5 Foods to Avoid to Stay in Shape

Once you’ve learned the seven food classes to combine for a healthy diet, you should also know the foods to avoid to stay in shape.

Your diet affects your body metabolism, your fitness, and your mental alertness. These spin off into other pivotal areas including your finances, your productivity (at work), your assimilation rate, and your relationships.

So if you’re watching your weight, how do you restrain from indulging in unhealthy meals? What non-diet factors can affect weight gain? This article discusses this and more.

Foods to avoid to stay in shape:

• Sugary beverages
• Fried foods
• Processed snacks
• Baked foods
• Alcohol

How Eating Affects Your Body Fitness

People defer to junk meals for numerous reasons: health conditions (like depression), eating disorders (like bulimia), or a reaction to a biological or emotional experience.

For Lexlee Hudson, it was the latter. Lexlee had been an athlete on her high school basketball team. That was until she suffered multiple injuries, ending her basketballing dream. Now that she wasn’t running up and down a court, Lexlee didn’t have a counter-system for processing the junk foods she ate. By the time she got to college, she was eating lots of junk food and was constantly stressed.

In one year, she’d gained 180 lbs and had begun to deal with PCOS. Exhausted, Lexlee decided to just deal with it. She got on a fitness plan her mom had used. This meant a change in diet, swapping her pizza meals for healthy snacks, and going on to shed the entire weight she’d added plus change.

Learn more about Lexlee’s fitness story here.

Chelize, who graduated from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, says she’d always been overweight. But the birth of her second child triggered post-partum depression, which got her adding more weight, turning to food as a coping mechanism.

Seeing a friend lose weight inspired her to commence her weight loss journey. She created a workout routine, developed a meal plan, and began to cook her meals herself. In nine months, she’d lost 32.9kg, hitting her desired body shape.

Learn more about Chelize’s fitness journey here.

Eating isn’t solely responsible for your fitness. However, numerous studies, including one by Harvard School of Public Health, imply that people who consumed processed foods gained more wait than expected when tracked over four years.

Knowing this, let’s consider the food classes to avoid to stay in shape.

Food Classes to Avoid to Stay in Shape

Here are five categories of foods to avoid to stay in shape.

Sugary Beverages

Sugary beverages are drinks that contain high amounts of added sugars, like soda, fruit juices, energy drinks, and sweetened teas. There’s no nice way to say this: too much Coke isn’t good for you. It’s not just CocaCola but the entire army. And before you pad yourself because you only drink Malta Guinness, a 33cl can of non-alcoholic malt contains about 36g of sugar, which is just a bit less than the volume of sugar present in Coke.

Regular consumption of sugary beverages can lead to weight gain because they add extra calories without making you feel full. This is why you can empty a chilled bottle of soda after a long work-day, and then get hungry shortly after.  The more you take sugary beverages, the more susceptible you are to obesity, diabetes, and other health problems.

Tip: Instead of sugary beverages, consider healthier alternatives, such as water, coconut water, zobo (hibiscus tea), and fresh fruit smoothies without added sugar. These options are refreshing and better for your health.

Fried Foods

Are fried foods really harmful or are we being “overly strict”? Harvard Health Publishing, in a report, stated that “People who ate the most fried foods each week were 28% more likely to have heart problems, compared with people who ate the least. Each additional 114-gram (4-ounce) serving of fried foods per week bumped up overall risk by 3%.”

The first problem with consuming an unchecked quantity of fried foods is fat accumulation. When we eat foods cooked in vegetable oil, the oil adds extra fat to the food. Inside our body, this fat gets broken down and absorbed into our bloodstream. If we eat more fat than our body needs for energy, it gets stored as body fat. This can happen because our body likes to save extra energy for later. So, eating a lot of fried foods can make us gain weight because we’re taking in more fat than we burn off through activities and exercise.

Then, there’s the rampant usage of unhealthy cooking oil in Nigeria. In 2019, over 70% of vegetable oils in Nigeria were unbranded or adulterated, causing food poisoning. These oils are high in saturated and trans fats and contribute to weight gain.

You can moderate your oil intake by purchasing government-approved oils that pose zero risk to your health.

Tip: To moderate your consumption of fried foods, try alternative cooking methods like grilling, baking, or boiling. Instead of sitting to a meal of fried yam, fried plantains, and fried fish in stew, you can boil your yam and bake your plantains.

And when you do fry – because we can’t completely do away with frying, can we? – use healthy cooking oils such as Sunola oil, Kings vegetable oil, or Golden Terra soya oil.

Processed Snacks

Processed snacks are foods that have been changed from their original form through methods like frying, baking, or adding chemicals. Examples include chips, cookies, and sugary bars. They come in colorful packages and can be grabbed on the go, though this often results in grabbing extra pounds if eaten too often. Additionally, these snacks are often loaded with sugar and salt. Excess sugar can lead to weight gain and increase your risk of diabetes, while too much salt can cause high blood pressure.

Processed snacks also add no vitamin or mineral value. So two small bags of potato chips (or 56 grams) will supply you about 300 calories, which is the same equivalent you’d get from two sticks of bananas and a handful of groundnuts. The divergence though is that the process of preparing potato chips strips it of a bulk of nutrients. A snack of bananas and groundnuts, meanwhile, supplements your potassium, fiber, and protein intake.

Tip: Opt for nutrient-rich snacks like oranges, bananas, and apples; these are natural, nutritious, and provide essential vitamins and minerals. Nuts and seeds, such as groundnuts (peanuts) and cashews are good sources of protein and healthy fats. You can add these items to your food pantry within twenty-four hours when you shop with PricePally.

Vegetable sticks like carrots and cucumbers make great snacks. They are low in calories and high in vitamins and minerals. Plain, low-fat yogurt is another good snack choice, as it is rich in protein and calcium. You can add a bit of honey or fresh fruit for extra flavor.

Baked Foods

Let’s agree to disagree: we can’t completely remove baked foods from our diet. Even if you adopt a “no pastries” diet, what about bread? Or cake? So why are baked foods one of the foods to avoid?

One, keep in mind that baked foods are high in calories, contain a lot of sugars and fats, and are low in essential nutrients. For example, a slice of cake can have around 200-300 calories, and a couple of cookies can add up to 150-200 calories. Frequent intakes – a pack of Maryland cookies here, one loaf of soft bread there – result in accumulated calories, which, when not effectively used, can become fat in the body.

Two, many baked items are made with refined flour, which lacks fiber and essential vitamins compared to whole grains like oats or brown rice. If your tastebuds are accustomed to baked foods, you can wean off the longing with non-flour baked meals like baked apples, fishes, or egg muffins.

Three, limit the intake. If you eat baked foods five times a week, limit it to three. Then two, then once a week.

Alcohol

No, alcohol isn’t on this list because of hangover or drunkenness tendencies. While a glass of wine or a bottle of beer might seem harmless, alcohol can have a big impact on your weight and overall health.

Alcohol is high in calories. A typical can of beer has about 150 calories, while a glass of wine can have around 120-130 calories. Mixed drinks, which often include sugary mixers, can have even more calories. These extra calories can quickly add up, especially if you drink alcohol regularly. If you consume more calories than your body needs, it can lead to weight gain because the extra calories are stored as fat.

Alcohol can also affect your wellness in other ways. The World Health Organization estimates that alcohol consumption contributes to 4.7% of the global burden of diseases.

Alcohol can disrupt your sleep, leading to tiredness and poor concentration. In the long run, heavy drinking increases the risk of serious health problems like high blood pressure and liver disease. With alcohol, it’s always a matter of time.

Tip: Ditch repeated alcohol consumption. Drink fresh fruit juices, herbal teas such as ginger or lemon teas, or sparkling water with a splash of lime or lemon.

Non-Diet Factors That Impact Body Fitness

An active athlete who eats a pizza a day will burn off more calories than a software engineer who works remotely. Fitness isn’t just calories in, calories out. Outside of our meals, some other factors that determine if we stay in shape include:

Sleep Quality

You may have heard some motivational talks centred around sleeping fewer hours to get more work done. Not only is this advice counterintuitive, it also presents health risks. The better your sleep quality, the more likely you are to stay in shape.

Sleep quality, especially for adults, is so important that science folks have conducted several researches highlighting the link between sleep quality and weight gain. Their findings, such as this and this, declare a consensus: short sleep duration increases the risk of obesity in adults, as well as children and adolescents.

To combat this, aim for at least seven hours of sleep daily. Reduce your nighttime activities and your screen time once bedtime approaches. Fit a power nap into your schedule for the day, as this enhances your memory and improves your thinking prowess.

Activity Levels

Physical activity can increase your body’s energy expenditure, which helps you stay wait. This doesn’t mean you must hit the gym immediately. However, if your work routine revolves around being sedentary, start thinking of ways to get your body moving.

If you work from home or spend long hours at a desk, you can take brief morning walks before resuming, and a second session of work when you close for the day. This edges you towards walking 10,000 steps, the benchmark for healthy walking. 

Genetic Makeup

Your genetics can affect how quickly your body burns calories. If you have a slow metabolism rate, you’d retain more energy than you should. Your genetic makeup could also determine the number of fat cells in your body, and how your body stores fast, particularly in the abdomen and waist regions.

If these observations resonate, stick to a healthy diet. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables and keep a bottle of water nearby each day. Be mindful of your portions when at meals. And whenever necessary, speak with a medical professional.

Conclusion

There’s a parlance we pass around on social media. It’s that, no matter what happens, you should eat. In your eating, aspire to stay fit. Don’t load up on vanity calories that add little to zero nutrients.

You can integrate vegetables and fruits into your weekly meal plans. And you won’t run out on these healthy options when you shop with PricePally. Be deliberate about your calorie intake, and your body will reward you with an in-shape figure for years to come.