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Banana For Weight Loss: Does it work?
Weight loss is not an easy goal and requires a lot of effort. Diet control, knowledge, the right exercise etc. Altough weight loss often sounds easy on “paper”, in reality 76% of all dieters struggle and are having a hard time losing 10 pounds and keep it off. Often times, dieteres end up tweaking their diet plans in multiple ways in order to lose those extra pounds.
Many fruits and vegetables play are key role in weight management. However, there is one fruit that has promising claims surrounding it, for weight loss. The Banana. Keep reading to find out if banana for weight loss is actually something that works.
Banana Is Dense In Nutrients
You can´t deny the fact that a banana is a remarkable source of various essential minerals and vitamins, however, this sunny yellow fruit could possibly help with weight loss as well.
According to Nutritionist and author for Weight Loss Journal, Cassie Jones, “Bananas provide fullness because of their high amount of fibre, which in turn can help with weight loss. They boost metabolic rate and can help with craving for sugary foods”.
Besides, bananas are a powerpack of nutrients that aids in proper functioning of the body and maintain your health. According to Cassie Jones, “It is a good snack which can be ingested in between meals and is also considered as a great pre-workout snack.
They help lowering blood pressure as well, due to it´s high potassium amount. Blood pressure issues are common amongst obese and overweight people.
Also this fruit is rich in macronutrients such as calcium, magnesium and folate. Bananas are nutritionally high in value and can be consumed without any fear of gaining weight when consumed in moderation”.
However, keep in mind that excess of any food could lead to adverse effects on one´s overall weight and health.
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Bananas Are Moderate In Calories
With a moderate calorie count, you may ask if a banana for weight loss is a good method to go. This sunny yellow fruit can work well in any diet plan, but you first need an overall good diet plan, which is tweaked in a way to optimize your metabolism.
A big, 8-inch banana has approximately 120 calories. Choosing a smaller, 6-inch banana, will provide you with 90 calories and save you a quarter of the calories from a large banana making it more suitable for weight loss.
Bananas are supplying a perfect amount of calories for a small snack in between meals, however they can have enough calories to ruin a diet if you already met your daily caloric intake goal, and then add the banana on top.
As already mentioned in our article “How much weight can I lose weight in 3 Weeks” calories are not the end all answer to weight loss. More so it is only a part of the puzzle, because hormones and their influence are as important, if not more important. But still calories have to be taken into account when it comes to weight loss.
Banana for weight loss provides a rich range of nutrients. They are a remarkable source of potassium and vitamin B6 and have around 9 percent of the RDA for a micro nutrient you might not expect – Vitamin C.
Banana For Weight Loss: Bananas provide Healthy Fiber and Starch
The healthy fiber and starch that bananas contain not only can aid in weight loss, but also can help with digestive health. A big banana has about 3,9 grams of dietary fiber, which makes it an excellent source based on the recommended intake made by the Institute of Medicine: 25 grams daily for women and 38 grams for men.
Fiber plays a valuable role in weight loss because it can slow down digestion, which in turn can help you feel more saturated and keeps your blood sugar levels balanced. Avoiding blood sugar spikes makes it more likely that your body is going to burn fat for energy, according to several studies.
The most common starches in natural foods are complex carbohydrate that feed glucose to your body for energy, but some foods have a different type of carbohydrate called resistant starch.
These starches are not able to be completely digested by your gut, and instead, will be fermented in your colon. Much less calories are produced for each gram of restitant starch than for each gram of other sources of carbohydrates. On top of these sources are green bananas, and the amount goes down as they ripen.
Several reviews suggest that resistant starch can stimulate the breakdown of stored body fat, but there are more studies needed to prove it´s effectiveness, according to a study conducted in 2015.
Simplified, eating a green banana instead of a ripe banana of the same size means you more likely to absorb fewer calories, because the green one has higher amounts of resistant starch. If it makes sense to eat green bananas which are tasting odd, I highly doubt it.
Are you Carb Counting?
For quite some time, bananas had the reputation to be a bad choice when it comes to weight loss, because they contain more carbohydrates than other fruits. Altough it is true that many fruits have fewer carbs, a large apple for example, has about the same carb count as a large banana.
Carb count in bananas range from 23,5 grams in a little banana to 30,5 grams in a big banana. But keep in mind that some of the carbs in a banana are made up of resistant starch, which other fruits don´t have. What´s more important than the shear amount of carbs, is how foods impact your blood sugar levels.
Carbs made up of simple sugars without starch or fiber cause an spike in blood sugar, which is bad for weight loss for this reasons:
- First, if your body doesn´t use up the ingested sugar for energy, it will be stored as fat. Additionaly, when insulin levels are high, it signals the body to stop breaking down body fat for energy. One of the measures for this is the so called glycemic index rating which indicates the effect of carbs on blood sugar levels.
The glycemic score of bananas are not always the same. They depend on the level of “ripeness”, but on average, they have a score around 50, according to review made in December 2008 in the magazine Diabetes Care.
This keeps them in the range of low-glycemic foods, meaning they have a smaller impact on your blood sugar. However, it´s close to the range which is marked as moderate, which starts at 56.
Banana For Weight Loss: Conclusion
To describe the number of calories per gram of food, there is a term often used, called energy density. Foods marked as low-energy-density provide more bulk of food with fewer calores, primarily because they carry extra bulk from calorie-free fluids and fiber.
*In addition to their starch and fiber amount, bananas for weight loss are a good choice because they are made up mainly of water ( 75 percent ), which makes them a quite low-energy-dense food choice. That´s why most fresh fruits and vegetables work well in a weight loss regimen because they are low in energy density.
Have you tried banana for weight loss? Let us know in the comments below.
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Thank you – Your WLJ-Team
Greetings,
Your WLJ-Team
