Foods To Avoid To Lose Weight

If you’re on your own personal weight loss journey, you’ll know that there are certain foods to avoid to lose weight.

If you find yourself wondering, ‘what foods should I avoid to lose belly fat?’, then wonder no more. We’re here to help.

Here’s a handy list of all the foodstuffs to keep out of your trolley if you’re trying to lose weight.

1. Sweets

Consuming excessive amounts of sugar is consuming excessive amounts of calories.¹ This can result in an excessive amount of weight gain. Although sugar has a lot of calories, it doesn’t really make you feel full.²

Products with added sugars, such as most sweets, often digest quickly in the body, so they don’t satisfy our hunger for very long.² As a result, you could eat more often throughout the day and consume more calories overall. They are, in essence, empty calories.

Sugar is also thought to have an impact on the biological systems in the body that control appetite.³ The hormone leptin controls hunger by helping signal how much energy the body requires.³ Obesity and weight gain can be the result of leptin dysfunction.³ A high sugar diet may cause leptin resistance, according to research in 2011.⁴ And sweets are basically all sugar.

2. White bread

Does bread make you gain weight? Well, it all depends on whether it’s white or not.

White bread is believed to cause a blood sugar surge and encourage you to overeat since it is manufactured with fine flour.⁵ Furthermore, it has undergone extensive processing and refinement, stripping it of its fibre and bran. Plus, it tends to have a lot of added sugar.⁵

Although white bread may not have a lot of calories, it might cause cravings, which can lead to you eating more calories throughout the day.⁶

3. Cakes and biscuits

Sweet treats like biscuits and cakes tend to contain large amounts of added sugar, and the flour used to make them is generally refined.⁷ They’re also very high in calories and generally not very filling.⁷ Because they’re not very satisfying, it’s possible that you’ll likely become hungry pretty quickly after eating this kind of high-calorie, low-nutrient foodstuffs.⁷

4. Ice cream

The majority of ice cream varieties are extremely high in sugar and unusually high in calories.⁸ Homemade ice cream is a better option because store-bought ice cream contains a high amount of sugar.⁸ It’s important to remember to watch your quantities because it’s really easy to consume too much ice cream.

Ice cream has some protein and calcium, but if you eat too much of it, the calories may mount up rapidly.⁸

5. Sweet, sugary drinks

When drunk in excess, fizzy drinks can contribute to weight gain.⁹ According to one study, middle-aged adults who routinely consume sugar-sweetened carbonated beverages had an average of 30% more visceral fat.¹⁰

Sugary beverages include a lot of calories, yet your brain doesn’t perceive them as real food. You won’t feel satiated after consuming liquid sugar calories, and you’ll end up eating more food to make up for it.¹¹ So you end up consuming far more calories than you normally would.¹¹

6. Frozen ready meals

The calories, sugar and saturated fat content of frozen meals can be surprisingly high, all while the essential vitamins and minerals are low.¹² Food producers frequently add a lot of salt, a natural preservative, to frozen meals to extend the shelf life of their food.¹³ You can become bloated if you take on too much sodium because it causes you to retain water.¹⁴

These kinds of frozen dinners are specially designed to be calorific too,¹⁵ with manufacturers doing their utmost to pack a full meal’s worth of calories into what’s normally a fairly measly portion.

7. Fruit juices

When considering which food should be avoided for weight loss, few people are likely to instantly answer with a liquid. Especially not one derived from a fruit, a healthy option. Yet fruit juices aren’t nearly as healthy as you may assume.

Many fruit juices are heavily processed and loaded with sugar.¹⁶ They also contain little fibre.¹⁶ You may be much better off drinking water and eating fruit instead.

8. Chips

If someone were to ask you to give one answer to the question of what food to avoid when losing weight, it’s likely that one of your first answers would be chips. Those lovely little mouthfuls of fried starchy delight should really only be eaten as a treat; they shouldn’t be a frequent visitor to your dinner table.

Lots of studies have shown that there’s a link between the consumption of chips and weight gain.¹⁷ In fact, one piece of research concluded that they lead to more weight gain per serving than any other type of food.¹⁸

Potatoes are high in carbs, but it’s mostly the frying that’s a problem. That and also because they’re moreish.