Dietary Importance While Pursuing Weight Loss Goals

Obesity is one of the riskiest health conditions individuals now face worldwide, primarily because it increases the risk of several other debilitating and deadly diseases. Diabetes, heart diseases, cancers, and hypertension are all health effects that come with being obese or overweight. To combat this, people try diet plans to achieve their weight loss goals. But is dieting really effective? Read on to learn about the dietary importance while pursuing weight loss goals!

Does Dieting Work?

If you are trying to lose weight, you must maintain a healthy and balanced diet and incorporate a healthy exercise routine into your daily life. A healthy diet is proven to help weight loss among individuals, and there are several studies to back up this claim.

A study conducted by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) on 1,032 participants confirmed that adopting a healthier diet may help you achieve and maintain weight loss. The healthy diet they proposed incorporated fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy.

At the core level, a healthy diet for weight loss will have you try to achieve a negative energy balance (caloric deficit), as recommended by the American Dietetic Association (ADA). A negative energy balance is achieved when your total energy intake is lower than your energy expenditure. This means you need to reduce the number of calories you consume or burn more calories to offset them.

What To Keep In Mind When Setting A Diet Plan

Qualified dieticians will recommend a nutritionally balanced, hypocaloric diet (a diet low in calories) to those who want to lose weight. Apart from these, here are some general guidelines recommended if you want to set a diet plan when an emphasis on dietary importance while pursuing weight loss goals:

1.) Make Sure You Meet Your Nutritional Needs

While a weight loss diet primarily means reducing your overall calorie intake, this doesn’t mean you should adopt a diet devoid of healthy nutrition. Make sure your adopted diet meets your nutritional needs for healthy weight loss. Experts believe that the optimal diet for you should be safe, healthy, and nutritionally adequate.

Setting unrealistic weight loss goals or opting for extreme diets may be incredibly challenging, making it difficult to adhere to. It also makes it more difficult to maintain a healthy weight after weight loss. This can lead to more harm than good in the long run.

2.) Aim For Natrual, Unprocessed Foods & Ingredients

Cut out heavily processed foods from your diet. Instead, try to include whole-natural foods. Processed foods tend to be filled with unhealthy calories and is a leading cause of obesity and increased body weight. You should eat vegetables, fruits, fish, lean meat, and nuts to meet your nutritional needs.

3.) Incorporate Unsaturated Oils such as Extra Virgin Olive Oils (EVOOs)

To lose weight, you want to avoid saturated fats such as butter and mayonnaise and instead switch to unsaturated fats such as extra virgin olive oil or EVOO. Extra virgin olive oil is considered an excellent partner for weight loss diets. Unlike most oils, Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) is unrefined and unprocessed and also contains plenty of omega fats and polyphenols (antioxidants) that are healthy for you. You can shop our Proprietary Blends of EVOOs here!

4.) Avoid Sugar

Added sugars are also a major cause of unhealthy weight gain and obesity. Consuming too much sugar can also lead to several health problems, including diabetes and heart disease. You will want to avoid sofas, baked goods, or candies that usually are filled with sugars that don’t offer any nutritional benefits.

Even some healthy foods such as vegan yogurt, vitamin water, or flavored green tea contain high sugar levels, so be sure to read the packaging before you stock up on them!

Which Diets Are Proven To Help With Weight Loss?

Several diets have been proposed that can be used for weight loss; most usually revolve around reducing the number of protein, carbs, or fat you intake. Here are some of the diets that have been proven to help weight loss:

1.) A Mediterranean Diet

The most popular and effective diet for weight loss is the Mediterranean diet. A Mediterranean diet usually includes foods that people from the Mediterranean regions have conventionally adopted in their diets. It is a diet rich in whole foods such as fish, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and unsaturated fats such as olive oil. EVOO is also a large part of a healthy Mediterranean diet.

This diet has been proven to help weight loss among individuals and may even double the likelihood of weight loss maintenance.

You can read our article on the Mediterranean Diet here and see if this diet is a good fit for your health and lifestyle!

2.) A Whole Food Diet

A whole-food diet, in its simplicity, does not include refined or processed foods. This means you will be cutting out any foods that contain preservatives or additives or have been processed. The concept here is that processed foods contain much higher calorie content. By cutting them out of your diet, you may lose weight. A 2019 study uncovered that individuals who relied on a whole-food diet compared to one filled with processed foods lost weight.

3.) A Plant-Based Diet

Finally, we have a plant-based diet. As the name suggests, this diet will have you cut down on meat and animal by-products such as dairy and eggs. Leafy greens, fruits, and vegetables tend to be higher in fiber and can be incredibly filling.

As a result, you’ll be consuming fewer calories at every meal and still feel satiated. This can lead to effective weight loss over time. Studies have proven that a plant-based diet may help lose weight and many health conditions, including high blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.

Is A Healthy Diet All You Need?

A diet for weight loss means you will be consuming fewer calories. However, reducing your overall calorie intake isn’t all you need for healthy weight loss. You also need to burn the calories you consume through exercise, which a diet alone cannot do for you. Moreover, by exercising and physical activity, your body will be able to fully make use of its nutritional intake.