Creating a weight loss diet and including potatoes may sound deceiving, but this may be because you have not learned about diets, calories, and how to count them. This omission is one of the reasons why many people in weight loss programs may not begin to see results even after many months of dietary modifications.

Diets are specific; a weight loss diet is different from bodybuilding: while they may both have the same type of foods in some meal plans, the key differences are in portion control and the method of preparation.

What you must know about counting calories

For weight loss to be effective, your caloric intake should be less than the amount you burn daily. This deficiency will eventually cause a weight reduction and allow your body to sustain a regular metabolic rate. However, some experts suggest that calories should not be counted individually but as a whole unit. They argue that this is best for keeping the total caloric intake under control.

But the truth is that counting individual or whole calories will be inefficient if the food is wrong. For example, it could prove futile to count calories with processed foods such as fries, sugars, burgers, flour, and other foods with many fat contents. This is because even the calories taken within accepted limits will only increase the fat levels in the body. Another reason is that chronic hunger will certainly occur because the portions needed to achieve the necessary caloric count are small.

The key is to have a diet of foods that can be eaten to fill up and still retain a healthy caloric count.

For this reason, it would be better to eat three or four baked Irish potatoes plus some herbs than to eat two whole Irish potato fries with cream and toppings. The amount of calories packed in the fries is almost double the amount in the baked potato meal and yet, it would not satisfy hunger.

When counting calories, it is also important to spread out calories. The problem with many people is that they focus more on counting calories than on calorie density. Some foods contain more calories per pound than others; their high-calorie density makes them unsuitable for weight loss diets. So, spreading your calorie counts should be done alongside spreading foods with more calorie densities.