You can lose weight by eating—instead of starving—and all you have to do is make the right food choices. But what are the foods to eat to lose weight? Beyond Diet takes a simple approach that will work for anyone, regardless of age or size. Here are the basics.
Natural foods are grown, not made in a factory, processed and contaminated with artificial additives. They include fruits and vegetables, whole grains, seeds, raw nuts, eggs, dairy, and meat.
Organic foods are raised without chemical pesticides, weed killer, growth stimulators, etc. Most of these are water-proof so they don’t wash off the plant the first time it rains, and they are difficult to fully remove from the skins of fruits and vegetables when you want to eat them, so you end up consuming those toxins.
The food that an animal is fed determines what kind of flesh that animal will have, so if a cow is fed low-quality grains to fatten it up quickly instead of allowing it to graze on the grasses it would naturally eat, its meat isn’t going to be high quality. Commercially produced meat comes from animals that are held in filthy, crowded conditions which result in disease, so they are routinely fed antibiotics, which end up in the meat you eat.
Toxins from your food will build up in your own body and interfere with the functioning of your organs. The liver is one that is especially affected, and it is critical to healthy weight loss.
Refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup are the first things to cut out of your meal plan when you are trying to lose weight fast. Not only do these fill you up without giving you any of the nutrients that keep you healthy, they metabolize very quickly, causing your blood sugar level to spike. That, in turn, triggers the release of a large amount of insulin, which is a hormone that helps your cells use sugar in your blood for energy—but it also tells your body to store fat!
As if that isn’t bad enough, high fructose corn syrup and refined sugar cause you to crave sugary foods, and make you hungry, so then you eat more but still want more. The cycle just goes round and round, making it harder to lose weight as you become more addicted to sugar.
In order to satisfy their sweet tooth, many people turn to foods containing artificial sweeteners. The problem is that they are toxins in your body and when the liver tries to filter them out, it gets clogged up and can’t function properly. If your liver can’t do its job, you will not be able to lose weight, and in fact, you’ll gain weight.
Never drink diet sodas. In addition to the artificial sweeteners, they have a bunch of artificial flavors and colors and other chemical additives that are not good for you—and to make matters worse they are highly addictive, so the more you drink, the more you want.
When you are looking for the best foods to eat for weight loss, you can’t go wrong with protein. A high protein intake will boost your metabolism and help curb your appetite. Protein foods keep you satisfied longer, so you are less likely to go for junk-food snacks, and the great thing about the protein-caused metabolism increase is that it can increase the calories you burn all night long.
There are hormones that relate to how hungry or satisfied you feel, and eating protein reduces the one that makes you hungry and increases the satiety hormones. Make sure that you eat organic meat, dairy, and eggs from animals that are treated well and fed a healthy diet.
Fruits and vegetables are the primary sources of carbohydrates in a healthy diet. They also contain antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals that are vital to good health. The fiber in vegetables and fruits is important to your digestive process, but it also helps to make you feel full. Another benefit is that they have a high water content, which keeps you feeling full longer.
Beans and whole grains, like quinoa, are complex carbohydrates. In fact, quinoa is the perfect complex carbohydrate that will also kick-start your metabolism. They make you feel full, but because they digest slowly, they don’t spike your blood sugar, but instead help to keep it steady. This is important because you will feel better and since your blood sugar level will be steady, you won’t get a surge of insulin, which signals your body to store fat. Simple carbohydrates, like sugar and bread, break down quickly and cause blood sugar levels to spike, so it’s much better to eat carbs that are low on the glycemic index (GI).
The GI was devised as a tool to help plan meals for diabetics. It was created using actual blood sugar studies and ranks foods according to how quickly they raised blood sugar levels in the test subjects. By eating carbohydrates that rank low on the GI, you will be able to enjoy carbohydrates and lose weight at the same time.
For quite some time, there was a trend towards low fat diets. This turned into a particularly unhealthy trend because food manufacturers saw that there was a demand for low fat foods, so they started taking out the fat from their products—and replacing it with sugar!
In Beyond Diet, we encourage eating whole foods, fats and all. It isn’t just because fat is a natural part of the food, though. Essential fatty acids (EFAs) are good fats that are vital to healthy brain and nervous system functioning, hormone regulation, digestion, and cells, organs and your immune system being able to work as they should.
Your body can’t produce EFAs, they have to be consumed in your food. There are two types: Omega-3 and Omega-6; they should be in a ratio of 1:2 or 1:4, but highly processed foods from grains can be so out of whack that the ratio is 1:50. It’s important to get your fats from foods that have a lot of Omega-3 fats, such as leafy green vegetables, oily fish, organic eggs, naturally raised meat, and walnuts.
One other kind of fat you should eat to lose weight is coconut oil. Coconut is one of the rare plant oils that is a saturated fat. That was another subject of bad advice for many years, but now it is understood that coconut oil can actually help speed up your metabolism, and make you burn fat faster. Butter is also a super-healthy fat. Just stay clear of trans fats and hydrogenated oils, like margarine and shortening.
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You can eat large amounts of the right foods, so you never have to go hungry.
Once you learn what portion sizes are right for you, and how many portions to eat each day, eating the right amount will be easy. There’s never a need to know how many calories a particular food has, and you don’t have to eliminate healthy foods from your diet just because they are high in calories compared to other foods.
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Apples and avocados are two of our top recommendations for fruits. Remember to eat whole fruits, not juices because the juicing process removes all the fiber, and concentrates the sugar so a glass of juice may have as much sugar as several pieces of fruit.
People react differently to beans, so the answer to whether beans are a good food choice when you are trying to lose weight depends on your own response to eating them. Pay attention to how you feel after you eat beans. With beans, sometimes it depends on what you eat them with, so pay attention to that too. If you eat beans with protein and feel good, but feel sluggish when you eat them with rice, your body is telling you when they are good for you to eat and when they aren’t.
The best foods to support weight loss are whole, natural foods. High protein foods are especially important, and these should be organic grass-fed beef, organic free-range chickens (and eggs from the same).
The key to burning fat naturally is to have your body functioning optimally and to make sure that your food intake matches up with your energy needs. Regular exercise can be beneficial for burning calories, but is even more important for strengthening your muscles and getting your circulation going so that it can flush toxins out of your system and circulate needed nutrients efficiently. If you eat a bunch of junk food, not only do you consume too many calories, but the absence of nutrients means your body won’t be fueled by the food, and will end up just storing fat instead of being energized by the food you eat.
When you want to lose weight, it’s easy to remember what not to eat by thinking of it in categories. You don’t need to carry around a list of “bad foods,” you just need to remember a few basics. Number one is: don’t eat processed foods—especially those with chemical additives. Number two is: avoid refined sugar, and be moderate with natural sugar consumption. It’s that simple!
