammation, it can be decreased even more when we eat the right foods.
It can be a common mistake to eat unhealthy foods, but just decrease the portion sizes to reduce calories. While this may lead to an initial weight loss, those unhealthy foods are still causing inflammation in the body, making it difficult to keep the weight off.
Make sure your weight loss plan includes anti-inflammatory foods like berries, leafy greens, and fatty fish. These will help you lose weight and help all of your body systems function more efficiently.
-
Chronic Disease
Why just lose weight when you can also reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes? Seems like a no-brainer, but many diets just focus on calories and ignore your overall health. Eating an abundance of plant foods and high-quality animal products has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Eating processed, low-calorie foods does the opposite, putting a burden on your body making it difficult to combat disease.
Avoid foods that promote low calories, low fat, and low sugar. These products are highly processed. Removing calories, fat, and sugar from a food means they are replacing them with artificial sweeteners and harmful preservatives. Focus on eating whole single ingredient foods like sweet potatoes and organic meats.
-
Digestion
Having a healthy gut can make the weight loss journey a lot smoother. Studies have shown that there is a difference in the types of bacteria in the guts of lean people and in people who are carrying extra weight. Certain types of food feed the good gut bacteria, creating a healthy microbiome. Fruits, vegetables, and legumes have high amounts of these gut-friendly prebiotics.
Eating a diet that only restricts calories will not provide your gut with the nutrients it needs. This can lead to slow digestion, constipation, gas, and bloating. Who wants to deal with all that? Skip the low-calorie diet and opt for a diet high in plant foods and watch your digestion quickly improve.
Want more info about the foods that will help you lose weight specific to your metabolic type? Click below to take the free quiz today.