Limit Calorie-Dense, Nutrient-Lite Foods

A couple weeks back I wrote about nutrient dense foods and how they should make up 80-90% of your diet. Here's a quick recap:

Nutrients = vitamins, minerals, fiber, lean proteins, and healthy fats

Nutrient density is a comparison of how many nutrients a food has relative to its calories

Nutrient dense foods provide a high amount of essential nutrients per calorie, or in other words are relatively high in nutrients and low in calories

Nutrient dense foods include fruits, veggies, lean beef, chicken, fish and seafood, eggs, nuts and seeds, whole grains, legumes, dairy, and healthy fats

On the other hand of the spectrum you have calorie-dense, nutrient lite foods. These are the foods you want to limit to 10-20% of your diet.

The combination of high calorie AND low in nutrients is the key here.

As just because something is high in calories does not necessarily mean it is bad for you or lacking in nutrients.

Avocadoes, potatoes, brown rice, nut butters, fatty meats, and full fat dairy are examples of foods that are higher in calories relative to some of their counterparts, but certainly still pack in a lot of nutrients and are definitely healthy foods overall.

But back to calorie dense, nutrient-lite foods.

These are generally the ultra processed foods that are packed with added fats and sugars that provide no nutritional value AND are high in calories. Consuming too many of these foods can lead to weight gain.

Potato chips would be an example of a calorie dense food. Traditional chip brands have essentially zero nutritional value, but are packed with calories.

Look, potato chips are undeniably delicious, and there is nothing wrong with eating entirely for pleasure at times. A bag of Hal's Chips here and there is not gonna kill ya.

But if you're inhaling a large bag of Fritos BBQ twists every day at lunch, you'll probably want to scale that back a bit.

P.S. the easy chip solution here is to buy Quest Chips. They taste like Doritos and are protein packed.

Here are other examples of calorie-dense, nutrient-lite foods (the kind you should limit):

- Traditional breakfast cereals - Regular soda - White Bread - Fried Chicken - Candy Bars - Flavored granola bars with added sugars and preservatives - Artificially flavored cheese crackers - French Fries - Traditional Fast Food - Traditional desserts like ice cream, cookies, cakes, donuts, and pastries

You do not have to eliminate these foods entirely from your diet to stay in shape and be healthy, but you should aim to limit them to 10-20% of your total caloric intake.

Eat Nutrient Dense foods 80-90% of the time (I would lean 90% if you're in a fat loss phase but closer to 80% is fine if you are maintaining or gaining).

And then fill in the blanks with whatever foods you want, even if they are calorie-dense, and nutrient lite.

Stay well this week, Hal the Health Coach