What to eat when losing weight: Know yourself and your enemy and six principles of food selection

What should you eat when losing weight?

To have a truly healthy life and maintain a good figure, you must first "know yourself"-understand your body's condition and know what you need; secondly, you must "know your enemy"-know the effects of the foods you eat. Both of these are essential.

Some people might complain, "So I have to be my own doctor and my own nutritionist! I have to know everything, it's exhausting."

What I want to say is that the knowledge you need about food isn't complicated; just a little is enough. There are only 13 vitamins in total, and you're only truly deficient in four or five of the most common ones. You might know all the brands and celebrities, so why can't you remember a dozen or so vitamins and minerals? It's exhausting to explain, simply because you haven't paid enough attention.

People are willing to invest in things they care about and consider important; they are unwilling to invest in things they don't care about or consider unimportant. In life, health is one of the most important things, and a good physique is a lifelong pursuit. If you're too lazy to even understand the food you eat, can you truly say you love yourself?

This chapter aims to explain some simple principles in plain language, helping everyone quickly understand what constitutes a healthy eating lifestyle. Once good eating habits are formed, they can benefit you for life, helping you lose weight, prevent obesity, and prevent various chronic diseases. Your family and friends can also benefit.

The principles of weight loss are consistent with the principles of healthy eating. These can be summarized as follows:

(1) Try to eat fresh and natural foods and avoid processed foods with low nutritional value.

(2) A diverse diet is essential, including all kinds of natural foods. Do not rely on just a few types of foods.

(3) Consume the least amount of energy and the most nutrients.

(4) In each category of food, choose those varieties that are less likely to cause weight gain.

(5) Choose appropriate cooking methods to preserve nutrients, while avoiding excessive intake of oil, salt and sugar.

(6) Practice daily moderation and enjoy yourself occasionally to live a happy and fulfilling life.

How to choose food when losing weight

Many people who are trying to control their weight have a common question: "How should I choose my food? Which foods are for weight loss, and which foods cause weight gain?"

Humans consume a lot of food every day, and each type of food contains energy, which is commonly referred to as "calories".

The total energy intake for each type of food is the sum of its energy.

If you consume more energy than you expend, your body will store the excess energy as fat, resulting in weight gain. Therefore, controlling your diet, limiting your energy intake, and appropriately increasing your physical activity to create a negative energy balance ("income less than expenditure") is an unavoidable path to weight loss.

So, how do you know if a certain food is helpful for weight loss? Is it true that the lower the energy content of a food, the better it is for weight loss?

A woman told me that she has finally learned how to read the nutrition facts labels on food packaging, and she chooses the ones with the lowest energy content.

I first praised her, saying that checking the nutrition facts label was necessary. However, I also told her that she could only compare the energy content of similar foods. For example, when buying yogurt, if the protein content is similar, the one with lower energy content is more beneficial for weight loss than the one with higher energy content.

Different types of food cannot be compared. For example, you can't compare the energy content of oatmeal and cucumber. Oatmeal is a dry staple food, and staple foods are inherently high in energy. Cucumbers have a water content of over 90%, so they have less dry matter and are therefore lower in energy.

Choosing only low-calorie foods isn't necessarily a good approach to weight loss. If you eat nothing all day and only drink water, your calorie intake is zero. So, is water the best food for weight loss? Obviously not.

For the human body to maintain health, including successful weight loss, it must first obtain the dozens of essential nutrients. Otherwise, the body's organs cannot function properly, making weight loss difficult. While eating too much leads to weight gain, simply eating too little is also detrimental. Malnutrition causes a decrease in metabolic rate, resulting in a body type that is prone to weight gain and difficult to lose weight, further hindering weight loss efforts.

Many people often say, "You need to eat your fill to have the energy to lose weight," but it would be more accurate to say, "You need sufficient nutrition to have the energy to lose weight."

During weight loss, what we need to do is minimize energy intake while ensuring our bodies receive all the necessary nutrients. Simply put, we need to increase the nutrient density of our food.

All food choices should be made according to this general principle. Relying solely on a few so-called "weight-loss foods" cannot provide the body with sufficient nutrients. For example, some people hear that eating apples can help with weight loss, so they replace rice with apples every day; some people hear that cucumbers and tomatoes are low in calories, so they replace other dishes with them; some people hear that kelp and mushrooms are high in dietary fiber, so they replace fish, meat, and eggs with them.

Each type of food has a different nutritional function. Focusing only on a few types of food while ignoring others will inevitably lead to nutritional imbalances and even severe malnutrition. For example, eating only the foods mentioned above will inevitably result in severe deficiencies in protein, calcium, iron, zinc, and vitamins B₁, B₂, A, and E.

All we can do is eat enough of all kinds of food, and within each type of food, choose varieties that are high in nutritional quality but relatively low in energy. In particular, during the cooking process, avoid adding too much oil and sugar, so that you won't consume too much energy.

For example, the energy content of refined rice is similar to that of brown rice and millet (within 10%). However, the vitamin, mineral, and dietary fiber content of millet and brown rice is two to three times, or even four to five times, that of refined rice. Therefore, if you replace some refined rice with brown rice and millet, and then reduce your total staple food intake by 25%, you can reduce energy intake while increasing nutrition, which will be beneficial for weight loss.

For example, making 200 grams of stir-fried green beans requires 25 grams of cooking oil (25 grams of oil is approximately equal to 25 grams of fat); while steaming the green beans and mixing them with 20 grams of sesame seeds, soy sauce, and vinegar only results in 8 grams of fat intake (sesame seeds contain about 40% fat), significantly reducing energy intake. Additionally, you also get vitamin E, iron, zinc, calcium, and other nutrients from sesame seeds, which is beneficial for weight loss and provides additional nutrition. Eating more steamed green beans and less rice is a good dietary approach for weight loss.

This diet may not seem to reduce calorie intake significantly, and weight loss won't be as rapid, but it allows you to lose weight without losing energy, eat less without feeling hungry, and improve your figure while also becoming healthier. This is the kind of diet that can truly be maintained long-term for weight management.