7 Foods That Help You Lose Weight

By Melanie Haiken, Caring.com

A helpful article with tips and foods that help you lose weight. Learn about the seven foods that can actually boost your body's fat burning potential and help you lose weight.

Don't get sucked into the idea that food is your enemy when you're trying to lose weight. In fact, it's just the opposite: Befriend the right foods, and the pounds are much more likely to peel off than if you just try to cut calories across the board. Here, seven foods known to nutritionists to boost your body's fat-burning potential.

1. Oats

Wait a minute -- aren't oats a carb? Yes and no. Oats are a whole grain, and they're high on what nutritionists call the "satiety index," meaning oats have tremendous power to make you feel full. Not only that, they're also high in soluble fiber, so they cut cholesterol and blood fat. Oats digest slowly, so they don't raise your blood sugar, and they keep you feeling filled up well into the late morning. Old-fashioned steel-cut and rolled oats, with up to 5 grams of fiber per serving, are best, but even instant oatmeal has 3 to 4 grams of fiber per serving.

2. Eggs

Nutritionists have been trying for some years to restore the reputation of the lowly egg. No longer thought to be a cholesterol-booster (eggs contain a different type of cholesterol than that in humans), eggs are a concentrated form of animal protein without the added fat that comes with meat. Dietary studies have repeatedly found that when people eat an egg every morning in addition to (or instead of) toast or cereal, they lose twice as much weight as those who eat a breakfast that's dominated by carbs.

3. Skim milk

Studies in reputable publications such as the Journal of Obesity (in addition to the controversial ones funded by the National Dairy Council) show that the combination of calcium, vitamin D, and low-fat protein in skim milk and nonfat yogurt trigger weight loss and help build and maintain lean muscle.

4. Apples

To keep the pounds at bay, eat an apple -- or two -- a day. Numerous studies have found that eating an apple a half hour to an hour before a meal has the result of cutting the calories of the meal. Why? The fiber in the apple makes you feel full, so you eat less. Recent research suggests eating apples has other benefits, too; the antioxidants in apples appear to prevent metabolic syndrome, the combination of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and prediabetes that tends to accompany thickening around the waist. Also, apples are high in pectin, which binds with water and limits the amount of fat your cells can absorb.

5. Red meat

Not exactly what you think of as a diet food, right? But research in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared diet results for women who ate red meat and those who didn't, and the meat-eaters lost more weight. Experts think the dense protein in lean red meat helps you maintain muscle mass -- but of course this assumes you're exercising to build that muscle.

6. Cinnamon

This simple spice appears to have the power to help your body metabolize sugar, according to surprising data that came out of a USDA study involving diabetics. Eating as little as 1/4 to 2 teaspoons of cinnamon a day was found to reduce blood sugar levels and cut cholesterol from 10 to 25 percent. So add cinnamon to smoothies, sprinkle it on your cereal, or flavor your coffee with it -- particularly if you take your coffee with cream and sugar. The cinnamon will boost the health benefits of the coffee while helping your body rid itself of the added sugars.

7. Almonds and almond butter

Another counterintuitive choice; aren't nuts and nut butters supposed to be incredibly fattening? Well, almonds are calorie-dense, but they also pack a huge nutritional punch -- and they're particularly effective in counteracting cholesterol and triglycerides. One study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that eating almonds was as effective as taking a statin. Spreading almond butter on your morning toast gives you a nice protein boost while preventing the carbs in the toast from spiking your blood sugar.

Source: http://www.caring.com/articles/seven-foods-lose-weight

Lose Weight: Why, When…How?

This is the best time when you should loose some extra pounds for good! You have to be least heard and follow the same old formula “Eat Less Calories than you expend and you lose weight” You get motivated and ready to start for a new journey since this may not be your first step towards fulfilling the desires of loosing weight. There are ample of diets that promise you to loose weight faster. However, some kind of myth and conflicting weight loss information may put you into jeopardy about what to and what not to choose! Ultimately, you fall into the cobweb of commercial weight loss diet and pills with their penetrating marketing skills and when they don’t work, you end up commenting “Diets don’t work!”

The point is, the whole practice of weight loss is about understanding how the body looses and gains weight that helps individual getting good understanding and control over their own weight. The whole change in the weight is commonly due to two elements- one is the food and another is the activity level.

Impact of calorie intake and activity level

When someone consumes more calories than the amount he burns off through exercises and workouts, is sure to gain weight. If someone is able to consume equal amount of calories, he will be able to burn off them on a regular basis. Finally, when an individual consumes fewer calories, he will burn it off and will be able to loose weight.

However, since it is important to consume the right amount of calories for weight loss, there isn’t any hard and fast rule that you will have to keep a strict count on your calories everyday. The point is, when an individual wants to loose weight, he/she can adjust the food/calorie intake accordingly and stick to normal eating habits.
This doesn’t mean keeping a strict calorie count each and every day but an individual should be able to judge how much food his body will require each day to maintain a steady weight. If the individual then wishes to loose or gain weight they will then be able to adjust their food intake. A healthy weight loss or gain is a gradual process therefore only slight change to normal eating habits is needed.

If diets don’t work

Whenever, there is a long term weight loss plan on the cards, it is better to collect information about various diet plans. Generally, diets mean the limiting amount of food and discarding all the ‘bad’ foods viz. chocolate, cake, pizza and chips. Thus, it is a common tendency of the individual to crave for ‘bad’ foods. Therefore the diet should have a balance of all foods so as to avoid such cravings that can lead to total diet failure.

Burn the calories

The human body works like a machine and so it requires fuel in form of food. If an individual consume excess food than what he/she will be able to burn, the excess food will be stored as a fat in the body. Exercise is the best way to burn calories and if you are not able to go to a gym then performing household tasks will give you a good form of exercise. Tasks like gardening, washing, dusting, hovering etc. are some of the activities that can help you burning unwanted calories.