Why Refined Foods are Bad for Weight Loss
Refined foods and low-cal foods have become more and more common today. Refined foods tend to be bad for weight loss because of the way the body responds to them.
Refined Foods and Weight Loss
The body, and its metabolic pathways, is tuned to extract nutrients from food in a very orderly manner. There are really an awful lot of chemical reactions taking place and there is a very fine balance. Since most natural foods contain the nutrients that trigger the process and enable it, there is usually no problem when they are eaten. The nutrients are extracted and used. The calories are converted to energy. The waste material is excreted from the body.
Modern society has messed with this process in many ways. The mass produced and refined foods so common today have, in many cases, refined out some of the natural nutrients that are needed to keep everything working in an orderly fashion. The big problem with this in weight loss programs is that when everything is not working well, the body tends to just convert the food into fat, store it in your thighs, and save it for a time when the proper nutrients are present to use it properly.
Fiber is one of the nutrients needed by the body. Refined foods move through the body very slowly and the metabolism process is really thrown out of balance. This is because fiber is one of the casualties of the refining process. Although most people are aware of the value of natural and unrefined foods, such considerations as time and expense have led us to turn to quick and easy meals regardless of the metabolic impacts they might have on us.
There is a lot of very slick advertising behind the sale of both refined foods and low calorie items such as sugar substitutes. This advertising tends to fool us into thinking that there is an easy way to regulate our bodies and control unwanted weight gain. We are always looking for an easy way out. Refined foods have fit well into our rushed lifestyle and fit well into this idea of finding the easy way. Meanwhile, inside our body, an amazing and complex process is taking place. It is not simple, and we can not control it by being simple either.
There is no easy way to control weight. Refined foods are not good for weight loss programs because they do not contain the things that the body is going to be looking for to complete the process of metabolism.