Can a healthy diet help you lose weight

The answer is yes, but this "can" has a prerequisite. It is by no means that you can lose weight just by eating food with a "healthy" label. The disagreements that are quarreling on the Internet are essentially stepping on the trap of "equating health and low calories."

My best friend gave up the takeout habit of Dunton milk tea and fried chicken last year, and followed a nutrition blogger to eat a Mediterranean diet. She replaced half of her daily staple food with whole grains, mixed vegetables with olive oil, and ate deep-sea fish twice a week. But Xiao Zhou in the same department started eating healthy meals at about the same time. Every day at noon, he ordered a light snack box labeled "low calorie" and always added two spoons of nuts as a "high-quality fat supplement." When he got home at night, he also ate two sucrose-free oatmeal energy bars as a snack. In three months, he gained 3 pounds in weight. Everyone said that healthy eating and weight loss are all IQ taxes.

If you ask them carefully about the details of their diet, you will know that the difference is not at all whether healthy eating is useful or not, but whether they have understood the core logic. Many people think that avocados, nuts, brown rice, and sugar-free baked goods are healthy, and they assume that they will not gain weight no matter how much they eat. However, in fact, the caloric density of these healthy foods is not low at all. Two spoonfuls of nuts have 200 calories, which is as much as a bowl of white rice. If you just add a meal at will, the total calories for the day will have already exceeded your consumption. How can there be room for you to lose weight?

I also encountered this pitfall when I adjusted my diet last year. At first, I ate brown rice with boiled chicken breasts every meal. I thought it was healthier than eating spicy hot pot before. I ate until I was full at every meal. As a result, I didn’t lose one tael for half a month. After reading the recipe given by the nutritionist, I realized that I ate two large bowls of brown rice in one meal. The amount of rice was one-third more than the white rice I originally ate, and the calories had long exceeded the standard. Later, I gradually reduced each staple food by one-third, and replaced the iced milk tea in the afternoon with sugar-free yogurt and half a handful of blueberries. I was not hungry. I lost 7 pounds in more than a month, and even the sleepiness I used to have in the afternoon was much less.

I read a related study published in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" before. It also showed that a healthy eating pattern consisting of whole grains, high-quality protein, and fresh fruits and vegetables resulted in a calorie deficit of 300 calories per day. Compared with those who relied on highly processed low-calorie snacks and went on a diet to starve themselves, they lost weight. The fat efficiency is about 30% higher, and the probability of subsequent rebound is much lower. The reason is also very simple. A healthy diet will make you feel fuller and more nutritious. It will not make you so hungry that you feel hungry and want to eat too much. It is also less likely to cause side effects of weight loss such as hair loss and a sallow complexion.

Of course, there are special situations. For example, people who are insulin resistant and usually eat a high-sugar, high-oil diet with severe inflammation may lose two or three pounds in the early stage when they first switch to a low-GI healthy diet, even if they do not deliberately control the total calories. In fact, most of the loss is excess water and edema. Because of this situation, many people think that healthy eating is the master key to weight loss. On the other hand, people who do not enjoy this "beginner's benefit" feel that it is useless. In fact, it is just a misunderstanding caused by individual differences.

To put it bluntly, healthy eating is a "buff" for weight loss, not a magic cheat. If you really want to lose weight, you still have to rely on a calorie gap. But choosing healthy food to make up for this gap is much more comfortable than eating cucumbers for three days until you starve to death. It is also less likely to rebound. In this way, it is still very cost-effective.