Site Navigation

Blog

What is Considered Junk Food?

Some of the links in my blogs may be affiliate links. See my disclaimer page for more information.


This week in my VIP group coaching program we had a no junk food challenge. I got a lot of resistance at first and questions about what is considered junk food. Let me start out by saying Diets DON’t Work! A big myth is that you must eat less to lose weight. That is just not true. It is more about the source of your food then the amount of calories or points. For example 1500 calories of Twinkies is not the same as eating 1500 calories of vegetables. Below is a live video on this blog I did on Facebook in case you want to listen instead of read. Feel free to follow me on Facebook here for more content like this:
Coach Shannah Holt

 

This is where I have to disagree with Weight Watchers and tell you why it didn’t work for me. Now it was a good number of years ago since I was in WW, so maybe things have changed, but they pretty much said I could eat anything I want as long as my points for the day stayed under a certain amount (plus having that extra cushion of weekly points too).

Your body needs nutrients and you won’t be getting them from Twinkies! It doesn’t get the nutrients it needs if you are only feeding it the 1500 calories of junk food. It will feel like it is STARVING with a capital S and Stop the fat loss. Have you ever been on WW and it worked for a little while even helped you lose x amount of weight, but then eventually you come to a screetching halt and you feel like you are back on that hamster wheel  going around and around without going anywhere?

 

 

Sure if you eat below the amount of calories you are burning in the short term you will lose some weight, but  I’m sorry to inform you eating 1500 calories of junk all day will not give you a healthy lifestyle and allow you to reach your goals. You are just sacrificing your long term goals for short term success.

When you are purchasing things with packaging don’t worry so much about what it says on the front of the package, because that is very misleading. All that low-fat, low carb, 100 calories, and whole grain are ways to get the consumer to think something is a healthier option when a lot of times it is not.

 

 

Instead look at the back of the package at the nutrition label. I know it isn’t always easy to understand. So I am going to break that down for you. It is also so tiny sometimes I need more than just my reading glasses.  The first thing I look at is the ingredient list. Remember when I said the fewer the ingredients the better?

Even healthy foods can be made unhealthy by added ingredients. I have 2 different packages of quinoa. One lists quinoa as the only ingredient, the other lists a whole paragraph of stuff including quinoa. Many of course I can’t even pronounce. Knowing what ingredients are in there is pretty important. Here is a label to check out.

 

The front of the package may say there is no trans fat, but the ingredient lists hydrogenated oils. Also sugars are hidden by being called by many different names like fructose, or corn syrup. The only way to know if these things are in what we are buying is to read the ingredient list.

What is considered junk food? Anything that does NOT give you nutritional value such as:

Here is a short list of junk food

  • Soda
  • Candy
  • Chips 
  • Donuts and other pastries
  • Fast Food
  • Ice Cream 
  • Cookies 
  • Mocha Lattes

 

 

What you need to look for in food for weight loss or wellness is whole real foods. They provide nutrients for your body such as fiber, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals with.  A whole food would be considered, ideally, as a food with only one ingredient for example broccoli, an apple, chicken or nuts.

So are you up for a challenge this week? Try 1 week with no junk food and see how you feel when the week is over.

One Response to What is Considered Junk Food?

  1. If you are going for most excellent contents like I do, simply go to see this web site every day since it gives feature contents, thanks