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If you're like millions of other Americans, your New Year's resolution is to lose weight. But when you try putting that resolution into practice in the coming months, you may be swiftly overwhelmed by the number of options available within the $72 billion weight-loss industry — or wary of some of the promises that sound just a little too good to be true. So we asked experts to separate fact from fiction to learn what really helps people drop the pounds.
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1. Myth: All calories are the same, whether from whole foods or processed ones.
Reality: Nope. While a 100-calorie candy bar and a 100-calorie apple contain the same amount of energy, the source of each calorie changes how your body digests and uses it.
Your body has to work harder to process whole foods such as vegetables and legumes than it does for packaged foods like crackers and sugary cereal, says Angela Fitch, M.D., associate director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center, an assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School and vice president of the Obesity Medicine Association.
"If I eat Cheerios, by the time it gets to my belly, there's no processing that needs to happen,” Fitch explains. “But if I eat quinoa or beans, my body has to break that down.” You expend more energy breaking down unprocessed food and protein than processed fare, which means eating things found in nature, not made by humans, is the better dieting strategy.
2. Myth: Losing weight is all about willpower.
Reality: “Physiologically, as humans, we are not created to lose weight,” Fitch notes. Hanging on to fat helped our ancestors survive, so we have evolved to keep the weight we gain. “I tell people struggling to lose weight that it's your chemistry, not your character,” she says.
Yes, some people may be blessed with a faster metabolism that helps them shed pounds a little easier than others. But metabolism tends to slow down as we age, making it even more difficult to lose those pesky extra pounds.
And when people do lose a lot of weight quickly, their bodies try to return to their previous “set point.” This could also affect their metabolism and make them feel hungrier. Indeed, a study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that for every two pounds lost, participants ate about 100 calories more later on.
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