Count calories, look at GI value... There are a lot of dietary tips for weight loss, but what should you consider first?

How should I eat to lose weight? Losing weight through diet is like practicing martial arts, no matter how it changes, the essence remains the same, and ultimately we all return to the principle of a balanced diet. However, in this "change" process, some people focus on calorie calculations, some people advocate looking at the GI value of food, and others emphasize increasing the proportion of protein in the diet. After all, among these weight loss techniques, what is the first order of consideration if you want to achieve a healthy and long-term effective weight loss goal? Let’s see the nutritionist’s answer.

To eat for a slim body, "calorie control" is the first key

In recent years, health awareness has risen, and weight loss has become a popular subject in the field of health care, especially various weight loss diets. As long as a celebrity tries it successfully, it will become a trend. Looking at all these methods that claim to help with weight loss, they all involve reducing calories, lowering sugar, controlling oil, calculating the GI value of food, etc. But if we further compare single factors, which one should be controlled first?

Li Wanping, a nutritionist at Rongxin Clinic, believes that the first priority for a successful diet to lose weight is to "control calories." From a nutritional point of view, calories are the key to maintaining normal human activities and life. There is a daily intake and output. Once you eat too much, it cannot be completely converted into body energy. The remaining calories will gradually turn into fat and accumulate in the body, leading to obesity. Therefore, if you want to maintain your ideal weight, "total calorie intake < total calorie expenditure" has always been the golden rule for weight loss.

The second key to diet weight loss: control the proportion of nutrients

However, meals with the same calorie content may not have the same nutritional composition. If you only control calories, or even resort to drastic fasting methods and almost don't eat at all, it is easy to cause weight gain and nutritional imbalance, which can also damage your health in the long run. Therefore, the second priority for dietary weight loss is the “nutrient ratio”.

Carbohydrates, proteins and fats are the three essential nutrients for maintaining the normal functioning of human cells, and none of them can be missing. According to daily dietary guidelines, protein should account for 10% to 20% of total daily calorie intake, carbohydrates should account for 50% to 60%, and fat should account for 20% to 30%. However, there are many popular diets for weight loss nowadays, such as the high-protein diet, low-starch diet, ketogenic diet, etc., but people keep trying to break this rule. Is this a good thing?

★High-protein, low-starch, ketogenic diet, good for weight loss?

Nutritionist Li Wanping said that protein helps with exercise to build muscle and lose weight. Excessive intake is not recommended unless people who exercise a lot need to increase their protein intake. On the one hand, because each gram of protein contains 4 calories, eating too much will still make you fat; on the other hand, consuming too much protein can easily increase the burden on kidney metabolism, which may lead to high uric acid and renal function problems.

The ketogenic diet, which has sparked heated discussions both at home and abroad in recent years, emphasizes that under normal protein intake, an extremely low-carbohydrate diet (carbohydrate calorie intake is less than 5%) should be adopted, and fat intake should be increased to 75% to 80%. This forces the human body to burn fat as the main source of energy rather than carbohydrates, thereby improving the effect of weight loss. However, although this method can produce quick results, its effects are not long-lasting, it is easy to gain weight again, and it is not suitable for everyone. If unsuitable people follow it for a long time, they are likely to be at risk of micronutrient deficiencies.

In comparison, nutritionist Li Wanping believes that a safer method is the "low-carbohydrate diet". Within the normal intake framework of the three major nutrients, considering that people now have less labor work, moderately reducing the intake of starchy foods and refined sugars will not only have a more lasting weight loss effect, but the approach is also more in line with human nature, and is easier to adjust and persist.

The third key to diet weight loss: pay attention to the GI value

The third consideration for diet and weight loss is to “look at the GI value”! There are two different kinds of food, one with a low GI value and the other with a high GI value. It is generally believed that eating low GI food is easier to lose weight, but if you eat low GI food desperately without any taboos, it is likely that you will gain weight more easily than eating high GI food. For example, if you change one bowl of high GI white rice to two bowls of low GI brown rice, you will gain weight instead of losing weight. Therefore, "total portion control is far more important than calculating the GI value!"

Nutritionist Li Wanping said that adopting a low GI diet only makes sense if the intake amount is the same! For example, some people are addicted to starch and must eat it at every meal. In this case, they only need to replace the porridge, noodles, white bread or refined white rice with higher GI values ​​with low GI starches that retain more dietary fiber, such as brown rice, corn, oats, sweet potatoes, yam, pumpkin, etc. This will help slow down the rise in blood sugar and prevent fat accumulation.

It should be noted that when following a low GI diet, don’t just look at the GI value of a single food, but look at the overall food combination of the same meal. Generally speaking, when consuming starchy foods, pairing them with protein foods and vegetables will make the nutrition more complete and will also change the overall GI value of the meal, making it lower. In addition, as long as the intake of green vegetables is doubled, the overall GI value will naturally be lowered, thereby achieving the effect of assisting weight loss.

【Eat simply and lose weight easily】

If you think the above diet weight loss secrets are too complicated, it’s okay. Nutritionist Li Wanping provides a simple method for reference: First, use a fist-sized or rice cooker measuring cup as the portion size standard, and prepare 3 cups of cooked vegetables, 2 cups of protein food, 1 cup of starch food, and 1 cup of fruit food for each meal; then, eat in the order of "vegetables → protein → starch" and fruit as a snack. Usually, even men will say they are full after such a meal. If women cannot finish it, they can try to reduce the three types of food in equal proportions. They can still eat healthily and lose weight!