There is a close relationship between body weight and metabolism. In simple words, metabolism is the rate at which your body converts food to energy.
So the faster your metabolism is, the more calories you are burning. Inversely, if your body is not burning calories at a sufficient rate, the food you are eating is not being efficiently used for energy and this can result in excess pounds piling on.
Your metabolism naturally slows down with age, but there are times when a slow metabolism could be attributed to wrong choices of food.
If you are trying to lose those last few excess pounds, ditch these foods to achieve your weight loss goals, and feel great.
1. White Bread: Made from refined flour, it’s a staple breakfast in many households, but do avoid it to keep metabolism robust. In fact, stay away from all foods that are made out of refined flour.
2. Alcohol: Alcohol is known to slow down metabolism quite significantly and consumption of the beverage in excess is guaranteed to mess up the metabolic rate quite severely. So we must watch out to ensure that our occasional indulgence does not go out of hand and make it extra difficult to lose weight than it already is.
3/Fruits and Vegetables sprayed with Pesticides: Fruits and veggies that have been raised using pesticides and miscellaneous insecticides have been shown to a great impact on metabolism. Hence, switch to organic produce and steer away from food laced with pesticides.
4. Flavoured Yogurt: Flavoured yogurt has loads of sugar with high number of calories, and with regular consumption, it can lower metabolism.
5. Artificial Fruit Juices: Artificial fruit juices are the worst when it comes to lowering metabolic rate. They contain too many artificial sweeteners, artificial colors and added chemical preservatives that lower metabolism and lead to rapid weight gain.
6. Soda/ Soft Drinks: Soda and soft drinks can do worse for our health, totally avoid soft drinks and soda, and switch to good old water.
7. Refrigerated/Frozen Food Items: Although in comparison to all the food items listed above, frozen food contains lesser amount of calories, most of them have preservatives, sugar, sodium, and hydrogenated trans-fat that slow down our metabolic rates.
8. Regularized Sea Salt: Instead of regular iodized salt, certain other salt varieties can affect thyroid hormone and impact metabolism. Cut down salt consumption, but do not give it up completely.
9. Candy Bars: They are almost entirely made of sugar and artificial preservatives, and affect metabolism in a negative way.
10. Junk Food: Junk food such as fried items and excessively oily food items not only add to our pesky pounds but they act to inhibit our normal rate of metabolism, making it difficult for us to lose weight.
11. Artificial Sweeteners: A lot of us replace regular sugar with artificial sweeteners, but some of them slow down metabolism, and can even alter the gut bacteria, raising inflammation in the body.
12. Canned Fruit: Exotic fruits dipped in sugary syrup with high fructose corn syrup is considered healthy! It’s absolutely not because the high sugar content elevates blood sugar, raises inflammation, has a lot of calories, and affects metabolism in a negative way.
So, this was the list of 12 food items that are bad for your metabolism and reduce all our efforts to lose weight utter futility. We hope that you found the article useful and informative.
The Final Note
Our health is a culmination of the several choices we make every day when it comes to the food we eat. You may be doing all the right things in terms of exercise, sleep, and leading a stress-free life and yet not arrive at your weight loss goals because of a few bad food choices that have led to a slower metabolism.
It is crucial for our metabolism to be running well for our overall health and well being.
The good news is that most of these mistakes are easily rectifiable and as long as you are committed to making these right choices a part of your life, your health goals are well within reach.