There are foods that can mess up your six-pack dreams. Find out what foods you should never eat if you want a six-pack.
You’ve hit a weight loss plateau, even though you’ve been working out a lot. It happens to the best of us. If you can’t figure out what you are doing wrong, you might want to check out these foods.
There are some foods out there that can completely mess up all your weight loss progress, and since you can’t target belly fat, your efforts to get a sixpack. So make sure you’re avoiding these 9 foods.
1. Ice Cream
You probably already know you need to avoid ice cream to lose weight but its negative impact might be bigger than you thought.
First of all ice cream is super high in sugar which is damaging to your health and can lead to weight gain.
Sugar will spike your blood sugar and thus the release of insulin, a fat storing hormone.
When your insulin levels are high, your body starts to focus on storing energy instead of burning it. Together with the sugar in ice cream, dairy makes it so the amount of calories in ice cream is quite high.
And because your blood sugar is that high, your body tries to store as much of that energy as possible.
2. Popcorn
This second one might come as a surprise to some people. Often it’s described as a healthy snack.
Let’s say you prepare your popcorn the best way possible, you would still end up with about 382 calories per 100 grams (1).
Now, it’s certainly harder to eat 100 grams of popcorn than let’s say nuts but it’s still quite the amount.
And the thing is when you don’t prepare popcorn in the best way possible it gets worse.
Almost all microwave popcorn varieties come in a bag that is lined with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). This chemical is the same toxic material found in Teflon pots and pans.
And in lab animals, this chemical when heated has been linked to a variety of conditions you don’t want.
Plenty of other bad stuff like trans fats and artificial flavors get added too.
3. Cookies
Cookies are somewhat similar to ice cream in terms of the reasons why they are not great for people who want six pack abs.
First of all, they will spike your insulin a lot. This puts your body into fat storing mode until your insulin levels are lower again.
However, another aspect of cookies that makes them so dangerous is that it’s so easy to overeat them. For example, 6 Oreos contain around 270 calories.
And how easy is it to eat 6 Oreos compared to let’s say, 3.5 boiled eggs?
Processed foods high in sugar are usually pretty addictive. It’s easy to fall deeper into the downward spiral cookie after cookie.
4. Fruit Juice
This might be another surprise for some people but most fruit juices are actually pretty bad for you.
In one glass of orange juice, there are about 110 calories and close to 21 grams of sugar or 5 teaspoons.
In general, it’s recommended to limit your consumption of sugar to 6-9 teaspoons a day. Lower is better in the case of sugar. By drinking just a single glass of orange juice you’ve almost crossed this line.
The surprise is mainly because people associate fruit with being healthy and fruit with fruit juice.
The difference between fruit and fruit juice is mainly fiber. Fiber is a kind of carbohydrate your body doesn’t absorb as energy but it does feed the microbes in your intestines, which is a good thing.
Fruit juice is basically fruit without fiber and with fewer vitamins. What remains is a drink high in sugar without many good things about it.
Even though fruit juice might not be as bad as soda, it still is going to slow down your fat loss.
An exception to this rule is lemon water. Lemon is a fruit without much sugar.
5. Chips
Chips start out as a medium healthy potato. But then manufacturers start doing all kinds of bad things to it.
They add a lot of salt and sometimes even sugar. And a lot of fat gets added because they get fried. Depending on what kind of oil they use this could cause medium to bad health damage.
Due to all the different things done to it this potato all of the sudden becomes extremely easy to overeat. You can do this experiment yourself.
Boil 300 grams of potatoes and just add a little salt and try to eat it. Chances are this will be at least 10 times as difficult as eating 300 grams of chips.
The chips will likely contain a lot more calories yet still be a lot easier to eat in the same amount.
6. Cream Cheese
Just like regular dairy products, cream cheese contains a decent amount of calories. On top of that, cream cheese is usually filled with additives and artificial flavors. These things are not great for your health and weight.
Unfortunately when you try to go on the lower calorie low fat alternatives to avoid the high fat and cholesterol content found in regular cream cheese. You are unknowingly adding more additives and artificial flavors.
7. Pizza
Pizza is a combination of fat from cheese and carbs from the dough and a bunch of salt. In total, one slice of pizza is 285 calories. And who only eats 1 slice?
2 slices put you well over 500 calories which, for some people, is more than 25% of their daily calories. Imagine 8 slices of pizza being the only thing you eat in a day.
Combine this with dessert and you’ll quickly see that you’ll never see your 6-pack eating this kind of food.
8. High-Calorie Salad Dressings
A lot of pre-prepared salads start out great. They contain a variety of vegetables and some protein. But then they put it in the bag of high-calorie salad dressing.
Just with 2 tablespoons, you’re taking in close to 130 calories with 6 grams of sugar and 11 grams of fat. You also want to avoid mayonnaise.
The first few times you skip on the dressing you might think your salad tastes a bit bland.
However, the more you remove artificial flavors from your life the more you will appreciate regular foods in their natural forms just as much.
9. Fried Chicken
Almost everything you fry is going to be worse for your weight loss than normal foods. Certainly chicken is going to cause a huge spike in calories, fat, and carbs. The frying also increases your risk of obesity and diabetes.
Not very good for your health. Also the oil they use to prepare this kind of food is typically the cheapest around. This usually means oil that is not of the highest quality.
So that’s 9 of the worst foods you can eat when trying to get a 6 pack.
You don’t have to skip out on these foods completely but it might be better to keep them for rare cheat days.
But if you want to reach your physical goals, it’s probably smarter to stay away from these foods.
