You snooze you lose?
While calories are important, you don't need to monitor everything that enters your body and track them. For example, eating more protein has been shown to lead to significant weight loss, without restricting calories.
Cereal should be treated more like a dessert than a breakfast meal. Cutting it out may be one of the healthiest things you can do for your body.
Certain vegetable oils, like sunflower, soybean, and corn oil, contain large amounts of omega-6 fatty acids. A high intake of these increases low-grade inflammation in your body. They also contribute to oxidative stress, which can potentially lead to heart disease.
The production of trans fats involves high pressure, heat, and hydrogen gas in the presence of a metal catalyst. They're unhealthy and linked to a drastic increase in heart disease risk.
The number isn't a reflection of your health. Your weight can fluctuate wildly, even in the course of a single day, and only gives you a small part of the picture.
Just because something is organic or gluten-free, doesn’t mean that it’s healthy. For example, you can make junk foods from organic ingredients just as well as non-organic ones.
There are many healthy spices, for example turmeric has been shown to reduce inflammation and prevent diabetes.
When the obesity epidemic started around 1980, some scientists started blaming foods like red meat, eggs, and butter. But these foods had been a part of the human diet for centuries. Therefore, it's more sensible to suspect new foods, such as processed foods, trans fat, added sugar, refined grains, and vegetable oils.
Many people believe that fruit juices are healthy, as they come from fruit. And while fresh fruit juice may provide some of the antioxidants found in fruit, it actually contains just as much sugar as soft drinks. This is because juice offers no chewing resistance and fibers.
When people talk about bad and good cholesterol, they’re really referring to the proteins that carry cholesterol around in your blood. Bottom line is, cholesterol isn't the enemy on its own.
Eggs are one of the healthiest and most nutritious foods you can eat. Often getting a bad rep for the yolk's high cholesterol, eggs have no proven effect on heart disease in otherwise healthy individuals.
Known as your gut flora, the bacteria in your intestine affect everything from body weight to brain function. Therefore, it's important to include plenty of fiber in your diet to feed the beneficial bacteria in your intestine.
Health goes way beyond weight gain or loss. Many obese people are metabolically healthy, while many normal-weight people have the same metabolic problems associated with obesity.
Measuring your body weight is a notoriously inaccurate way to measure fat loss. Once you start losing fat mass from exercise and dietary changes, your body compensates by increasing muscle mass. For this reason, you need to measure your body fat percentage.
Many people struggle to understand what foods are actually healthy for them. One strategy is to think: if the food was made in a factory, try to avoid it.
Your body is well-equipped to digest and absorb all the important nutrients found in meat. The protein gets broken down in your stomach by stomach acids. Then, digestive enzymes break down the rest in your small intestine.
As with almost everything in nutrition science, the issue depends on the context. Both fat and carbs can be fattening, but it all depends on the rest of your diet and your lifestyle.
Through clever manipulation of the chemistry, taste, and texture of foods, food scientists have been able to make food so rewarding that your brain gets flooded with dopamine. For this reason, some people can completely lose control over junk food.
Several studies suggest that it neither works for weight loss nor disease prevention. Foods that are naturally low-fat, like fruits and vegetables, are great. But processed foods that are labeled low-fat are usually loaded with unhealthy ingredients.
A crash diet highly restricts intake and is designed to get dramatic results quickly. However, people often return right back to their old eating habits as soon as the program ends.
Food companies make some pretty incredible claims on their packages. You can find many unhealthy junk foods with these health claims, such as "whole-grain" or "low-fat." These labels are used to trick people into thinking that they’re making the right choice, so don't buy into it.
People with type two diabetes are resistant to insulin, and any carbs they eat will cause a big rise in blood sugar levels. If anyone benefits from a low-carb diet, it is people with diabetes.
Mainstream media is one of the reasons behind many circulating nutrition myths and confusions. These stories often get a lot of attention, but when looking closely you'll see that they're often taken out of context from higher-quality studies.
There is no one food that will solve all your problems or instantly achieve all your goals. A healthy diet has a variety of foods from the different food groups.
Excess added sugar in sugary drinks can be detrimental to our health. The problem with liquid sugar is that the brain doesn’t compensate for the calories by eating less of other foods. This means your brain doesn’t register these calories, making you eat more.
Each person is different regarding where they store fat, how easily they build muscles, and so much more. With so many differences at the biochemical level, it's no wonder that the same type of diets don't work for everyone.
Sources: (Healthline 1 and 2)
Skinny fat refers to a condition where people can have all the metabolic problems that overweight people have, while still having a normal BMI or weight. This is why you can't assume someone is healthy just based on their weight.
There are many different weight loss supplements on the market, and they almost never work. In the end, the best way to lose weight, and keep it off, is to adopt a healthy lifestyle change.
Some people believe that having smaller, more frequent meals may help them lose weight. However, some studies suggest that meal size and frequency have no effect on body weight. Therefore, it's better to simply eat when you’re hungry.
No matter how much you exercise, you simply can't out-exercise a bad diet. Exercise is still very important, but you have to include a good diet if you want to see any changes and remain healthy.
Due to social media and a large amount of self-proclaimed health "experts," there is a plethora of information regarding nutrition available to us nowadays. Unfortunately, it’s often confusing, contradictory, or even just plain wrong.
It can be frustrating and discouraging to filter through all of this information, resulting in some people just giving up. Sadly, a lot of reliable facts about nutrition have been forgotten due to the large influx of inaccurate facts. So, to help you figure out what’s actually true, here are 30 nutrition facts that should be common sense, but aren’t.
Nutrition facts that should be common sense, but aren’t
Understanding these basic facts will help you make better decisions about your health
HEALTH Nutrition
Due to social media and a large amount of self-proclaimed health "experts," there is a plethora of information regarding nutrition available to us nowadays. Unfortunately, it’s often confusing, contradictory, or even just plain wrong.
It can be frustrating and discouraging to filter through all of this information, resulting in some people just giving up. Sadly, a lot of reliable facts about nutrition have been forgotten due to the large influx of inaccurate facts. So, to help you figure out what’s actually true, here are 30 nutrition facts that should be common sense, but aren’t.