Can Some High Calorie Foods Be Good for Your Diet?

Some foods are good for you and your diet even though they are high in calories.  In fact, these foods may even help you slim down by reducing your cravings by making sure you get the different kinds of nutrients and fiber your body craves.  The trick is to manage these higher calorie foods very carefully.  If you don’t, you can quickly go overboard and blow your diet.

What are healthy high calorie foods?

Lots of foods qualify.  They are the ones that are high in fiber and protein. True, they can also have fat. The key is that the fat is unsaturated.

Take peanut butter.  It is true that just two tablespoons of peanut butter have 190 calories.  Plus, a majority of peanut butter’s calories are from fat.  Fortunately, this vegetable fat is unsaturated. That helps make peanut butter so famously satisfying.  Two other reasons are fiber and protein.  Those two tablespoons of peanut butter have 7 grams of protein and are rich in fiber.  In fact, even raw peanuts and many other types of nuts are similarly helpful, despite being high in calories.

Cheese is another example of a high calorie food you can include in your diet.  Of course, be careful here too because many cheeses are loaded with fat.  Pick the ones where the fat is unsaturated. Also, lots of low-fat and fat-free cheeses are available and cheese makers are getting better at improving the taste.  However, if you must have full-fat cheese, you can.  Just keep it to a single ounce which means about 100 calories.  While a majority of those calories are fat, that cheese also has 7 grams of protein and lots of calcium.

Finally, rice, bread and pasta can also fit on your diet.  However, some are much better than others.  In fact, processed rice, bread and pasta can cause a spike in blood sugar followed by a too rapid drop in blood sugar.  The culprit is low fiber when the processing breaks or removes the outer shell or "bran" from the grain.  By eating whole grain foods, your body absorbs these foods at a slower rate and that blood sugar spike and drop problem will be replaced with a more satisfied feeling.

High calorie foods to avoid

Just don’t get too comfortable bringing higher calorie foods back into your diet.  Lots of them are off for a reason and should stay off and some are tricky.  Keep an eye out for these fatty choices. Don’t be tempted by otherwise healthy salads with mayonnaise or other high fat dressings.  True, salads are wonderful for diets but a single tablespoon of mayo alone is about 100 calories, mostly from fat and some of those calories are from saturated fat.

Also, while no one is pushing ice cream as a diet wonder, it is a major temptation and sugary toppings make it even worse.  So, it’s true you can add high calorie foods, but stick to those that are low in processed sugar with no saturated fat and that also have good shares of protein and fiber.

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