Are low fat foods making you fat?

UK Health Radio guest presenter and blogger, fitness and diet guru Rebecca Lane (pictured), shares her personal thoughts on a key topic for debate amongst dieters:

I wonder how many of you buy low-fat products in the hope to lose weight.

There are so many companies out there claiming that their products help people to lose weight. According to research Americans eat the most low fat and fat free foods, but somehow they have the highest rate of obesity in the world!

People of all generations before us were not struggling as much as we are today with weight. What was it that was different? Well, they certainly didn’t have low fat or fat free foods, so if they didn’t have those foods to “help” them, what was it? Simply, they didn’t have low fat or fat free foods! That’s why they were not struggling with their weight!

Low fat and fat free foods do not help you to lose weight!

First off, foods with fat tend to taste better than their low fat or fat free. When companies reduce or take out the fat, the taste goes with it. In return large amounts of sugar is added resulting in a huge insulin spike. Low fat and fat free foods contain so many extra fillers that it’s scary! Included are huge amounts of salt and sugar along with bulking agents, flavor enhancers and artificial flavoring. However, it does the trick to making low fat and fat free foods tastier.

Secondly, now that companies have been successful in making low fat and fat free foods tasty, people tend to think that since they taste good and are low fat, then it’s okay to eat even more of these foods than regular full fat foods. This is actually very bad! It’s bad because if you eat more, you end up eating more of the chemicals they pump into these foods! And those chemicals are bad for your body.

Statistically speaking, when you eat low fat or fat free foods, typically everyone will end up eating 28% more calories than regular full fat foods! Can you believe that? So by eating more of these low fat or fat free foods that are artificially tasty, you’re actually eating more calories than you should be, than you would be if you were eating full fat foods!

Now, that doesn’t mean that if you just eat less of the low fat or fat free foods, then these will be healthy for you because they really aren’t.. That also doesn’t mean that you’re free to eat fatty, greasy foods either because fried foods are never good for you. What you should be eating are foods that are high in good fats. These include olive oil, avocadoes, nuts, seeds and oily fish, like salmon and tuna.

Successful weight loss begins with making good health choices and sometimes it may mean making a healthy lifestyle change. But the key is to keep all of your health decisions in your hands. So keep learning about foods and make sure to keep your health is your focus and you’ll quickly be able to lose weight successfully!

Follow Becky at @beckyfitness

Detox versus calorie counting

UK Health Radio guest presenter and blogger, Rebecca Lane (pictured), a health and fitness expert, shares her personal thoughts on the detox versus calorie counting debate.

Most people associate losing weight with counting calories. This is not the best and ideal way to achieve your weight loss goals and here is why:

When a person counts calories their aim is to create a calorie deficit. For example; consume 1,200 calories but use 2,000 calories will create an 800 calorie deficit. Then at the end of the week will result in a few pounds lost. This is great for a short while but your body will start to conserve that energy and become wise. It will notice that not much food is entering the body and will switch on the fat storing hormone and you will plateau.

I used to work in an office of women and we were rubbish at keeping to diets, we constantly spoke about food and we binged uncontrollably. One of my colleagues used to have a can of diet coke to keep her hunger at bay. Before I started in the fitness industry I never really thought about why she did this. The reason for this was because it was curing her sweet fix for a short period of time but what she didn’t realise and probably still doesn’t today is that these drinks are crammed full of toxins which slows down metabolisation and in fact make you hungrier.

Diet drinks are full of aspartame, which is a lethal synthetic chemical combination found in thousands of foods and drinks and is dangerous! Stay away from the diet cokes.

So, what is the difference between traditional and fad diets…

Fat is stored to protect our bodies from impurities. When someone goes on a fad diet (calorie counting, points, shakes) the body becomes smaller but because the body hasn’t been detoxed there is an increased amount of impurities within the body. Skin will be bad, lethargy will be present. The body knows there is an increased amount of toxins so will go into emergency fat production – known as rebound where the fat goes back on.

When we nutritionally cleanse (aka detox) – the impurities are released and the body will shed fat at the same time. You will feel grotty when you start on a nutritional cleanse, my detoxers will tell you this! But after a few days – one week they feel fantastic and will have an increase in energy. This is because there are less impurities and therefore better overall health, less fat and more lean muscle.

Follow Becky at @beckyfitness