Many popular diet plans have promised you can lose weight by eating as much as you want of whatever you want. While those claims may, in fact, be too good to be true, it is possible to lose weight without eating significantly smaller portions of food. The key is to learn which foods to eat.
In order to lose weight, you need to consume fewer calories than you burn each day. In order to consume fewer calories without eating less food, you need to eat foods that have low energy density.
What is energy density?
Energy density refers to the number of calories in a specific amount or volume-of-food. In other words, foods that are high in energy density have more calories per bite than foods that are low in energy density. One bite of a fast food cheeseburger, for example, will probably contain more calories than the same-sized bite of an apple. You could, therefore, eat the same amount of food, but consume fewer calories if that volume came from apples rather than cheeseburgers.
Which foods have low energy density?
The more water a food has, the lower its energy density will be. This is why most fruits and vegetables, which have very high water contents, are generally low in calories. In addition, foods that contain a lot of fat will have more calories per bite than foods that have little or no fat. Foods that are high in fiber also tend to have a low energy density.
