When Low-Calorie Foods Ruin Your Diet
Low-calorie foods are in vogue these days. Sure, at first glance they might seem like a good idea, but sometimes they are as silly as the thought, “If I cut this cake in half, I can eat twice as much.” Here’s how to tell when a low-calorie option is the right choice.
First, understand that marketers don’t always care about your best interests . Creating a “low-calorie” alternative is more about sales than consumer health. When you count calories, there is something even more important than the absolute amount of food – what I call the ratio of calories to satiety.
Calorie-Saturation Ratio Tutorial
You’ve probably seen 100-calorie packs of popular foods. Of course, they have fewer calories, but they don’t necessarily increase your “satiety” (or satiety). In fact, eat one of these packs and tell me that after that you are not really hungry. In contrast, an eight-ounce chicken breast contains more than double the calories, but you may feel full even before you finish.
When dieting, think of calories as a budget where your goal is to maximize satiety at the end of the day. You should only choose the lower calorie option if it maximizes your satiety or “satiety.” Of course, foods like olive oil can be high in calories per pound for pound, but they significantly increase the feeling of fullness, resulting in fewer calories.
However, satiety is not only physical; there is also a mental component. After all, you cannot “get enough” if you feel like you are constantly deprived of food choices.
Mental satiety versus physical satiety
Even if you are not physically hungry, you may still have some cravings . For example, you may want something sweet even if you are already full. In this case, sugar-free jelly can be a great option because you will satisfy your cravings for something sweet while saving hundreds of calories.
This is when the lower calorie option is a good choice. In fact, if you drink four or more full-calorie sodas a day to calm your sugar cravings, you can lose almost one pound every week without any other changes in your diet, simply by satisfying your cravings with the zero-calorie option. …
This may also be the case where the 100 calorie option might actually be beneficial. For example, let’s say that you are more than anything else in the world that you crave for a little Oreos flavor. If the 100-calorie Oreos pack is causing that mental satiety, that might be a smart move, too. It all depends on the context.
Be forewarned. Sometimes, this decision can reduce the overall feeling of fullness. For example, consuming a 100-calorie pack of Oreos increases your appetite because afterwards you feel “unsatisfied,” or it acts like a snack and flips a switch in your brain when you crave more. It is important to be alert and understand the contexts in which a low-calorie diet appears to be beneficial.
Where to go from here
Realizing that the total number of calories in a food is not necessarily the most important factor when making decisions, here are some things to consider when deciding how to spend your calorie budget:
- More important than calories is the macronutrient ratio in your meals. There are studies that show that increasing protein and decreasing carbohydrates will make you fuller on your diet. While anyone on a diet will benefit from a higher protein content , you probably want to play around with this ratio a bit.
- There is a proverb called “Never trust a salesperson,” and nowhere is it more applicable than in the food industry. Always keep this adage in mind when making decisions based on food labels. The people who create the low-calorie versions are marketers, not nutritionists . Their main goal is to buy their product, not help you lose weight.
- Never call food “good or bad,” instead think of food with a ROI concept in mind . There is a context in which a low-calorie option might be good, but it depends on the person, situation, environment, cravings, and a host of other factors. The only way to know for sure is to learn about yourself and practice mindfulness.
The last point is especially important. Many people reading this article will intuitively raise their hands in the air and say: “Zomg diet soda and Oreos are very unhealthy and you just shouldn’t eat them.” But this is a recipe for dieting. Instead, stay flexible in your decisions and food choices with a flexible diet. From an Evidence Magazine article on flexible dieting :
Lyle MacDonald was probably the first to popularize the flexible diet concept. MacDonald describes two main reasons dieters fail:
- Be too absolute and expect perfection.
- Focusing only on the short term.
A flexible diet is essentially the opposite of it – it is less absolute and focuses on both the long and short term.
By using the decision guidelines above, you will know exactly when to make the wise decision whether to switch to a low-calorie option or consciously indulge in a nutritious treat instead.