10 Healthy Foods That Make You Fat

Eating healthy foods that make you fat is a great way to kill your weight loss goals as fast as possible.

In this video, I’m gonna show you ten healthy foods that you’re eating that aren’t actually healthy. Instead, it’s making you fat.

This is important because it’s hard enough to lose weight as it is. You don’t want to be sabotaging your own efforts by eating healthy foods that make you fat. Some of these foods that I’m about to mention might even surprise you.

So let’s go through these 10 healthy foods that make you fat in order based on when we consume them throughout the day.

10 “Healthy” Foods That Make You Fat

Breakfast Cereal

The almighty breakfast cereal. This is probably one of the most damaging things that we put in our bodies because we get started on this stuff at a very early age.

Breakfast cereals were completely foreign to me when I was growing up in Asia. It was only when I moved to North America that I was introduced to this stuff. There’s a reason why obesity rates are drastically different in Asia compared to North America.

The main problem with breakfast cereals is that they are unbelievably highly processed. They’re also full of sugar and they’re highly addicting. The problem is, it’s also a multi-billion dollar industry.

Through sheer brilliant marketing, eating breakfast cereals first thing in the morning has become the norm in North America. Breakfast companies are really smart when it comes to marketing this stuff. They put cartoon characters and action figures on the box and kids just go crazy over this stuff.

Then we somehow justify eating this stuff and give it to our kids because it’s fortified with vitamins and minerals. As if that’s the exact same thing as eating whole foods. The problem is, you’re only getting the synthetic version of those vitamins and minerals because it gets added back to the food after all the processing that it goes through. I literally cannot think of a worse way to start your day by eating a sugar bomb first thing in the morning

Granola Bars/Protein Bars

Next up are granola bars, protein bars, and meal replacement bars. They’re all the same.

We live in a world where you can have anything on the go. We’re all busy and sometimes we don’t have time to eat first thing in the morning. So we grab whatever’s convenient and that’s when these bars come in. It’s basically breakfast cereal on-the-go. They’re literally the exact same thing.

But again, through brilliant marketing, it somehow gets passed as being “healthy”. They’re labeled as vegan, organic, gluten-free, non-gmo, and high in fiber. As if that means anything. A cardboard box is also vegan, non-GMO, organic, and high in fiber. It doesn’t mean that you should eat it.

The problem is, most of these “healthy” protein bars and granola bars are laced with sugar or artificial sweeteners. If you look at the back of the packaging, it wouldn’t necessarily say sugar all the time. It’ll usually say Sucralose, Dextrose, Maltodextrin, or one of the 61 different names of sugar. Food companies are sneaky like that.

A Cliff Bar for example has 240 calories, 5 grams of fat, 44 grams of carbs, 22 grams of it being sugar, and 10 grams of protein.

Compare that to a Snickers bar which has 280 calories, 14 grams of fat, 35 grams of carbs, 30 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein.

They’re really not that far off from each other. Yet one gets demonized and the other one gets a free pass.

Meal Replacement Shakes

Next up are meal replacement shakes. People consume this stuff because they’re branded as being “healthy”. It’s branded as “meal on-the-go”.

Full disclosure, I actually know some people who’s lost weight on this stuff. I’m talking about those people that drink weight loss shakes like SlimFast, Shakeology, or whatever new company is selling these products. There’s big money on this stuff.

The problem is, do you really want to be drinking weight loss shakes for the rest of your life? Can you sustain that lifestyle? What are the long-term implications of drinking this highly processed concoction that you’re drinking?

The problem lies in the processing. Meal replacement shakes usually contain fillers. The main ingredients usually are high fructose corn syrup, preservatives, vegetable oils which are highly inflammatory, and they’re usually sweetened with artificial sweeteners to keep the calories down. The problem is, they’re not satiating. You drink this stuff and an hour or two later, you’re hungry already. They also tend to be really expensive.

You just have to use some common sense here. You’re not eating real food by drinking meal replacement shakes. You’re eating food-like products.

Fruit

I’m gonna get a lot of flack for including fruit in my list of healthy foods that make you fat but I don’t care. I’m all about telling the truth.

Fruit seems to get a health halo from a lot of people. I guess if you’re replacing eating a bag of chips and you’re eating fruit instead, then that’s a great first step. But if you’re trying to lose weight, you should limit your intake of fruits. Especially the ones with high sugar content.

Here’s the thing. Your body can’t tell the difference between eating fruit and eating candy. It gets processed the exact same way. The more concerning problem with fruit is it contains a type of sugar called fructose, which your liver can only process. And high levels of fructose in your system leads directly to fatty liver disease which is directly linked to obesity.

The problem is it’s been ingrained in our heads for decades now that we need to consume five servings of fruits and vegetables every day.

That number by the way is completely made up. It’s not based on good science at all. The government literally just thought that five servings seemed like a good number and that’s how that information became enshrined.

Does that sound like good science to you?

The other problem with fruit is that the fruit we’re eating today is not even remotely close to being the same as the fruit that our ancestors ate back in the day.

Fruit today is genetically modified to be sweeter. It’s genetically modified to be bigger. Banana back in the day looks drastically different from a banana today. It’s the same thing with tomatoes and berries. If you look at what a watermelon looks like back in the day versus the stuff that we eat today, they’re drastically different. You can check it out here.

Bottom line is if your goal is weight loss, you should be limiting your fruit intake to just avocado and berries.

Fruit Juice

Fruit juice is the evil cousin of fruit.

It’s especially bad because now you’re getting fruit in its highly processed and concentrated form.

At least with fruit, you’re slowing down the absorption of all the carbs and sugar in your body because of its fiber content. But when you drink fruit juice, all of that gets taken away. When you drink fruit juice, it literally acts like a sugar bomb once it enters your system. It’s no different than drinking a can of coke.

The other problem with juice is its serving size. If you go to one of those fancy cold-pressed juice bars for example, you can get a bottle of orange juice with the servings size on the bottle. For example, it’ll say it has five oranges.

My question is, who the hell eats five oranges in one sitting???

And I don’t care that fruit juice contains vitamin C, or whatever. You can get vitamin C from better sources. Broccoli for example is very high in vitamin C and it contains zero sugar.

Again, drinking juice is no different than drinking a can of coke. Yet coke gets demonized and juice gets a free pass.

Plant Based Substitutes

I’m gonna get some haters for saying this especially from the vegan community. But again, I’m all about speaking the truth. I have nothing against vegans by the way. Good for them for believing in not hurting animals.

But here’s the problem with plant-based substitutes. Let’s use beyond burger for example. It’s all the rage these days. A lot of fast-food joints and restaurants serve beyond burgers and people think it’s like the second coming of Jesus.

The problem with beyond burgers is that if you look at the back of the box, there are God knows how many ingredients there are on a beyond burger. Compare that to a beef burger patty. The beef burger patty has one ingredient. Beef.

The beyond burger has God knows how many ingredients. Just imagine the amount of processing that a plant has to go through for it to even look remotely close to a burger patty. Most plant-based substitutes are highly processed. I can’t think of a better example of healthy foods that make you fat than plant based substitutes.

The same principle applies with vegetable chips. These “healthier” chips still need to be deep-fried in industrials oils like canola or sunflower oil which again are highly inflammatory.

Bottom line is when you’re trying to make these healthy food choices, just stick to single ingredient foods. What’s the point of trying to eat healthy by eating plant-based foods when you’re eating an unbelievably highly processed food. That makes zero sense

Diet Soda

Diet soda is one of the biggest lies in the fitness industry.

Through brilliant marketing it’s being branded as the healthier alternative to regular coke because it contains zero calories. As if that means anything in your body.

The problem is, your body doesn’t count calories. You have no calorie counter in your stomach. Your body however has a physiological response every time you drink a can of Diet Coke. It triggers an insulin response. That’s important because insulin is what controls your body weight.

Every time you trigger an insulin response, your body goes into fat storage mode. People get addicted to drinking diet coke because they think they can “cheat” the system. That’s how people get fat drinking this stuff. Diet soda also destroys your gut microbiome and it’s directly linked to obesity.

Here’s the only question you need to ask about diet soda. Do you know anybody who drinks diet coke and has lost a lot of weight because of it? It’s an emphatic, no. It’s the exact opposite.

The other thing is people use diet sodas as a crutch for their bad food choices. These are the people who will order the worst thing on the menu and then they’ll say, “Can I get a diet coke with that please?”

Low Fat Dairy / Low Calorie Foods

Another poster child of healthy foods that make you fat. A majority of people still have a fat phobia up to this day.

I spend a lot of time at coffee shops and you still hear so many people order their skinny vanilla lattes thinking that it’s good for them. There’s a lot of research out there these days that shows that saturated fat and cholesterol are actually not bad for you. You can check it out HERE. It was wrongfully demonized back in 1960 and it led to unintended consequences like the obesity epidemic that we’re dealing with these days.

The problem with low-fat dairy and low calorie foods is that to make anything low-fat or low calorie, fat is the main thing that gets stripped away. It goes through a lot of processing to take away the fat. Food companies do this because fat is calorically dense and goes rancid easily. Taking away fat in food makes it low calorie and also extends its shelf life. Double win.

Once they take out the fat they need to replace it with something else to make it taste good. That something else is sugar. So usually, anything that’s low fat is actually high sugar.

Low calorie ice-cream is a perfect example of this. The brand Halo Top for example is really popular because it’s low calorie. It’s literally the dream. But again, it’s highly processed. They use sugar alcohols and artificial sweeteners to lower the calorie content which means that it’s not much better than eating regular ice cream.

Artificial Sweeteners

Anything that’s branded as zero calories qualifies as an artificial sweetener.

You’ve got your usual suspects like Stevia, Splenda, Sucralose, Maltodextrin, etc. It’s branded as zero calories and people think that it’s somehow good for you.

Yes, it doesn’t raise blood sugar levels. But artificial sweeteners still raises insulin levels. Your body still reacts to artificial sweeteners the same way as regular sugar. Your body thinks that there’s food coming in. So again, it triggers an insulin response.

Artificial sweeteners triggers the cephalic phase in your body. Again, your body thinks there’s food coming in. So the more you consume this stuff, even when you’re fasting, the more you trigger an insulin response in your body.

Persistently high levels of insulin leads to insulin resistance. And insulin resistance leads to diabetes and obesity. Listen, artificial sweeteners does not get a free pass in your body. Zero calories means nothing. Nothing that sweet gets a free pass.

“Healthy” Whole Grains

Last but not the least, “healthy” whole grains. This might be the most insidious “healthy” food out there.

If we do a little history lesson, back in the 60s, obesity wasn’t a problem in the US. Then everything changed in 1977 when the US released their first Dietary Guidelines for Americans. They told Americans to eat 8-12 servings of grains as part of their daily diet. Most of it coming in the form of the processed variety.

If I were to pinpoint one reason why we have an obesity epidemic in North America, it’s because of the overconsumption of grains. That and the combination of us going from three meals a day to six meals a day.

Processed grains does two really bad things to the human body:

1. It triggers an insulin response. Because most of the grains that we consume are highly processed. The higher the processing, the higher the insulin response. If you’ve been watching my videos, you’ll know how important the insulin response is in your body when it comes to controlling your body set weight.

2. Grains contain anti-nutrients, specifically lectins, which is rarely ever talked about.

Anti-nutrients reduces the consumption of vitamins and minerals from a meal. It can also trigger an autoimmune response in your body because the lectins bind in the gut wall of your stomach. Your body treats this as a threat and starts attacking itself in the process. That’s how autoimmune diseases are born. Yet none of the so called “experts” talks about anti-nutrients.

Here’s all you need to know about “healthy” whole grains.

We evolved as humans two and a half million years ago. Modern agriculture started ten thousand years ago. That was when we started cultivating grains. Our bodies evolved to eat a certain way two and a half million years ago and then we started eating grains ten thousand years ago. If you do a little math that is 0.4% of human history that we only started eating grains.

Simply put our bodies haven’t evolved to process this stuff. Yet our entire diet revolves around grains these days. North Americans predominantly eats a very high carb, low fat diet.

And there’s nothing inherently wrong with eating carbs by the way. A lot of traditional people revolve their diet around carbs like the Okinawans and the Kitavans for example. They eat a very high carb diet. They eat a lot of yams and tubers for example and they don’t have an obesity problem. The poison lies in the processing and that’s been a major theme from all the foods that I mentioned.

At the end of the day, you just want to make sure that you revolve your diet around single ingredient foods. You want to revolve your diet around plants and animals. Try to avoid refined carbs and processed carbs. Don’t drink liquid calories and avoid added sugar.

Make sure you do your own research before you start eating the next trendy healthy food. Remember, there are no bad foods, only processed ones.

As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!

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