Shedding excess body weight can be among the most challenging parts of your plaque control program. Taking fish oil is easy. Adding niacin has its ups and downs, but most people do just fine. Including raw almonds and oat bran to reduce LDL and generate larger particles—also easy.

But losing 10, 20, or more pounds because you have low HDL, small LDL, or other weight sensitive patterns—that can be downright hard for many people. These are patterns that can booby-trap your plaque control efforts.

Excess weight is the most common reason for failure in plaque control. You can do everything else right, but if you continue to show weight-sensitive patterns like small LDL or high blood sugar, then plaque control will elude you.

Here, we list foods that you can include in your diet everyday that provide advantage for your weight loss effort. Can you add a weight-promoting food and go crazy on cakes, breads, and pizza and still lose weight? Of course not. The foods we list here need to remain part of an overall healthy diet program. They cannot make up for an otherwise unhealthy diet. No food, supplement, or drug is that powerful.

Don’t forget to read Track Your Plaque fitness expert, Kelli Calabrese’s, article on how pedometers can help accelerate weight loss: A Pedometer is the Key to Fitness and Weight Loss.   Also see our report on Shutting off Metabolic Syndrome for a discussion about nutritional supplements that can help you achieve more rapid weight loss.

Food choices really do count

When trying to lose weight, choosing the right foods can make the difference between success and failure.

The list of foods to avoid is a long one. It includes all the foods that get Americans in trouble in the first place, like fast food; processed foods like breakfast cereals, breads, fruit juices, chips, and baked goods; greasy saturated fat sources like butter, sausage, and pork.

Have we succeeded in dispelling the notion that low-fat means weight loss? In fact, a low-fat diet often increases unwanted abdominal fat, the sort that is associated with metabolic syndrome. (See Get Fat on a Low-Fat Diet)

But just avoiding the wrong foods is not enough. Choosing the right foods is also important. Some foods can accelerate your weight-loss success. But let’s be clear on this. You can’t just add these foods to a poor or lackadaisical diet and expect miracles. It doesn’t work that way. Nor will you lose 20 lbs. in 5 days doing this. These strategies help you on a percentage basis, i.e., if you were destined to lose 5 lbs. this month on your nutrition and exercise strategies, you might lose 7 lbs instead. In other words, these strategies can work by themselves, though weakly. Their real power is when you combine them with an all-out weight loss effort.

Weight loss foods

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Copyright 2006, Track Your Plaque.