“But It’s Healthy!”: Be Sure To Avoid This Common Dieting Mistake

When trying to lose weight, many people fall victim to the common misconception that eating healthy will lead to weight loss. For the benefit of your overall health, choosing mostly healthy and nutritious food is obviously important, however, eating only “healthy” foods does not necessarily lead to weight loss. Although eating nutritious, filling foods is an important component in going on a weight loss diet, the key to actually losing pounds is the number of calories you are consuming.

            So you decided you wanted to lose weight. You went to the grocery store and filled up your cart with items like whole wheat bread, eggs, lots of fruit and vegetables, nuts, low-fat yogurt, some snacks like Special-K cracker chips or Pop chips, frozen yogurt, chicken, granola bars, e.t.c. The next morning you are ready to start your new diet. You make an omelette with veggies and two slices of unbuttered wheat toast for breakfast and then have an apple for a snack a few hours later. For lunch you have a yogurt with granola and a bowl of Special-K cracker chips. You snack on some almonds later on and make chicken, vegetables, and brown rice for dinner. For dessert you have one and a half cups of frozen yogurt. In general, this sounds like a very healthy day, and for the average person, maybe it is. But if you are trying to lose weight, this is not going to work. If you add the calories from breakfast (350), the first snack (100), lunch (650), the second snack (200), dinner (650), and desert (350), you would have consumed a total of about 2300 calories! This is where many dieters get stuck, and some people even end up gaining weight while trying to diet by unintentionally overeating health foods. It would seem that cutting bad fats, unnecessary sugars, junk food, white bread, and other notoriously unhealthy foods out of your diet should result in weight loss. Unfortunately, dropping pounds is not that simple.

            Weight loss is based on a mathematical equation that takes into account the number of calories you burn on an average day, how much you weigh now, how much weight you are trying to lose, the time span in which you’d like to lose x number of pounds . . . And if you are like me and seriously fail at math, this sounds very complicated and confusing. Luckily, there are many websites you can go to that will calculate the number of calories you should be eating daily in order to lose weight based on your personal body type and weekly activity level. Many diet plans also help make this easy. For example Weight Watchers gives all foods a point value, so you do not have to constantly be adding up numbers of calories. There are also iPhone apps that help you track calories and other nutritional factors. My personal favorite iPhone app is called “Calorie Counter and Food Diary” by MyNetDiary Inc. This free app helps you determine how many calories you need to eat each day in order to lose X amount of pounds in X amount of time. It also allows you to plug in the foods you eat throughout the day, and it tells you the amount of calories and other dietary components each food contains.

            Losing weight is no easy task, and it requires determination and will power. There are many helpful tips to keep in mind while dieting such as remembering to eat healthy, filling foods so you will not be hungry at the end of the day and find you are out of your allowed number of calories. Some people find it helpful to keep track of what they eat each day so they can figure out what worked for them and use that eating schedule for future days. I will go into more detail on helpful tips for dieters in future posts soon to come. If you have any tips you would like to share with fellow dieters, feel free to post them in the comments box below! Some days will be easier than others, but if you can stick it out and make it through to your goal weight, it will all be worthwhile and extremely rewarding.