Foods That Make You Fat and Skinny

The Harvard School of Public Health has come out with some interesting conclusions based on three studies regarding what lifestyle behaviors and foods make you gain weight or lose it over time.

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, the most useful dietary metrics for preventing long-term weight gain appear to be:
•Focus on improving carbohydrate quality by eating less liquid sugars (e.g. soda) and other sweets, as well as fewer starches (e.g. potatoes) and refined grains (e.g. white bread, white rice, breakfast cereals low in fiber, other refined carbohydrates).
•Focus on eating more minimally processed foods (e.g. fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, yogurt) and fewer highly processed foods (e.g. white breads, processed meats, sugary beverages).

The biggest winner in battling weight gain is yogurt and the biggest loser is the potato, or starches. So, the idea is increase your intake of the good stuff and lower your consumption of the bad ones. I have always been a subscriber of fruits and nuts, but I will confess that I do love a great baguette and potato... and yes put on the butter. So, while I may refrain from indulging as often as I would like, the "bad" food items will not be entirely off the menu or this blog.

You can check out the study from the New England Journal of Medicine by going to: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1014296 or visit the website for the Harvard School of Public Heatlh at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2011-releases/diet-lifestyle-weight-gain.html.

For more on the same studies, play the video by clicking below to hear directly from lead author, Dariush Mozaffarian:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/multimedia/video/diet-lifestyle/

Interesting tweaks to our diet appear to make a "fat" difference over time.