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Avoid White Bread to Lose Weight

Here is the 97th article in our new series of fully 100 Weight Loss Tips posts that are cleverly designed to bring you a brand new top tip on how to lose weight.

The last two posts looked at both sugar and sugar substitutes, but the first of these tips, #100 looked at the disadvantages of eating white pasta.

So in this post, we take the other side of the "refined wheat products" coin and look at the health disadvantages, potential problems and even dangers of eating white bread and how it can impact your attempts to lose weight.

There is an old saying that goes: "The whiter the bread, the quicker you're dead!"

The scary part of that saying is that there is some truth to it. Did you know that the white bread most of us eat actually is not good for you?

Yep, it’s the truth, just ask any diabetic how good it is and you'll get more than you bargained for!

Why White Bread is Bad For You

A lot of research over the years has shown quite clearly that people who consume more refined products in their diet (such as white bread and white pasta) are much more likely to have excess belly fat.

Why is that?

Simple!

By eating these refined wheat based foods, your body does not get what it needs in the way of nutrients and fiber.

The food industry is a completely different entity to the health industry, so don't expect them to agree with any of this, okay? You can never trust that the food industry has your best interests at heart, even though they go to great lengths to convince you otherwise.

White bread contains no goodness whatsoever, so when you eat it as part of your own diet, all you do is fill up on worthless empty calories and bulk. Worse, the high levels of high glycemic carbohydrates and starches in white bread combine to clog up your arteries with excess LDL (bad) cholesterol as the body tries to metabolize it.

What it ends up giving your body is more stored up fat which is generally kept in your belly area.

The Best Alternative

If you absolutely and positively have to eat bread as part of your regular diet, the best type of bread to eat is wholegrain, or wholemeal bread which is made from wholemeal flour. Wholemeal flour contains the whole wheat grain including all the nutrients, proteins, vitamins and minerals as well as lots of good, natural fiber from the bran, which is the husk of the wheat seed.

All of this goodness is stripped from white, refined flour leaving a sterile, nutrient and fiber starved bulking agent.

If you find that you are so hooked on white bread that the thought of making the change to wholemeal is putting you off, you can still get the (illusion of) flavor of white bread by switching to whole grain white bread. This is made from a mixture of wholemeal and white refined flour and contains some of the goodness of wholemeal bread but retains the texture and blandness of white bread.

Sara Lee is a well known manufacturer of this type of bread, but you will find several good ones in the stores these days. They are sometimes labeled "wheatmeal bread."

After a while, you will be able to move on from wholegrain white to full wholemeal, whole wheat or whole grain and once you do, you'll wonder why you ever ate white bread.

After eating wholemeal bread for some time now as part of my own healthy diet, I find that if I am given white bread, say in a restaurant, it is almost tasteless and very bland as well as having a pasty, unhealthy texture to it. I actually don't like it at all now. You'll probably be the same.

Weight Loss and the Daily Loaf

So what does this all mean for those trying to achieve weight loss? White bread fills you up with stodge, clogs up your arteries and deposits fat on your belly, which are all things you do not want.

Also, it contains no dietary fiber, which is bad for your colon, making it work harder to shift waste products from your body. On top of all that, it slows down your metabolism, which compounded with the above all creates an environment for weight gain.

Whole grain bread, on the other hand, is far better for you in that it provides your body with nutrients, assuming that you have to eat bread at all. The fiber it contains helps your body to metabolize food more efficiently and dispose of waste products better, which makes for a healthy (and happy) colon.

This, when a part of a wholesome, healthy diet, also leads to weight loss, as your metabolism is more efficient and your body is healthier and happier.

Weight loss tips number 96 will follow in the next post!

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Posted on Tue, 09 Jun 2009 in Top 100 Weight Loss Tips | 2 Comments