During the summer ☀, we all take dieting a little more seriously because we all want to be able to fit into that bathing suit 👙. A big part of dieting is avoiding foods that cause weight gain, bloating, and which are very fattening. So here are six fattening foods that should be avoided when you want to lose weight.

Cheese 🐭

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Cheese is one of the most delicious foods we can eat. It can make food taste great. It makes pizza 🍕 everything that it is, so cheese is one of the hardest foods to avoid since restaurants depend heavily on it to flavor their dishes and sauces. So eating out at a typical American restaurant almost always guarantees that you will eat some cheese in your food.

The problem with cheese is that it constantly has listeria in it. It has been on the recall list constantly in recent years, and contamination has been a problem for quite some time now, so much so, that the CDC has even put a warning out for it on their website. 

“Outbreaks of Listeria infections in the 1990s were primarily linked to deli meats and hot dogs. Now, Listeria outbreaks are often linked to dairy products and produce. Investigators have traced recent outbreaks to soft cheeses, celery, sprouts, cantaloupe, and ice cream…Soft cheeses made with unpasteurized milk (also called raw milk) are estimated to be 50 to 160 times more likely to cause Listeria infection than when they are made with pasteurized milk. Although pasteurization of milk kills Listeria, products made from pasteurized milk can still become contaminated…Be aware that Hispanic-style cheeses made from pasteurized milk, such as queso fresco, have caused Listeria infections, most likely because they were contaminated during cheese-making” (“Listeria (Listeriosis)”, CDC Website). 

The other issue with cheese is that it is high in fat, including saturated fat, and it can cause constipation. If your body can’t clean itself out, you will gain weight as your body holds in all its poisons.

Bread 🍞

Photo by Mick Victor from Pexels

Bread and butter are well-loved. Bread is filling because it is a carb. It tastes wonderful when we make sandwiches and hamburgers 🍔 with it. The issue with bread though is that it seems to expand in our stomach, and it can make us tired and lose energy after eating it because it is quite heavy. 

One slice of bread can range in calories from 70 calories to as much as 180 calories. Then the butter and cheese and whatever else you put on the bread triples and quadruples these calories even further, so it really can add up. So, when wanting to lose weight, you should avoid bread and any foods made with it.

🍘 Rice 🍙

When I want to diet, I found that simply cutting rice out of my diet really caused a lot of weight loss pretty quickly. The problem with rice is that it is a carb, and like most carbs, it can be high in calories. 

The heaviness of carbs makes them more filling and we feel better after eating them, but when you want to lose weight, you should consider avoiding rice because one small cup of rice is over 200 calories; this is more than even bread. You also need to consider these calories mixed with the calories in everything else you are eating with it, so it can really add up.

There is now a new problem with rice today as well. It has been discovered that all rice contains arsenic. China is now making fake plastic rice for people to eat. The material that it is made from is questionable, but it is still fake rice, so many countries are getting stricter on Chinese imports and are looking out to confiscate the fake foods that China is creating.

Read the full article here: https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/23/africa/nigeria-fake-plastic-rice/index.html

Pasta/Spaghetti 🍝

Photo by Eneida Nieves from Pexels

Pasta is delicious. The mix of cheese, spices, and fresh vegetables and herbs can make it taste wonderful, but it is this very mix of ingredients that makes pasta so heavy in calories. The carbs from the noodles mixed with the meat, sauce 🍅, and cheese can make pasta a very fattening dish. A small amount of pasta, as little as 2 ounces, is almost 80 calories. When most people eat pasta, they eat a plateful of it so that they can get full, so all the noodles alone without the cheese and meat are hundreds of calories. 

“Japchae (Maangchi Recipe)”, 2010, Gamene, Flickr

If you are dieting but feel too hungry on your diet, then you can go for healthier less fattening options for pasta such as the Korean japchae noodle dish. This dish is made from sweet potato noodles🍠. You can also get noodles made from vegetables. 

Pork 🐷

Pork is very fattening, but it is also well-loved by many people across cultures. In Asia, places like China, the Philippines, and Italy, pork is cheap, flavorful, and in many traditional dishes. There are a lot of issues with pork though. The first is that pork is greasy and often fried so it is high in saturated fats. Pork is also high in calories. A small 3 ounce serving of pork is over 200 calories, so it is not good food for those who are dieting.

Read the full article here: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13143199.bbc-presenter-gains-weight-after-swallowing-tapeworm/

The other issue with pork is that it is often contaminated because it is not cooked long enough to kill the tapeworms, parasitic nematodes, and worms that are in it. So be careful where you order pork from. As a rule, I avoid pork, but if you do eat pork, I recommend avoiding it at Chinese restaurants and other restaurants where the people are culturally known for eating undercooked meats. 

Beef and Steak 🐮

Not everyone is into beef or steak; in part, because it is expensive, but also because it is quite heavy and hard to chew. So a steak is easy for some people to avoid. Steak is also high in calories. A small 3 ounce serving of beef is over 200 calories. Steak is also high in saturated fat and it needs a lot of salt to make it flavorful. Most restaurants use cheap bad salts to cook with so the salt content alone makes steak an unhealthy choice.

Final Thoughts

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