Why eating enough nutrition can help you lose weight successfully

Have you ever felt that dieting can help you lose weight quickly, but once you return to a normal diet, you quickly gain the weight back? Why is this? Today we are going to talk about the importance of adequate nutrition to weight loss.

It is difficult to lose weight simply by counting calories

When losing weight, most people focus on controlling calories but ignore the most important nutrient intake.

In the initial stage of weight loss, simply controlling calories will indeed have a fat-reducing effect. However, healthy and effective fat loss focuses more on long-term effects. It is difficult to really lose weight by simply controlling calories, and it is easy to rebound, because you may lose protein and muscle, but what you really need to lose is fat. So although the weight has dropped, you have not actually lost weight at all.

A balanced diet allows the body to take in enough nutrients, which will make the body more energetic, less prone to fatigue, and consume more energy. Through this virtuous cycle, the body will naturally lose weight slowly, become healthier, and not easily rebound.

What is a high nutrient density diet?

Nutrient density (ND) refers to the concentration of important nutrients (vitamins, minerals and proteins) in food per unit of calories. It is generally used to evaluate a certain nutrient in food alone. It can be expressed by the formula: ND = % of a certain nutrient RDA met by a portion of food / % of energy RDA met by the portion of food. For example, for the same 100 kcal, the portion of fruit is larger, and it also contains a lot of water, vitamins and some dietary fiber, while chocolate contains a lot of sugar and trans fat. Therefore, the nutrient density of fruit is higher.

There is a pair of twin brothers, their height, weight, basal metabolism, exercise consumption are the same, they use the weight loss calorie of 1400 kcal to lose weight. After one month, the elder brother lost 6 catties, while the younger brother only lost 2 catties. The calories of their diets are the same, why is there such a big difference in weight loss effect? ​​It turns out that when losing weight, the elder brother ate grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and lean meat and eggs, which are the protein sources needed by muscle tissue; while the younger brother chose noodles, cakes, white rice, ham, and biscuits. Therefore, there is such a big difference in weight loss effect.

High-quality low-carb, low-fat diet reduces risk of death

A paper on the correlation between low-fat and low-carb meals and their impact on mortality in Americans concluded that if one only looks at the ratio of carbohydrates, fat, and protein, low-carb and low-fat meals are not associated with the risk of death; but if one considers the quality of the food source (nutrient density), both low-carb and low-fat meals are associated with the risk of death.

The final conclusion is clear: only the quality of diet is related to the risk of death. It is meaningless to talk about low-carb or low-fat without considering the nutrient density of food. Therefore, improving the quality of diet is the key!

List different foods for everyone

High-quality carbohydrates: non-starchy vegetables (various beans, carrots, lotus roots, etc.), whole grains (whole wheat, oats, quinoa, brown rice), and fruits; low-quality carbohydrates: refined grains (bread, white rice, steamed bread), free sugars (including fruit juice, honey, various natural syrups), potatoes, pure starch, processed vermicelli (vermicelli, rice noodles, sweet potato flour, etc.).

High-quality fats include plant fats and unsaturated fats; low-quality fats include saturated fats and trans fats.