Weight-Loss Diet question about nutrition facts?

Weight-Loss
rockgangster

rockgangster

New member
What am I looking for and what am I not looking for on the nutrition facts of anything I eat? I have been doing a lot of workouts and trying to get a diet ready, what things should I not be looking for that are usually on the facts?
 
for weight loss you need to be looking at a single thing: kcal / 100g or as it is often in the states kcal / serving. if / serving, be aware that on most products a serving is some ridiculous arbitrary amount chosen to make the product look "healthy" on the nutritional facts sheet.

The only thing that really matters in weight loss is how many kcal you eat, and how many you use during the day.
 
Calories are the important thing for weight loss, but you will also want to make sure you are getting a reasonably balanced diet. It really depends on how much time and effort you want to spend on your meal plan. I take a fairly minimalist approach by trying to stick to the approximate number of servings of the various food groups as recommended by the USDA. For me, it is just too time consuming to try to track the macro and micro nutrients in any great detail.
When shopping for prepared foods, there are certain things I look for in products that I haven't used before. If it is canned food, I will look at the sodium, because canned food seems to have a lot of that. If I would get half the daily recommended limit of sodium in one bowl of soup, I'll probably buy something different.
I use bread and cereal products, along with fruits and vegetables, to get the requirement of fiber. So when I shop for bread and cereal, fiber is one thing I look for - that and grams of sugar. I also look for and avoid any food containing hydrogenated vegetable oil. That's about all I look for on the nutrition label.
 
Calories are the most important thing in weight loss ... yes. Absolutely. Whatever nutrition you get, if you eat more calories than you burn, then yeah, you'll gain weight.

However, within that guideline, it's a good idea to make sure you're eating HEALTHY calories vs. unhealthy calories. I mean you could lose weight eating 1500 calories of cookies per day, but you'd be really malnourished and sick with dull skin, fatigue, brittle hair and nails, etc.

Or you could lose weight eating lean protein (approx 1g per pound of lean body weight), lots of veggies, some fruit, healthy fats (like olive oil, avocado, nuts and seeds, etc.), and finally complex carbs and whole grains.
 
If your just starting to become aware of the labels, don't overwhelm yourself with more then the kcals and match it to your allowance per meal/day.

When you get a bit more confidence then I;d start to be concerned with the protein (getting enough) and the carbohydrates which sugars (limiting it) as well as the saturated fats (limiting as close to 0g as possible) and sodium or salt (limiting). Your protein is needed to build muscles to keep your body healthy and have a healthy working system, your carbs which sugars will if overeaten lead to a blood sugar high then fall and this can make you more hungry and make it ahrder to keep to a calorie limit. Your saturated fats are not considered healthy to your body so best avoided but wont kill you if you eat them, trans fats if listed are bad bad bad ans try to stay well clear and the sodium or salt- well its easy to overeat these and whilst it is important to get enough, its far easier to overeat sodium as its in so many types of food. Salt and sodium are different things, they both boil down to the same thing but 1gram of salt is not the same as 1 gram of sodium. Sorry I don't have the correct recommended daily amounts for sodium but 4-5grams of salt a say is the max recommended level.
 
oh, I didn't at all mean to insinuate that calories was all that mattered to living, but when it comes to weight loss thermodynamics rule :) the good part, to me at least, is that it is easier to feel full with less calories by eating healthy food.

Also, when it comes to salt in food, fatty acids etc. realize that there is none of those things (perhaps maybe qualifiedly so except transfat) that compares to getting good regular exercise when it comes to coronary health etc. But it is indeed good, for most of the western population, to reduce salt and saturated fat intake :)

But as others suggest, for starters, don't worry so much about eeeeverything on the labels.

I'd say the first thing was to get used to recalculating "serving" to "100g" to be able to effectively compare things, and also to remember to sort of remember that some foods might have a high calorie / 100g, but be very light therefore actually being low in caloric density volume wise while being high mass wise :)
 
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