When I go food shopping Thursday I'm not sure if I should buy food low in fat or low carbs? Which is better for losing weight or does it even matter?

Depends on if you mean Food Low in Fat, or Low-fat Foods.

Foods low in fat, like skinless chicken breast for example, are real food that is naturally low in fat....great way to go

Foods that are low-fat, for example a low-fat salad dressing, will have additional sugars, and other un-natural additives that are not healthy for you at all.

As far a low-carb, I myself am a firm believer in not depriving yourself of any food group. We need carbs, we need protien, we even need fats. But there is the proper ratio, and there are healthy carbs and not healthy carbs. Great sourse of healthy carbs would be beans (kidney, pinto, garbonzo), whole grains (oats, quinoa, whole wheat) Sweet potatoes (baked or roasted or mashed) Nuts, Veggies and Fruits...Not so good carbs would be white rice, white potato, white bread and pasta, etc....Bad carbs would be crackers, cereals, etc that have no nutritional benefit...sugars, etc

Remember, weight loss is NOT a diet, it has to be a life plan. So it is not realistic, or healthy to plan to restrict a food group entirely, we need a good balance. For me personally I did best when my calories were made up of 30% protien, 45% carbs and 25% fats (Sparkspeople does a great job at charting this for you)

Hope that helps

It's all about finding the plan that works for you, that you can live with, and shop for that. But you do need to have a specific idea in mind of what you want to do so that you can plan and shop for that. Whatever you decide to do, preparation and planning are key.

I think you may want to do some research to make sure you choose the right path for yourself. Everyone has a different idea of whats healthy and I would totally disagree with Mikkijoe on eating any form of a grain, but you can make your own choice. I don't deprive myself of much, unless your talking about processed junk like cakes,cookies,boxed food. I have finally had tremendous success losing weight, I ate low-fat for over 5 yrs and could barely drop 10 lbs, I finally started to eat the basics of our diet (meat,seafood,veggies,nuts,seeds,fruit) and started dropping the lbs.

Like mthrgoos68 said, find something that works for you. I think like anything in life education is so important and I am so glad I didn't stop investigating what worked for me.


http://www.marksdailyapple.com/why-g...are-unhealthy/

Choose one and go for it! I've plateaued every twenty pounds and the way I break through is to change my diet. I started with low fat, but I'm currently playing with low carb. You might take a look at the different diet groups on 3FC and see if the people in one group or another seem especially supportive to you and start there.

I'm more like Gardenerjoy ... started calorie counting and tweaked my way into lower carb. And like Kara, no grains, no sugar, no preservatives.

I think that you'll find most folks will encourage you to seek out real food. Natural, as it grows You can never go wrong with a nice piece of chicken and a lovely salad.