What Are The Seven Mistakes That Ruin Any Diet?

Eating Light And Diet Foods Without Attention

How many times have you looked at the packaging and thought, “okay, this is light”? Well, light and diet foods have entered the routine of many people, but they can interfere with weight loss and harm health. First, if the food comes with the description of light or diet, it means it is industrialized.

After all, nature doesn’t provide us with labels and packaging with nutritional information. Processed foods, in general, have many chemical elements in their composition—high sodium content, dyes, stabilizers, flavorings, and many others that we can’t even pronounce.

Pay attention to the nutritional information of the food and, especially, the same ingredients. It doesn’t pay to consume food just for the low-fat content if it is rich in chemicals that harm your health. 

In the list of ingredients, the one that appears first is the one that is in the most significant quantity — and so on. That is when you buy whole grain bread, and the first ingredient that appears is “wheat flour enriched with iron and folic acid” this means that the element in more significant quantities is regular white flour, not whole grain.

Practicing A High Glycemic Index And High Glycemic Load Diet

Before discussing how these diets can harm you, let’s understand the glycemic index and glycemic load concept. The glycemic index represents the speed with which the sugars present in food are transformed into glucose in the blood.

The glycemic load is given by the product of the glycemic index and the number of carbohydrates present in the food. Consuming effects of high index and glycemic load causes the pancreas to release insulin to regulate blood glucose levels.

This insulin spike produces a feeling of hunger and cravings for sweets as glucose suddenly leaves the circulation. In addition, excess insulin is also related to diabetes and resistance to this same hormone.

Consuming Too Much Sugar Without Realizing It

We know that sugar is among the main villains of a healthy diet; therefore, we start to avoid foods rich in this component. However, the big food industry is no fool and uses different names to identify it.

This hides it in many industrialized foods, even those “salty foods.” To help you find sugar, here’s a list of some of the names it can have: refined sugar, corn glucose, malt syrup, molasses, molasses, corn syrup, maltodextrin, maltose, and others.

Don’t Eat Real Food

Losing weight by eating only processed foods is not healthy. To eliminate excess fat, bet on real food- foods provided by nature. Nature is wise and has given us all the macro and micronutrients necessary for our health.

Vegetables, roots, fruits, fish, eggs, meat, and oilseeds, in addition to being delicious, have nutritional value and add quality to diets when consumed in a balanced way. Please pay attention: these foods have no ingredients; they are the ingredients and were the basis of human nutrition for centuries before industrialization.

And if you think eating naturally is too dull, we’re sorry, but you’re wrong. In addition to a wide variety of natural foods, there are thousands of ways to prepare them.

Speaking of prep, if you like to cook, now is the time — cooking at home is one way to ensure quality food. You will know which oil was used, if the seasoning were natural, you will learn all the ingredients, and you will have the opportunity to try new flavors and textures in the kitchen.

Make Exceptions A Routine

Eating well 100% of the time is not a rule, and you are not prohibited from eating your favorite candy or that typical dish in your state. On the contrary, a healthy body needs a healthy mind – eating what we love brings us joy and a sense of well-being, helping our emotions.

The idea is to adapt the palate to like healthy foods and try to eat the best way most of the time, leaving sweets and other unhealthy foods for special occasions and days when the desire is powerful.

The problem is that these exceptions happen all the time, every weekend, at every gathering of friends, etc. You may not even gain weight, but you will delay your results and run the risk of going back to eating poorly on a routine basis.

Abusing the Use Of Fruits

Everyone knows fruits are healthy and can be great allies in our diet. However, be careful! Do not think that, because they are natural, they can be consumed at will.

As said before, nothing in excess is good. Fruits are rich in fructose, a type of sugar, and can increase body fat if consumed in excess. Another tip is to avoid fruit juice.

When we drink a glass of orange juice, for example, we consume all the sugar in the orange (most often from more than one orange) and throw away the fiber in the fruit. That is, we are drinking pure sugar, which will cause a more excellent production of insulin — as we have already explained here.

Trust Only The Scale

You already know the difference between losing weight and weight, but maybe you don’t know that the numbers on the scale alone don’t tell us much about weight loss. It is necessary to understand that each body component has a different density.

In our case, we need to know that muscle tissue is denser than fat — in other words, for the same volume, the muscle would represent a greater weight on the scale. In some cases, you can lose fat and gain lean mass, keeping the same number on the scale.

Also Read: Intermittent Fasting: What Is It, Benefits And Care