Going nuts about weight loss

Posted: Mar 12 in Health And Wellness, Nutrition, Weight loss by Dr. Lazarus

Keeping our calories under control to lose weight  is a challenge faced by many dieters. Often times, people turn to “100 Calorie Snack Packs.” Seems smart right? Just eat what’s in the pack, and you’ll limit your calories to 100. The problem is, many of these snacks contain very poor nutritional value and are comprised mainly of highly processed carbohydrates, which your body is very good at absorbing. And, many times people end up having 3 or 4 snack packs instead of just the one.

Should a person losing weight avoid nuts?

Many people going on a weight loss diet avoid nuts because they remember that fat has more calories per gram than carbohydrates. But is this a good practice?

Calories in nuts

A recent study looked at how many calories in nuts are actually available for us to use. When we eat nuts, we are eating a natural and very healthy type of fat vs. the highly processed carbohydrates mentioned above. Some of these fats have been shown to have health benefits. As an added bonus, fats are very filling. This study looked at how many of the calories in nuts are actually extracted when we eat them and found that a lot of the nuts pass through our system undigested.

Nuts have less calories than you think

In fact, cashews have 16% fewer calories than previously thought, walnuts have 21% fewer, and almonds have 32% fewer.

Calorie labels are nut updated yet

Most product labels don’t reflect this new information, yet. So imagine this, you can have a “100 Calorie Pack” of almonds but only absorb 68 of those calories.

Whole nuts – not peanut butter!

Remember – this is for whole nuts – not for peanut butter or other types of processed nuts.

Learn more…

So, if you are having a snack, why not consider whole nuts?  Talk to your Registered Dietitian Nutritionist about incorporating nuts into your weight loss program.