Wheat, Alcohol and Chocolate are not the devil when it comes to losing weight. Overconsumption of any, or all of them is!

Here at Body Planners we get to hear all sorts of rumours through clients about how too much coffee makes you bloated, or eating too many carrots will give you the complexion of an Umpa-Lumpa. Although the two seem highly unlikely, theres always an emphasis on ‘too much’.

Too much bread will make you gain weight… Too much chocolate will make you gain weight… I even had a client who said ‘I just need to stop drinking!’. It seems we’re all aware of our problems, and what we think is the root cause of our weight issues but the fact is, it isn’t the item of food itself. It is how much you consume, and how you prepare it. For instance a baked potato of a medium size would contain maybe 140kcal, however made into chips and deep fried in a chip pan the same potato would be around the 250kcal to 300kcal mark.

You have probably heard that one of your friends has cut gluten out, or wheat or alcohol or chocolate, and that they are achieving great results in terms of weight loss. This isn’t because they are devil foods and you wont lose weight if you so much as look at them. This is because they are all calorie dense items, some more than others. As we established in another article, the only way to achieve weight loss is to create a calorie deficit which is difficult to impossible by consuming too much of the above. I have heard countless people say that cutting gluten out has resulted in weight loss however, this doesn’t actually mean it is a healthy way of losing weight and there are plenty of items out there which are gluten free which are as bad as the gluten free variant if not worse, in terms of calorie content.

Although cutting out certain foods will give you a crazy calorie deficit it is more advisable to stop kidding yourself that these foods are bad, and simply reduce the amounts of each so they fit your macros. This way you will still achieve your goals in time, and nourish your body with all of the goodness it needs to sustain good health and immune system function.

REMEMBER, there is not one devil food that will make you gain weight, too much of anything will!

Jake