Did you know that losing 5% of your body weight can work wonders for almost every single aspect of your body? Losing this relatively small amount of weight can reduce the strain you put on your joints. It can also lower your blood pressure. It can even bring down your chances of having to deal with diabetes or cancer. Losing weight isn’t always easy. But you can do it if you find the right foods to cut out for weight loss and remove them from your diet. It’ll help you improve your health in ways you wouldn’t have imagined.
Here are five foods you should say goodbye to when weight loss is on your mind.
1. Potato Chips
If we were to ask you to guess the top five foods to cut out for weight loss, this would land somewhere near the top of the list. It has turned into the quintessential “this has got to go!” food item for those dieting.
There’s a good reason for that, too. Chips have more calories than many other snack foods, and it’s easy to eat more of them at once than you planned. If you’re someone who is always reaching for the bag of potato chips in your cupboard, stop and see how much weight you lose.
2. White Bread
Bread, in general, isn’t bad for you. In fact, whole grain bread is great for you when you’re trying to eat healthier. But you should keep white bread out of your kitchen when you’ve made it your mission to lose weight. It has a lot of sugar in it and is highly refined. Go with whole grain bread instead if you’re going to have any bread in your home while trying to lose weight.
3. Cookies
Yes, cookies are delicious. It’s why they’re found in so many American homes. But they’re also not good for you at all in most cases. They have a high-calorie count like potato chips, and some of them also have trans fats in them. And did we mention how much sugar they have in them? Cookies have a lot of sugar in them, and that sugar can hurt your waistline. Find healthier snacks than cookies to chow down on when you’re dieting.
4. Pizza
One survey after another has shown that pizza is America’s favorite food. People can’t get enough of it—and it shows in the form of the country’s rising obesity rate. Losing weight will be almost impossible if you’re eating pizza every few days or, worse, almost every day. It’s something you’ll need to stop eating more than once or twice a month if you’re going to have a chance to lose weight.
5. Ice Cream
Like many of the other foods to cut out for weight loss, ice cream is high in sugar, fat, and calories. It’s also very hard to stop eating once you pull out a bowl. If you’re going to eat ice cream at all, you should try to eat ice cream you make at home yourself. It’ll give you more control over which ingredients you put in it. But in a perfect world, you should steer clear of eating ice cream altogether if you want to stand a chance during your next weight loss challenge.
It’s not going to be easy to eliminate all these foods to cut out for weight loss at once. You might want to consider cutting them one at a time to make the transition easier. But you’re going to find it hard to lose weight if you don’t give these foods the heave-ho. They’ll continue to send your weight soaring in the wrong direction.