Ladies who are on the road to losing weight, how are you?

"In February, the grass is long and the warblers are flying. The willows on the bank are swaying and the spring smoke is intoxicating." In this vibrant season, I believe that many young ladies have begun to linger in front of their favorite wardrobes. Of course, there must be many young ladies who are working hard to lose weight in order to wear these bright and beautiful clothes. Speaking of this, you don’t think I’m here to talk about weight loss today, right? Hahaha, of course not!

The topic I want to talk about today is: a point repeatedly emphasized by the nutrition community - balanced diet. This is a point that many people who want to lose weight easily overlook, and it is also the factor that makes it difficult for many people to continue losing weight, simply considering calories and ignoring balance. However, human eating habits and nutritional needs have evolved for so long, how can they be forced to change in a short period of time? Therefore, a large number of people are corrected by the body's powerful balance ability, and the result is that they give up before they can persist for long, not only wasting all their previous efforts, but also retaliating with food supplements, which will aggravate obesity.

Obesity has become a characteristic of the times. Due to the rapid development of modern industrial and agricultural technology, our nutrition today is far better than before, but our genes have not yet evolved rapidly, so a large amount of calories have been accumulated, resulting in a global obesity problem.

Fighting obesity has become one of the important issues of this era. Almost everyone is trying to lose weight. Even "The Richest Man in Xihong City" uses a song "Burn My Calories" to guide weight loss, as if the era of national weight loss has arrived.

Image source: "Burn My Calories" MV

However, losing weight is not easy. "Those who can't lose weight are always in turmoil, and those who can't gain weight are fearless" can be said to be a problem faced by many people. In fact, losing weight is not a simple thing. It is not just a matter of controlling diet, but also requires attention to balance. This is a big misunderstanding in the fight against obesity.

1. Low calories does not mean balanced

If the calorie intake is lower than the calorie expenditure, then you can lose weight. This principle is the core of almost all weight loss theories. However, as time goes by, various "folk versions" of weight loss methods have begun to appear, which can be called a hundred schools of thought contending and a hundred flowers blooming, and various "wild" weight loss methods have emerged in an endless stream. Anyway, the core principle is to reduce calorie intake as much as possible. Of course, there are also those who advocate exercise, but if you can move, it is estimated that losing weight will not be a problem.

However, many weight loss theories have gone to extremes. They all pursue low calories. So they open various calorie tables and start calculating those with less energy. Finally, they find a solution that seems to be low in calories, using a variety of combinations to reduce calories.

It seems to be effective, but I seldom hear of it being promoted on a large scale. Many people think that it is due to willpower. In my opinion, it is not only that, but may involve a deeper problem, which is the neglect of balance. The natural balance will be corrected.

Health is never just about calories, but a system based on balance. Whether it is sugar, fat, protein, or various trace elements and vitamins, they are all vital to the body.

For example, carbohydrates are not only energy substances, but also structural substances of the body, such as glycoproteins on the cell membrane that are responsible for cell recognition. In addition, immune activity is also inseparable from carbohydrates.

The same is true for fat. Fat is both an energy substance and a structural substance. For example, the membrane of our cells is a phospholipid bilayer. In addition, fat is involved in the body's metabolism and regulatory functions. Cell recognition, tissue immunity, etc. are inseparable from fat.

Similar proteins and vitamins do not have a single function, but are of vital importance in the normal physiological activities of the body.

Because of this, the body requires a very balanced intake of various nutrients. The lack of any one of them will cause metabolic disorders in the body, and if it is serious, it will lead to disease.

Countries have also introduced various dietary guidelines to guide people towards a balanced and healthy diet.

If this kind of nutritional imbalance always occurs, the power of evolution will urge the brain to release signals to require the body to make up for it. The end result is retaliatory overeating when dieting occasionally or when nutrition is unbalanced.

Therefore, it is okay to control intake, but remember not to use energy as the only criterion. Instead, you should reduce it overall while maintaining a balance.

2. Hidden hunger brings more serious consequences than obesity

During the weight loss process, a phenomenon that is easy to occur is high protein + fruits and vegetables & zero fat, but the effect does not seem to be very good. Even if the total energy can meet the basal metabolic needs, you still feel hungry, and unhealthy conditions are found during physical examinations.

The reason lies in "hidden hunger" caused by unbalanced nutrition. Hidden hunger refers to health problems caused by insufficient nutrient intake or unbalanced nutrition.

One of the major problems lies in fat. Many people who know a little about biology may tell you that it doesn’t matter if there is 0 fat. After all, the human body has an important biochemical metabolic pathway that can synthesize fat from sugars, so we don’t need to worry about the demand for fat.

But there is a problem here. The amount of fat synthesized from sugar is limited. Some fats cannot be synthesized by the human body, such as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). There are two main categories: one is the ω-3 series of polyunsaturated fatty acids based on α-linolenic acid; the other is the ω-6 series of unsaturated fatty acids based on linoleic acid. Since they cannot be synthesized and can only be obtained from food, they are called essential fatty acids [1].

Therefore, even if you think you are using sugars instead of fat and letting the human body synthesize it, in fact it is still lacking in essential fatty acids, thus forming a hidden fat hunger problem.

Therefore, the correct approach should be to balance the body's fat intake and avoid fat imbalance. As the main source of fat for humans, edible oil is naturally the top priority. After all, up to 50% of human fat comes from edible oil. However, edible oil is a very broad concept. There are many sources of edible oil, including rapeseed oil, soybean oil, corn oil, olive oil, etc. The ingredients of each edible oil are different. For example, the table below is an analysis of the fatty acid content of different edible oils [1]. The author compared the relative content of different fatty acids in 9 edible oils from different sources and found that the ingredients were quite different. Taking palmitic acid as an example, the highest content can be nearly 10 times that of the lowest content.

It can be seen from this that choosing different cooking oils is also a big deal. We can't always look up literature or eat them in rotation, right?

In fact, a good way is to choose blended oil. According to the needs of use, two or more refined oils are blended in proportion. This balances the different oils. Scientific proportions help to balance the intake of dietary fatty acids. Avoid excessive intake of a certain oil and insufficient intake of other oils. The advantages of various oils complement each other and achieve balance, which also avoids the trouble of changing oils.

This reminds me of the word balance in English. Its origin is very vivid. The ancient Latin word for balance is bilanx. The word is divided into two parts. The bi on the left means two, and the lanx on the right means plate, which is the two plates on both sides of the scale we see. Balance is called balance only when they are balanced with each other.

In short, nutritional balance is something we must pay attention to in our daily lives. Many people ignore nutritional balance while controlling calories, which will have a certain impact on the human body in the long run. What we need to do is to strive to achieve a balanced diet. Only in this way can we achieve individual health to the greatest extent.

References:

[1] Simopoulos, Artemis P. "The importance of the ratio of omega-6/omega-3 essential fatty acids." Biomedicine & pharmacotherapy 56.8 (2002): 365-379.

[2] Alatantuya, Zhang Li, Wu Zhiyan, Bai Guodong, Song Shuqin. Analysis of fatty acid composition of 9 edible oils[J]. Journal of Chifeng University (Natural Science Edition), 2019, 35(12): 5-7.