Losing weight can have its challenges. It requires discipline and commitment. Your diet is a key component in weight loss, where the types of foods you consume are essential in getting the kilos off and can either impede or enhance weight loss. Saturated fats, high sodium, refined sugars and processed carbohydrates are major barriers to losing weight. Avoiding a diet that is high in saturated fats, sodium, white flour and sugar is a successful way to both shed kilos and maintain a healthy weight for life.
1. Fast food
Burgers, fries, shakes, chicken fingers, and everything else served at most fast food chains is filled with nothing but things that are bad for your health. The most glaring culprit for this is trans fat, which unlike any other type of fat, has absolutely no nutritional value of any kind – it is strictly bad for you.
2. Candy bars
Not going anywhere for awhile? Well, neither will that extra five pounds if you keep downing Snickers bars in the waiting room. The typical candy bar contains about one half of the recommended daily consumption of saturated fat without adding a scrap of nutrition beyond the occasional dabbling of calcium from milk chocolate.
3. Hot dogs
Beyond the question of what exactly they are made from, hot dogs are also in direct conflict with weight loss. Just one plain hot dog can contain as much as one-third of your daily suggested intake of saturated fat along with 500 milligrams of sodium. The vast majority of a hot dog’s calories are from fat, so it is best to avoid the Hot dogs at all costs.
4. Potato chips
Just an ounce of plain potato chips contains ten grams of fat, roughly one-sixth of the recommended daily intake. Of the 153 calories in each serving, an eye-popping 92 are from fat. And chips tend to be the kind of snack that you sit down to eat without measuring out a serving. It’s better to just cut them out completely rather than trying to ration a few of them into a weight loss diet.
5. Bacon
While bacon strips are small and do not contain a lot of anything, they are quite high in fat for their size. About three-quarters of the calories in bacon are from fat and each strip contains over 100 milligrams of sodium. It gets even worse if it’s fried, nearing 200 milligrams of sodium.
6. Soda
When do you drink soda? You drink it when you’re thirsty. So why drink something that has absolutely no redeeming health qualities and makes you even thirstier? Drop cola from your daily diet and replace it with water. You might not think it tastes as good, but you’ll be saving yourself a lot of calories and sugars without even cutting a single snack from your diet.
7. Ice cream
It’s the tasty treat that you scream for as a child and still savor as an adult, but it’s always unhealthy no matter your age. Ice cream has high contents of everything that hinders weight loss – saturated fat, cholesterol, sugar, and calories. The exception is if you can find a light ice cream that is low in fat and preferably sugar-free; if you can muster up the self-discipline to limit yourself to the serving size, you can have it on occasion.
8. Pizza
Just one slice of pepperoni pizza from a delivery place contains about 300 calories, five grams of saturated fat, and 750 milligrams of sodium. So, if you were to have just a quarter of a medium pizza, you would have fulfilled 50 percent of your daily value of saturated fat and 60 percent of your daily value of sodium. High levels of sodium can be a problem for dieters as it causes an increased retention of water-weight.
9. Sausage
Perhaps the worst meat you can eat, just one link of sausage can contain over 20 grams of fat, ten grams of saturated fat, and a dreadful 1,000 milligrams of sodium. Breakfast sausage is less of an offender, but it is still an awful way to start the day.
10. Fried snacks
Out of nowhere, kitchens across the globe are greasing up some very unusual sounding fried foods. Cereal, candy bars, soda, and cookies, among a host of other bewildering concoctions are getting an added dose of ridiculously unhealthy ingredients in a deep-fryer. If you find these foods so intriguing that you must eat them, you may want to pencil in a gastric bypass for the weekend.
These are just ten of the foods that can derail your weight loss aspirations. Keep in mind that even if you avoid all of the foods on the list, you should still exercise moderation in your diet. Avoid big meals and always be mindful of what you are eating and how it was prepared. If you eat right and avoid overeating, better health can become a reality.
