Can eating boiled vegetables help you lose weight? 7 weight loss rumors that you believe are harming your health

Author: Ruan Guangfeng, Deputy Director of Kexin Food and Health Information Exchange Center

Reviewer: Zhang Yu, researcher at Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, doctor of medicine

gossip

There are many weight loss methods on the Internet, for example, eating "cold rice" and other cold staple foods can help you lose weight; eating only boiled vegetables can help you lose weight; eating fruits is low in calories and can help you lose weight; eating spicy food can help you lose weight; eating certain foods, the more you eat, the faster you lose weight; eating cheat meals can improve your basal metabolism; eating a banana after a meal can offset calories and absorb fat; the "liquid fasting diet" can help you lose weight by drinking. Are they all reliable?

analyze

According to the "China Residents' Nutrition and Chronic Disease Status Report 2020", the overweight and obesity rate among Chinese adult residents has exceeded 50%, and the obesity rate has exceeded 16%.

Obesity increases the risk of many chronic diseases, so more and more people are beginning to pay attention to the topic of weight loss. There are also many weight loss methods on the Internet, such as the rumors listed above.

Can these methods really help you lose weight? Let me explain them to you one by one today.

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1. Can you lose weight by eating only boiled vegetables?

Conclusion: Eating only boiled vegetables may not necessarily help you lose weight, but it may lead to malnutrition and harm your health.

Losing weight requires a reasonable diet structure and balanced nutrition intake, and a single food is difficult to meet this requirement.

Analysis : Compared with other cooking methods such as stir-frying, braising, and stewing, boiling vegetables can usually reduce the intake of fat and calories because it does not require the addition of a large amount of oil for cooking. This helps to reduce its calories, so many people say that doing so can help lose weight.

Actually, not necessarily.

The key to losing weight is to control the balance of energy income and expenditure. Only when energy intake is less than energy expenditure can you lose weight. If you only eat boiled vegetables, but if you eat a lot and also eat a lot of vegetables with high energy content, such as potato chips, yam slices, lotus root slices and other vegetables with high starch content, the energy is also high and you will gain weight.

Moreover, if you only eat boiled vegetables and no meat, eggs, milk, or fruits, boiled vegetables cannot provide all the nutrients needed by the body, such as high-quality protein and fat, which may lead to malnutrition and affect your health. Healthy weight loss requires not only controlling calorie intake, but also ensuring a variety of foods, including meat, eggs, and milk, to ensure adequate nutrition.

In general, eating only boiled vegetables may not necessarily help you lose weight, and eating like this is also very unhealthy. To lose weight, you must also ensure a reasonable diet structure and balanced nutritional intake.

2. Fruits are low in calories, can eating fruits help you lose weight?

Conclusion: Eating fruit may not necessarily help you lose weight. Even if the fruit is not high in calories, eating too much will make you gain weight, not to mention that there are many fruits that are not low in calories.

Analysis : Fruits are generally low in calories and rich in fiber and water, which makes them one of the ideal choices for weight loss.

However, simply eating fruits to lose weight may not necessarily make your dream come true.

First of all, although fruits are relatively low in calories, most of them still contain a certain amount of carbohydrates, otherwise why are they so sweet? If you really eat a lot, for example, if you eat three or four pounds of grapes and strawberries every day, it will also cause weight gain. Moreover, the energy of some fruits is not low at all, such as the calories of durian is 150 kcal/100g, and the calories of avocado is 171 kcal/100g. Eating more will not make you lose weight.

Secondly, like vegetables, both fruits and vegetables are healthy when viewed individually, but if you rely solely on fruits to lose weight for a long time, you may suffer from malnutrition and physical health problems. The key to a healthy diet is a variety of foods and a balanced diet.

In general, losing weight does not mean that you can eat all kinds of fruits without worry. Eating too much will make you fat. Moreover, some fruits are not low in calories, which will make you gain weight more easily.

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3. Can eating spicy food help you lose weight?

Conclusion: Eating spicy food may not necessarily help you lose weight, and many spicy foods are high in energy and delicious, but may even make you fatter.

Analysis: Many people feel hot, flushed, sweaty, and red in the face after eating spicy food...which is very similar to the feeling after exercise. They believe that eating spicy food promotes the body's metabolism, helps consume more calories, and can help lose weight.

In fact, this kind of sweating and burning calories through exercise are completely different things.

When people eat chili peppers, they feel the spiciness, not heat, but pain. The main component of chili peppers is capsaicin, which stimulates nerves and causes the body temperature to rise after the human body ingests chili peppers. Sweating is mainly for heat dissipation, which is completely different from exercising to metabolize and consume fat.

Although capsaicin can also help burn calories and promote metabolism, the amount of energy consumed is negligible if you only eat a small amount of food. Moreover, many spicy foods are high in oil and salt, and taste good, so it is easy to eat too much. Think about the popular Sichuan cuisine, spicy crayfish, and spicy bullfrog. Do you think you can lose weight by eating these delicious foods every day?

In general, the superstition that eating spicy food can help you lose weight may make you fatter.

4. The more you eat a certain kind of food, the faster you lose weight?

Conclusion: There is no food that can guarantee that the more you eat, the faster you lose weight. The key to weight loss still lies in the difference between overall energy intake and expenditure.

Analysis: The key to weight loss is to control overall calorie intake and ensure that the energy consumed is greater than the energy taken in. Even some foods that are thought to help with weight loss, such as vegetables or fruits, can lead to excessive calorie intake and ultimately weight gain if eaten too much.

Moreover, eating only one kind of food is not healthy either. It cannot provide all the nutrients needed by the body and may lead to the lack of other nutrients, which in turn leads to malnutrition and affects health. For example, eating only fruits can easily lead to a lack of high-quality protein in the body, which can easily lead to health problems such as hair loss, sagging skin, and menstrual disorders in women.

There is no food that can guarantee that the more you eat, the faster you will lose weight. Weight loss is a complex process that requires comprehensive consideration of factors such as diet, exercise, and lifestyle. To lose weight effectively, the key is to control overall calorie intake, maintain a reasonable diet structure, and exercise moderately. A reasonable diet structure includes a variety of foods, appropriate calorie intake, and sufficient nutrients. Moderate exercise can increase energy consumption and improve body metabolism.

In general, if you want to lose weight, you can't rely on eating only one kind of food.

5. Can eating a cheat meal increase your basal metabolism?

Conclusion: Long-term reliance on cheat meals may lead to weight rebound and metabolic problems and is not recommended as a weight loss strategy.

Analysis: A cheat meal is a high-calorie, high-carb meal that is chosen at a relatively fixed time after a relatively low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb diet for a period of time. Some people believe that regular low-calorie diets will lead to a decrease in basal metabolic rate, while cheat meals can stimulate metabolism by increasing calorie intake, thereby increasing the basal metabolic rate and achieving weight loss.

However, scientific research has not clearly proven that cheating meals can increase basal metabolism. In fact, excessive intake of high-calorie, high-carbohydrate meals may lead to excess energy and ultimately weight gain. Although cheating meals may lead to a temporary increase in metabolic rate in the short term, long-term reliance on cheating meals may cause the body's calorie regulation mechanism to become unregulated, thereby affecting the basal metabolic rate.

In addition, cheat meals often disrupt daily dieting rules, which may affect people's ability to control their diet, increase the risk of overeating, and ultimately lead to weight rebound.

Therefore, cheat meals are not a scientific and effective weight loss strategy, and it is not recommended to rely on such meals for long-term weight loss.

In general, cheat meals are not a scientifically effective weight loss strategy and can really trick you.

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6. Eat XX food after a meal

Can it offset calories and absorb fat?

Conclusion: Eating certain foods after a meal does not offset calories or absorb fat. It will only further increase energy intake and make you more likely to gain weight.

Analysis : Some people say that eating something else after a meal can offset the calories of food and absorb fat. For example, a cup of yogurt after hot pot or a banana after barbecue can offset the calories and prevent obesity.

This is complete wishful thinking.

You should know that foods such as yogurt and bananas do not have any special calorie-offsetting or fat-absorbing effects. Moreover, their calories are not low . For example, a 200 ml cup of yogurt has about 150 kcal, and a 100 g banana has about 97 kcal. Eating them will only increase energy intake and make you gain weight more easily.

In general, eating certain foods after a meal will not offset calories or absorb fat, but will only further increase energy intake, making your weight loss plan worse.

7. “Liquid fasting diet”, will you lose weight just by drinking it?

Conclusion: A "liquid fast" is an extreme method of weight loss that usually involves drinking only water or other liquids and no solid food. While it may result in short-term weight loss, this method of weight loss carries serious health risks.

Analysis: The "liquid fast" is an extreme weight loss method that usually involves drinking only water or other low-calorie liquids and not eating solid food for a period of time. The principle of this method is to restrict calorie intake, thereby causing weight loss. Since water and other liquids do not have the same calories as solid food, they may cause weight loss in the short term.

However, the liquid fasting diet has serious health risks . First, long-term reliance on liquid intake alone can lead to malnutrition, because drinking water can only provide water to the body, and other nutrients are gone. The body does not have the nutrients such as protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, etc. that it needs to survive, which can easily lead to metabolic disorders, decreased immunity, muscle loss and other health problems. Secondly, if you only drink water, it will also affect the body's water and electrolyte balance, leading to dehydration and other health problems. Therefore, it is not advisable to rely on the liquid fasting diet to lose weight for a long time.

In general, the "liquid fasting diet" poses serious health risks and is not advisable.

Planning and production

Source: Scientific rumor refutation

Author: Ruan Guangfeng, Director of the Science and Technology Department of the Kexin Food and Nutrition Information Exchange Center

Review丨Zhang Yu, Researcher, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Doctor of Medicine

Planning丨Zhong Yanping

Editor: Zhong Yanping

The article is produced by Science Popularization China-Starry Sky Project. Please indicate the source when reprinting.

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