Foods for weight loss: examples and practical indications

Video

Transcript follows

Introduction

This article was born from a lightness that I committed when speaking to you about oats; the lightness, or perhaps an outright mistake from the point of view of my disclosure, was to write that

oats may also promote weight loss

without explaining myself better.

A question in the comments to the video was illuminating: “And who should gain weight?”.

Oh yes, the way I explained it, one might think that those who need to gain weight should avoid oats… if they make you lose weight…

But is not so! Not only can he eat it, it’s just an excellent strategy for gaining weight in a healthy way…

But how is this possible? Either it makes you fat or it makes you lose weight…

No, let’s start from this fundamental concept:

NO food by itself causes you to gain weight or lose weight.

Suffice it to say that bread and pasta make you fat, just to name one that I hear too often… (every time someone says that bread and pasta make you fat there is a nutritionist who falls down dead somewhere… Let’s put an end to this sad massacre … 😉)

Why does he get fat? Why do you lose weight?

You get fat when you eat more calories than you burn, there is no escaping from here. Then it’s very true

• that calories are not all the same,
• that each of us is different
• how different is the intestinal microbiota
• and in some (rare) cases also the metabolism.

All true, within certain limits, but the fact remains that you gain weight if you eat more calories than you burn, you lose weight if you introduce less.

So if you eat half a kilo of oats every day in addition to your normal diet you will gain weight, if you eat 50 g of oats and nothing else, you will lose weight (oh, please, don’t do either one or the other, it was so to speak …).

The myth of negative calorie foods

Let’s defer the discussion that not all calories are created equal to another article, and try to understand why certain foods are sometimes said to cause weight loss. For example, there is the myth of negative calorie foods… what does it mean?

Let’s suppose you decide to eat the branch of a tree… you sit there calmly and a little at a time, while you watch some popularizer who talks about food on YouTube, you nibble it well.

We can reasonably consider it a calorie negativeWhy

• to bite it you consume calories,
• to chew you consume calories,
• you consume calories to digest it
• and yes, even when in about 12-24 it will come out of your intestine in a different form (but not too much) you will consume calories.

You will therefore have burned several calories, not many, but still some. And you will have obtained a completely negligible amount of it. A branch of a tree does not bring you calories because we are unable to absorb the fiber of which it is composed, but it requires you for all the processes we have seen.

You’ll agree with me that eating branches isn’t particularly sustainable in the long run, but are there any foods worthy of the name that actually have negative calories? The most frequently reported example is the celery: in 100 g of celery there are 20 calories, practically nothing, but will they be few enough to be compensated by those necessary for its digestion?

The answer is no, but in reality we are not too far away, and this is the reason why among the thousands of reasons that contribute to making fruit and vegetables the cornerstone on which to build any diet, we also include this reason, which from a scientific point of view it is described as “low energy density”, i.e. a reduced amount of calories per unit of weight, for example the famous 100 g that are always taken as a reference.

Just to be clear

• 100 g of celery provides 20 calories,
• 100 g of Nutella® provide 539.

Then energy density foods elevated should they be avoided?

Absolutely not, for example extra virgin olive oil provides well over 800, but:

1. We use limited quantities
2. and above all it is about calories Very precious, because they are made from good fats and accompanied by antioxidants such as vitamin E.

Here, for example, EVO oil is another excellent food that can help us gain weight in a healthy way in subjects in which this objective is pursued. But I don’t want to digress…

So there are no negative calorie foods?

Actually yes, there is one… unsuspected…

Water.

Drink a large glass of water 8 times during the day and you will burn about a hundred calories.

Strong, right? The reasons lie in an increase in the basal metabolic rate, which can be detected by the heart rate, among other things. If you want to learn more, I recommend this book here

I often recommend it because I found it really super interesting: it analyzes all the possible strategies for losing weight from a strictly scientific point of view, but the author is a doctor who has dedicated his life to studying the link between nutrition and health, so it’s actually interesting regardless of the weight loss issue…

What about oats?

I can already hear you saying: “Yes, that’s fine, but you still haven’t explained how oats can help you lose weight… It’s a cereal! It has loads of calories!”

Like all cereals, oats provide more than 300 calories per 100g, so as we said at the beginning if you added just 100g of oats to your current diet you would probably gain weight. But when it comes to nutrition from a scientific point of view there’s a question you need to learn to ask yourself.

Instead of what? Compared to what? For example:

• The Paleo Diet Loses Weight and Keeps You Healthy! Compared to what?
• Bread and pasta make you fat! Compared to what?
• It’s not true that animal fats are bad for you! Yes, but how many? And in comparison with what alternative?
• The ketogenic diet saved me, since I’ve been following it I’ve lost 10 kg. Excellent, but first of all, how and how much did you eat?

I have now spoken in the first person, but it is exactly with this critical spirit that you must also analyze scientific studies, newspaper articles and even the past.

Cases of diabetes have exploded since we were told to cut fat in favor of carbohydrates! Yes, that’s true, but what carbohydrates are we consuming today? Whole grains that our grandparents ate or refined flours in ultra-transformed industrial products?

My dad has been telling me this for ages… everything is relative!

When I tell you that oats contribute to weight loss it is because, for the same number of calories, this cereal offers an enormous advantage over other alternatives, an advantage which has emerged several times in the comments on the dedicated video: the sense of satiety which is able to guarantee.

Beyond the terrible nutritional value, if you eat cappuccino and brioche you’ll probably be hungry after 2-3 hours, if you eat the caloric equivalent in porridge you won’t.

And please, don’t rush to write to me that instead you with a hood and brioche will arrive calmly until dinner, because clearly when effects of this type are studied, it is done at the population level, not of a single individual, which is the basis of a well-conducted scientific study: take for example 34 overweight subjects, divide them into 2 random groups and

• give half of them oats,
• give the other half another type of cereal, apparently the same, but without beta glucans.

What you will find is that, average, subjects in the group that took oats lost weight, saw their abdominal fat decrease and cholesterol values ​​improve. Then it could also be that in the group of those who consumed oats someone got worse, but what allows us to say that oats promote weight loss is the average result.

Oh, then as I wrote many times in the comments to the same video, if you are intolerant to nickel or for any other reason you can’t consume it, you don’t like it, your intestine protests loudly or you’ve tried it and you don’t like it… it doesn’t happen Nothing: no food is essential to build a healthy dietin the coming weeks I will offer you other monographs on the precious alternatives we have available.

Indeed, yes, there is an ingredient that must never be lacking… variety.

So is it just a question of a sense of satiety? Does it make us feel full and eat less?

Probably not only, because oats

• it is also very delicate towards insulin,
• promotes a healthier gut flora which also affects your cravings and appetite regulating hormones.

Any other advice?

We conclude the article with a couple of other important indications on how to choose foods during a slimming diet:

The nuts it is another food that is systematically associated with better results in terms of weight loss, despite the high caloric intake. But I would say that in this case we are faced with the Swiss army knife of diets.
Let’s start from the assumption that a regular consumption of nuts extends life:

• If you need to lose weightwith 30 g of walnuts a day, or maybe even better a rotational alternation with almonds, pistachios, peanuts and more, to replace other less healthy choices, will guarantee you not only the precious antioxidants and good fats they contain, but again a prolonged sense of satiety, probably thanks to the right mix of fat and protein.
• If you are trying to gain weightat the same time, they are an excellent source of super healthy calories, which your nutritionist believes you can increase.

Little trick:

• if you need to gain weight, pass them through a food processor or consume them in the form of a cream (like peanut butter, but without added sugar or salt, please),
• if, on the other hand, you need to lose weight, it is better to chew them.

The difference in terms of calories actually absorbed can be truly incredible, up to 20% less.

Last point… a moment ago I mentioned the proteins in nuts and before that the fiber in oats, oats which can also boast a good protein content: it is no coincidence. The nutrients that most of all contribute to the sense of satiety are precisely these, proteins and fiber, to which we also add water. And which foods can boast an excellent supply of protein, water and fiber?

Legumes, what do I tell you to do… and it’s one of the many reasons why this underrated food is permanently part of all diets that can boast real and proven scientific soundness.

And again, this doesn’t mean that if you eat a portion of lentils a day then you can eat whatever you want during the rest of the day hoping not to gain weight, instead it means that in the context of a healthy diet, an adequate lifestyle, will guarantee you the same feeling of satiety as a steak, despite a slightly lower protein content, and this is particularly important in light of the need for Western populations to reduce the consumption of animal derivativesboth for our health and for that of our poor and abused planet.

The most important message

What I hope will remain for you from reading this article is not only that no food is miraculous nor indispensable, but above all that any healthy diet that is truly based on solid scientific literature, or rather some slightly more well-founded demonstration of efficacy of your cousin’s opinion, it invariably encompasses the same fundamentals, whether it’s designed to make you fat, slim, protect against metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease, or cancer. The basics are always invariably the same:

• fruit and vegetables, lots of fruit and vegetables,
• Whole grains
• proteins and fats they come from mainly from vegetable sources (legumes, seeds and nuts)
• possibly fish in non-vegetarian diets and meat, little meat, but of excellent quality, raised on pasture, in the fresh air and under the mountain sun.

Depending on the goal, some declinations, relative quantities and qualities could change, but the pivots on which a diet stands are these.