The key to good health is to stop dieting and start eating normal natural foods every day. The secret is to just we aware about what we’re putting into our stomachs. We’re all becoming conscious of what we eat and are aware of how food we’re eating is going to affect our health.
We’re trying to eat as much organic as we can afford and find, we exercise, count calories, trying to bring lifestyle changes related to food and what not. And yet many of us complain that all this effort does not work as we expect.
There are a few new theories (from Harvard researchers) to take note of by those who want to follow the right ways to stay fit. According to that new theory there is a direct connection between weight loss and the amount of energy used by our body to digest food. This means that what you eat is important but HOW you eat is going to decide if it will help you lose calories and maintain weight.
When you eat food that is uncooked or raw, or it will take your body longer to digest it, and you will end up losing weight, where as if you eat processed or cooked version of the same food it will cause weight gain as processed foods are much easier to digest and doesn’t take body much effort hence energy consumption is low.
A calorie in simple words is nothing but unit of energy consumed while digesting foods. The more calories one needs to burns to digest the food, better for the body from weight loss/maintenance point of view. Processed foods consume fewer calories to digest than raw food.
Food processing can happen at your home while you’re cooking the meals or foods may be already processed when you buy them. Processing includes cooking, blending, mashing, use of raw material like refined butter, flour etc as cooking ingredient.
Instead of eating only those foods which burn our calories, we should balance food consumption according to our lifestyle and body type. Calorie is energy but which should be used and consumed wisely.
There is another theory to note that food with same amount of carbs, fat, proteins etc gets digested in different states is not the same. For example starch content in foods like toast, pasta spaghetti etc that have been cooked hours before eating or is part of left-over from previous meals becomes difficult to digestion as starch in these tend to crystallize into structures which the digestive enzymes are not able to break down. As a result these foods will give you fewer calories than the same foods eaten piping hot, fresh, and straight from oven, stove, and gas.
This means that if we want to keep our weight in check we should choose what we eat wisely. NO more soft white breads, and mashed potatoes, or processed cheese. Instead we should opt for rough whole wheat breads, natural cheese, more fruits and more veggies in our salads.
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