A Step One Side Benefit: Weight Management

About 75 million Americans are dieting at any one time. Considering the fact that diets don’t work, that’s not so surprising. If they did work, people wouldn’t need to be on them all the time! 

Diets tend to create an obsession around food -- and that’s not sustainable over the long term. Building health by making small, manageable changes, however, is sustainable.

That’s what we’ve serendipitously discovered at Step One Foods. When I set out to create this program, weight loss was not the primary goal.  I wanted to create an exceptionally nutritious line of products that promotes cardiovascular health and helps lower cholesterol -- by delivering specific levels of key nutrients from whole food ingredients.

But when we first introduced the line, we started getting positive feedback from some of our overweight customers letting us know that they were – pretty effortlessly - losing weight!  We consider weight management to be one of the many side benefits to eating our products.

Why does Step One Foods help people manage their weight? I believe a big part of it is that when you just focus on making healthy choices, you wind up at a healthy weight. When you’re not obsessing over every single calorie or depriving yourself of your favorite foods, eating well becomes more manageable. Ask my husband, who swapped out donuts for our products and lost 50 pounds in six months!

Our products are also very nutrient dense. In other words, we pack a lot into every calorie, so our foods tend to be much more satiating. Our Oatmeal contains six grams of fiber, for example, which will most likely leave you feeling fuller much longer than a plain bagel (even though that plain bagel has 90 more calories).  Our foods are also low in added sugar, so your blood sugar stays constant.

When you’re eating nutrient-dense food, most people don’t feel the urge to eat as much of it. For example, if you normally ate that plain bagel in the morning and typically enjoyed a regular-sized Snickers bar as your afternoon snack, watch what happens when you swap them out for our Pancakes and our Chocolate Crunch Bar: You save 180 calories every day, and likely feel just as full.

Of course, 180 calories is not much in and of itself. But do that every day for a year and you should lose 18 pounds.

It’s those small, sustained changes that can make a huge impact on health -- including weight.  Step One can help.  Our foods were designed to make a difference.

Here’s how much of an impact Step One can have on weight management, in the words of real customers.

After 8 weeks of using Step One, Cholesterol went from 272 to 215, LDL from 176 to 129, and Triglycerides from 268 to 239. Weight loss of 10 pounds. Step One foods will definitely continue to be a part of my diet.

I have the oatmeal every morning with raisins and frozen fruit. It is the first stage of my new lifestyle of eating a plant based diet everyday. The combination of your oatmeal for breakfast, a cranberry bar for lunch, and non-meat or dairy dinner has changed cholesterol levels from 220 to 120. The oatmeal in the morning is a great reminder to me of how I need to eat to stay healthy. Another side effect has been a weight loss of 16 lbs.

I don’t eat breakfast. I’ve been using the smoothies in the morning. I’ve lost 27 pounds I’m not focused on my weight but my cholesterol went from 254 to 193 in four weeks.

Read the rest of the blogs in this series of Step One Side Benefits: 

• Higher Energy Levels
• Controlling Blood Sugar
• Inflammation Prevention