There are many articles that praise the low-carb diet as one of the most effective options for weight loss. However, recent studies show that both low and high-carb diets can increase the risk of early death (USA Today). The key to an effective weight loss diet for your family is to eat the right kind of carbs. This will ensure that you get enough energy to stay healthy and don’t put your future at risk.
Best Carbs to Eat for Weight Loss and Health
The best carbohydrates to eat are complex ones that your body takes time to process. Note that you will need to not only add some specific foods to your diet to get healthy carbs. You will need to replace some of the things you eat with these ‘good’ alternatives. It’s as important to not eat ‘bad’ carbs as it is to eat enough of the ‘good’.
Best carbs to add to your daily meal plan include:
* Fruit juices (freshly squeezed)
* Fresh fruits and vegetables
* Whole grains
* Nuts
* Root vegetables
All these foods are staples of the healthy diet because they contain a variety of micro and macronutrients. This means they do not only give you complex carbs but also fiber, protein, vitamins, and minerals. They are also the basis of any list that tells you what to eat to lose weight fast. It’s the high nutritional value of the foods that makes them good for weight loss. And complex carbs are a key factor in this, because they ensure that the foods are filling.
Carbs to Avoid on a Healthy Weight Loss Diet
Processed, this one word sums up all the carbs your family should avoid to stay healthy. You also need to avoid them to lose weight because they bring nothing useful but calories. This means that foods with processed carbs are fattening but not filling as they don’t provide you with all essential nutrients.
To make your diet as healthy as possible, you should replace processed simple carbohydrates with their alternatives listed above. For example, this means dropping sodas for natural juices and white bread for whole grained one.
Note that a diet high in processed carbs is not only bad for your weight. It deals a lot of damage to your general health and is one of the contributing factors to the current epidemic of type 2 diabetes (The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition), among other things.
‘Bad-carb’ foods that you should avoid above all others while on a weight loss diet are:
* Coffee drinks.
Black coffee is good for the diet because it stimulates metabolism and has few calories. However, coffee drinks with milk, sugar, syrup, and/or whipped cream contain too many fats and sugars.
* Pastries and white bread. Anything made from refined white flour is to be avoided as extremely fattening. Bagels and other pastries are the main offenders because they contain about 300 calories and 50 grams of carbs in one serving.
* Preserves, jams, and jellies. Any kind of sugary fruit that comes from a jar most likely contains way too much sugar to be healthy. If you want a healthy alternative to put on your toast, blend frozen or fresh berries with a handful of nuts into a paste.
* Yogurt with fruit at the bottom. By the same principle as jam, yogurt with fruit on the bottom contains too much sugar because it literally contains jam. Yogurt that’s good for weight loss is plain unsweetened or Greek.
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