Ben Greenfield breaks down why prepackaged diet plans like Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers, and South Beach backfire. They're loaded with preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and sodium that cause bloating and immune problems. He recommends whole foods and meal prep instead.
Welcome to the top 10 questions on exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle. My name is Ben from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I'm responding to the most popular questions that I get from people all over the nation who have questions about human performance and wellness.
Question number six comes from listener Tom, and he says, will I see good.
Results if I start a weight loss plan that uses prepackaged foods like nutrisystem, Weight Watchers, or South Beach? Tom, you hit a sore spot with me as a nutritionist. One of my pet peeves, and something that you should be very careful with is prepackaged foods. Very high in preservatives, very high often in artificial sweeteners, and incredibly high in and sodium.
And even though these foods are very convenient and typically they're also somewhat low.
In calories, that's not the whole equation. If you want to learn more about the calories, go back and watch video number one from this series where we.
Talk about why it comes down to.
A lot more than just calories.
This is a perfect example of that. I've had people who have been on.
The nutrisystem prepackaged meals with Weight Watchers.
Prepackaged meals, and they've got bloated ankles, they've got frequent immune system attacks, colds, flus, high levels of sodium on board, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and their.
Body is basically rebelling against all the fake food that they're eating.
You would be much better off going.
Out and investing in some good Tupperware containers, some Ziploc bags, some containers that you can actually prepackage your food in and take it with you if you got to get a kitchen scale to measure things out. I'm not a big fan of actually measuring your food. I like to approximate it. Nutrition Data is a great site where.
You can actually look up how many calories are in food, if that is.
Something that you're concerned about. But ultimately, what it comes down to.
Is if you turn around the ingredient.
Label of any of those nutrisystem or.
Weight Watchers or I think the other.
One is south beach, read through how many things, how many chemicals are in.
Those box foods, and also look at.
How much sodium is necessary to, to preserve that type of food, folks, if.
It can sit on a shelf in your pantry for three or four or five months and you can come back and eat it, you maybe shouldn't be.
Putting that into your body.
Eat real food, eat whole food. Look into raw foods.
I'm not a vegetarian.
I'm not a granola or a hippie.
Or anything like that.
But the more real food that you.
Can eat, the better your body is going to perform. The faster you're going to burn fat, the better you're going to feel and the more successful you're going to be. Because when you're healthy, you are productive. When you're productive, you're successful. And so it's a great big happy cycle.
So my name is Ben from BenGreenfieldFitness.com great question. And that was question number six from.
Our top ten questions about exercise, nutrition and lifestyle from BenGreenfieldFitness.Com.
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