How not to get fat on low-calorie foods

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Low energy foods can both help and interfere with proper nutrition. To benefit from a low-calorie meal, there are a few simple guidelines to follow.

At first glance, low-calorie foods promise solid advantages: you can eat what you like, eat as much as you want and not think about calories. But sometimes this approach plays a cruel joke with us: we become so careless that we eat twice as much as the body needs. It turns out like in an old joke about pizza, which is asked to cut into four pieces, because eight pieces is too much.

Balancing calories and satiety

Surely you have come across low-calorie versions of popular foods more than once. Of course, they have fewer calories, but they can also feel much less satiated - chances are that you simply won't be full. But with a 200-gram chicken breast, this is unlikely to happen: the feeling of satiety will come before you finish it.

Treat calories like a budget, that is, set yourself the goal of being as full as possible with the lowest possible daily calorie intake.

Low-calorie options are only good if you don't feel hungry all the time. Olive oil, for example, is one of the most high-calorie foods, but it makes you feel so full that you won't want to snack on and gain calories from other foods. As a result, you will eat less.

Psychological satiety and physical satiety

Feeling full is not only a physical but also a psychological state. It's hard to feel full and satisfied when you deny yourself your favorite foods.

Even when you are full, you may feel unbearably craving to eat something, such as a sweet one. In this case, fruit jelly without sugar will save you, which will satisfy the need for sweets and have almost no effect on the daily calorie intake.

Sometimes, low-calorie versions of foods come in handy. For example, if you miss cakes, find them in the dietary version (there are such, believe me), eat and calm down. Of course, they won't be very low in calories or healthy. But it's better this way than suffering for a long time, and then breaking loose and swallowing the whole cake.

However, this does not always work and not for everyone. For example, for someone the same low-calorie cake can only whet their appetite and make them want to pamper themselves with something tasty. As a result, one cake can entail a chocolate bar, a pie and a handful of candies - it will turn out worse than if you immediately ate the coveted butter cream cake.

It is important to know yourself well and understand in which situations low-calorie foods will solve the problem, and in which they will create it.

How to choose between low-calorie and regular foods

Consider the following when deciding what to spend your daily calorie intake on.

• The nutritional value of a product is more important than its calorie content. It is believed that increasing the proportion of protein and reducing the amount of carbohydrates in the diet leads to greater satiety. But this does not mean that you need to eat one protein and completely give up carbohydrates. This means that you need to find the optimal proportion for yourself.
• Low-calorie versions of foods are created by marketers, not nutritionists. Their main goal is to get you to buy a product, not to tidy up your weight. Read the information on the packaging carefully and do not believe the advertisements.
• Do not hang labels: no product is absolutely harmful or absolutely healthy. Think like an investor: think what the use of this or that product will give you. In some situations, the choice in favor of a low-calorie analog is justified, but a lot depends on the person, his environment, activity, willpower, the situation itself and many other factors.

The last point is especially important. Many, after reading this article, will exclaim: “How does it feel to eat a cake? Eating cakes is bad! This attitude will ruin any diet. Be a little more flexible in your food choices. By the way, the so-called flexible diet is based on this principle.

Lyle MacDonald, sports physiologist, nutritionist and early proponent of a flexible diet, argues that there are two reasons why conventional diets are not working:

• categoricalness and expectation of an ideal result;
• focusing only on the short term.

A flexible diet is based on opposite principles: not being categorical and focusing on both the short and long term.

Follow these tips, listen to yourself, and you can often make the right choice between your favorite high-calorie foods and their low-calorie counterparts.