There is always a new fad in the diet and weight-loss industry in the way of a pill or a tonic. Today, however, trends seem to be heading back to the direction of what nature intended for us – good, wholesome foods. We hear a lot of talk about whole foods, but what exactly is a whole food anyway?
Whole foods are foods that are eaten just as nature intended them, without any change or processing. Every food designed by nature has a purpose and a cause and whole foods are excellent foods to look at when seeking to lose weight.
There are several things that whole foods do not or should not contain. For example, oatmeal can be either a processed food or natural whole food. If it is quick or instant oatmeal, you can be sure that it is not a whole food and that something was taken out of or even added to it in order to make it processed. Steel-cut oats or rolled oats would be, in fact, a whole food.
In addition, looking for something that has been added to your food choice would be a way of discerning if a food was whole or processed. If there is an added ingredient such as sugar, food dye, chemicals, artificial fillers or a name that you cannot even pronounce, you can be sure that these are not whole foods.
Some great examples of whole foods are foods such as bananas, grapefruits, tomatoes, potatoes, and pears. These food items are provided by Mother Nature and are whole in their entirety as nature intended them to be.
Root plants such as beets and carrots are another good example of whole foods. Think of any fruit that you can pick yourself straight from nature such as an orange or an apple and a vegetable that you might grow in your very own garden and you will have an idea of what a whole food really is.
Whole foods help you to lose weight by the simple fact that they were designed to be absorbed and digested by your body. Body parts such as the liver can break down enzymes; blood cells can turn food into energy and so on and so forth. By eating whole foods in their natural state, you allow your body the privilege to work exactly the way it was intended.
When you put something foreign into your body, on the other hand, such as sugar or salt and fat, you can make your body go into flight or fight mode. Your body will attack these substances and work twice as hard with no benefit whatsoever.
Eating whole foods allows your metabolism and your energy as well as your digestion to work the way nature intended, thus allowing for the proper absorption and maintenance of the weight you lost in the first place.
