There Are No Weight Loss Foods

I talk about this concept in my book, The Three Rules to Lose Weight and Keep It Off Forever, Second Edition. As you can imagine, I have spoken to patients about weight loss hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. On websites and podcasts, you will see claims of various foods causing weight loss. There are no weight loss foods. None. Certain foods cause more weight gain than others, but no foods, by themselves cause weight loss.

It is what you remove from your diet that makes the difference. Often, when I asked a patient how they were doing on their weight loss plans, they would say, “Great. I am eating salads and vegetables.“ I tried to be nice, but eating salads and vegetables doesn‘t mean that they are doing well on their plan.

What do I mean? If I eat salad for breakfast and broccoli for lunch, you don‘t know anything about dinner and snacks. What if I eat a Baconator and cheesecake for dinner, I will not lose weight that day. I would probably gain weight. And if I ate two salads and the Baconator and cheesecake, I would lose more than if I had only one salad. A salad without blue cheese dressing, bacon, or cheese may not have a lot of calories, but it has some, and two salads have more than one.

There are only two ways to lose weight. 1) Exercise like crazy. If you run ten miles a day, and I‘m not suggesting it, you will probably lose weight no matter what you eat. 2) Remove something from your diet. For most of us, removing something from your diet is the only way.

Historically, we lost weight when we ate less, removing calories from our diet. Since we don‘t tolerate hunger well, I recommend removing certain carbohydrates from the diet. In the book, I call these bad carbs. If you remove all the bad carbs from your diet, you will lose weight. Yesterday, my wonderful wife and I had lunch at Café Zupas. I had never been there before, and I highly recommend it. I ordered a Power Bowl. It had perfectly cooked roast chicken, warm vegetables, pepitas, and a hard-boiled egg. I didn‘t know for sure what was in the dressing, so I didn‘t have it.

I am confident I didn‘t gain weight, and if I were overweight, I might have lost weight yesterday. But if I had eaten the rolls or chocolate-dipped strawberries that were offered, then I might have gained weight. Bad carbs, like those in bread and most candy, will cause weight gain. Adding a Power Bowl will make it worse. A candy bar and salad have more calories than a candy bar alone. The sugar in the candy revs up your weight-gain hormones, and calories get stored as fat.

If you‘re wondering, Wegovy (the same medication as Ozempic) and the other new weight-loss medications largely work by decreasing our appetite, removing calories from the diet. No medication causes weight loss without decreasing our calorie intake. You can eliminate your bad carb intake on your own for free.

An analogy I like is alcohol addiction. If your loved one were trying to give up alcohol and you asked how they were doing, you wouldn‘t be happy if their only answer was, “I‘m drinking juice.” You‘d want to know if they were drinking whiskey also. It sounds silly, but it‘s the same thing.

Many people fail in their efforts to lose weight despite giving up a lot of the foods they enjoy. The main reason is they underestimate the importance of a few bad carbs. Carbs are so crucial that a roll or a cookie in the evening will negate all your efforts that day. Losing weight is very difficult. You must give up something. You can give up a lot of calories and be hungry or give up food with bad carbs. I recommend giving up the bad carbs, leaving many great things to eat. Either way, there are no shortcuts and no weight loss foods.