Foods that help you lose weight
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What if you could choose foods that help you lose weight?
Here's a list of just that—foods that you can include every day to enhance your weight-loss success.
Shedding excess body weight can be among the most challenging parts of your plaque control program. Taking fish oil is easy. Adding niacin has its ups and downs, but most people do just fine. Including raw almonds and oat bran to reduce LDL and generate larger particles—also easy.
But losing 10, 20, or more pounds because you have low HDL, small LDL, or other weight sensitive patterns—that can be downright hard for many people. These are patterns that can booby-trap your plaque control efforts.
Excess weight is the most common reason for failure in plaque control. You can do everything else right, but if you continue to show weight-sensitive patterns like small LDL or high blood sugar, then plaque control will elude you.
Here, we list foods that you can include in your diet everyday that provide advantage for your weight loss effort. Can you add a weight-promoting food and go crazy on cakes, breads, and pizza and still lose weight? Of course not. The foods we list here need to remain part of an overall healthy diet program. They cannot make up for an otherwise unhealthy diet. No food, supplement, or drug is that powerful.
Don't forget to read Track Your Plaque fitness expert, Kelli Calabrese's, article on how pedometers can help accelerate weight loss: A Pedometer is the Key to Fitness and Weight Loss. Also see our report on Shutting off Metabolic Syndrome for a discussion about nutritional supplements that can help you achieve more rapid weight loss.
Food choices really do count
When trying to lose weight, choosing the right foods can make the difference between success and failure.
The list of foods to avoid is a long one. It includes all the foods that get Americans in trouble in the first place, like fast food; processed foods like breakfast cereals, breads, fruit juices, chips, and baked goods; greasy saturated fat sources like butter, sausage, and pork.
Have we succeeded in dispelling the notion that low-fat means weight loss? In fact, a low-fat diet often increases unwanted abdominal fat, the sort that is associated with metabolic syndrome. (See Get Fat on a Low-Fat Diet)
But just avoiding the wrong foods is not enough. Choosing the right foods is also important. Some foods can accelerate your weight-loss success. But let's be clear on this. You can't just add these foods to a poor or lackadaisical diet and expect miracles. It doesn't work that way. Nor will you lose 20 lbs. in 5 days doing this. These strategies help you on a percentage basis, i.e., if you were destined to lose 5 lbs. this month on your nutrition and exercise strategies, you might lose 7 lbs instead. In other words, these strategies can work by themselves, though weakly. Their real power is when you combine them with an all-out weight loss effort.
Weight loss foods
Nuts—almonds, walnuts, and pecans.
It's definitely counter-intuitive: nuts are commonly regarded as high-fat, high-calorie foods that pack on weight. That's true of the processed, canned, and packaged nuts in the store made with added oils and often mixed with sugary ingredients like raisins, dried pineapples, mangoes, and bananas—these definitely do make you fat and have no place in your plaque control or weight loss program.
For instance, a ¼-cup serving of cashews roasted in oil and salted—the kind to avoid— contains 187 kcal, 15.4 grams total fat, 2.7 grams saturated fat, and 1.1 grams fiber.
But a ¼-cup serving of raw almonds—the kind you should choose—provides 137 kcal (27% less), 11.65 grams of total fat (24% less), 0.89 grams saturated fat (67% less), and 2.7 grams fiber (245% more). There's less of the bad, more of the good in raw nuts compared to roasted, canned, processed varieties.
Plain old raw nuts are what you're after. Rich in fibers (they must have the brown exterior coating of fiber, not blanched) and healthy oils (monounsaturates), nuts are tremendously satisfying. They also reduce blood sugar. Nuts are especially useful for people with any characteristics of the metabolic syndrome. You'll recognize raw nuts in the bulk section of your grocery or health food store, or in bags in the produce aisle.
Of course, even too much of a good thing can go too far. One ounce of almonds (around 23 almonds) contains 164 calories, 14.4 grams of fat, and 3.3 grams of fiber. That means a good two handfuls a day will provide around 200–300 calories. But several more handfuls would provide upwards of a thousand calories—far too much. So limit yourself to two handfuls per day.
Best times to use: as a between-meal snack; in the morning, as part of your breakfast, e.g., with yogurt or oat bran cereal; with lunch; with dinner in a salad or other dish.
Oat bran
Oat bran has the unusual property of tremendous water-absorbing capacity. It can absorb four times its volume of water. In other words, 1 Tbsp of oat bran can swell to 5 Tbsp of volume. In your stomach, it therefore occupies lots of space, yielding a sense of fullness—even though much of it is water.
Beta-glucan, the soluble fiber unique to oat bran, also binds intestinal cholesterol and lowers blood cholesterol levels by 15%. Oat bran, by the way, contains twice the amount of beta-glucan as oatmeal (by weight).
Add 1–2 tablespoons to yogurt, protein shakes, tomato juice, etc. You can even use it heated in the microwave with water, soy or low-fat milk to make a hot cereal (add blueberries, strawberries, raw sunflower or pumpkin seeds, raw nuts). Oat bran can often be purchased in health food or grocery stores bulk for less than a dollar a pound.
Oat bran, like raw nuts, reduces the effective glycemic index of other foods, thereby improving your body's sugar control. This effect has been shown to facilitate weight loss. It also cascades into improvements in HDL and triglycerides. Try to get 3–4 Tbsp in your diet per day for full effect.
Because of oat bran's water absorbing capacity, be sure to drink plenty of extra water to accommodate the water absorbed by the oat bran. Otherwise, you'll be dehydrated and constipated!
Psyllium seed
Psyllium seed is somewhere between a food supplement and a food. Commonly known as Metamucil®, psyllium is usually regarded as a bulk-forming laxative, i.e., it creates bulk to facilitate smooth and easy bowel movements.
However, psyllium's unusual water absorbing capacity, similar to that of oat bran, can be useful to create a feeling of fullness. One rounded tablespoon diluted in a non-sugar containing beverage, e.g., unsweetened soy milk, water, tea, works well. Drink 30 minutes before meals or between meals to take full advantage of the satiety effect. As with oat bran, increase your water intake or else you'll experience constipation and even dehydration. Make sure to use the unsweetened or artificially sweetened products, not ones with weight-increasing sugar.
Soy protein
Soy protein, when used as a replacement for meals or to replace other protein sources (e.g., meats, dairy products) yields modest reductions in body weight. It's not entirely clear why soy seems to achieve this weight-reducing effect, but it's a relatively easy method to drop a few pounds while also taking advantage of soy protein's modest LDL-reducing effects.
Much of the data showing that soy protein products reduce weight use soy protein shakes. These can be purchased ready-made. However, we suggest that you make them yourself, instead. This way, you can control the ingredients. You're less inclined, for instance, to add sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, ingredients you'll commonly find in pre-made shakes.
You can make your own by blending 2–3 heaping Tbsp soy protein powder, 12 oz soy milk (avoid overly sweetened brands), and blueberries or other berries in a blender. Optionally, add a Tbsp of oat bran or ground flaxseed; a tsp of healthy oil like grapeseed or canola. Soy shakes are so filling that you can use them as a meal replacement and feel satisfied.
Soy protein powder can also be stirred into yogurt or added to many other dishes like vegetarian chili. You can use other soy products besides the powder, like tofu (stir fries; vegetarian scrambled "eggs", vegetatarian chili; tofu contains 13 grams soy protein in 4 oz), textured vegetable protein (use as a meat substitute in vegetarian chili or "meatloaf"; one burger-sized serving will provide 10 grams soy protein) and soymilk (10 grams soy protein per 8 oz glass unflavored).
Aim for 25 grams of soy protein a day through your shake or by scattering soy protein containing products throughout your day. Our experience is an additional 2–4 lbs. weight loss per month following this strategy.
Salmon and fish
We all know that salmon and cold water fish like cod are great sources of omega-3 fatty acids. But eating fish can also be a useful weight loss enhancing strategy.
A 4 oz. serving of salmon (cooked) contains 194 calories and 9 grams of total fat. The fat content breaks down into around 3 grams monounsaturated, 3 grams omega-3 (EPA, DHA), and 1 gram saturated. This profile of healthy fats—7 grams in 4 oz—provides a satiety effect. The fat content adds only 63 additional calories but also slows digestion, slows the release of any sugars, and keeps you satisfied for a longer period.
But the real power of fish in your diet is not weight loss. The extra weight lost by using fish as a replacement for, say, chicken or beef, is actually very modest.
Instead, fish hugely magnifies the benefits of weight loss on blood pressure, inflammation, pre-diabetic patterns, lipids and lipoproteins. In one study, for instance, the blood pressure reducing effect of weight loss was doubled when fish was part of the weight loss program. Triglycerides plummet 40% or more when fish is a frequent part of your weight loss diet.
Best choices for fish: Salmon (preferably wild or Alaskan—less mercury than farm-raised); Alaskan halibut; tuna; sea bass; herring; sardines. When you're trying to lose weight, including one serving per day, 5 or more days per week, provides maximum benefit. After you've achieved your target weight, then back off on fish intake to reduce your mercury exposure.
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