Losing weight with the Löwenanteil: that's what matters!

There are many reasons why someone would want to lose weight. It doesn't matter whether it's overweight or underlying health problems, whether it's "simply" a feeling of discomfort in your own body or whether you're pursuing a fitness goal - losing weight can be a challenge. To make it easier for you to lose weight, in this article we explain what you should pay attention to in your diet and give you tips on how you can lose a few excess kilos almost unnoticed.

In theory, losing weight is easy, because to lose a few pounds, all you need is a calorie deficit . That means you

• consume less energy/calories than your body uses or needs to maintain weight

• or burn more energy than you have, e.g. more sport/exercise with unchanged eating habits

The higher the calorie deficit, the more weight you lose in a short period of time. However, you should not choose the calorie deficit too high and avoid crash diets - even if the weight loss journey takes a little longer.

A moderate calorie deficit is between 300 and 500 calories per day . It shouldn't be any higher, because otherwise you will damage your body and your health in the long term and in the short term with problems such as

• Freeze

• Fatigue, lack of concentration

• digestive problems

• lack of motivation

• hunger

• sleep problems

• Lack of energy/ drive

• etc.

are confronted. You should be able to continue to cope with your everyday life without restrictions and only consider losing weight as a side project.

If you don't want to cut back on food, you can alternatively exercise more or do sports to generate a calorie deficit. Because the more active you are, the more calories you burn. It doesn't have to be a sweaty cycling lesson, quite the opposite: a longer walk is enough. Don't be afraid to get out into the fresh air, even in winter. You won't get sick from it, you'll even boost your immune system! You are welcome to read about it here .

You can, but don't have to, count your calories to lose weight successfully. But if you want to know for sure and want to be on the safe side, counting calories using an app is recommended.

To do this, you must first find out how high your basal metabolic rate is. This is the amount of calories you need at rest to sustain all bodily functions. Subtract a maximum of 300-500 calories from this to get the number of calories you need to lose weight. If 300 calories is too high a deficit for you, you can of course choose less, exercise more or eat the “right” foods (see below in the blog post) – losing weight shouldn’t become a burden .

You can also make calorie calculations easy for yourself by letting our calorie calculator do the math for you based on your goal – lose weight, gain weight, or maintain weight/be healthy. In addition to your goal, the calorie calculator also takes into account body-specific characteristics, how long you sleep, everyday activity and your sports workload and uses this to determine your individual daily requirement.

Note: If you want to lose weight, you must not deduct anything from the calories given by the calorie calculator. The calorie deficit is already taken into account in the displayed calories (if you click on “lose weight” at the beginning).

You don't have to count calories or eat less to lose weight. For example, you can eat more fiber and protein than usual because, to put it simply, they burn calories themselves during metabolism (more on this in the following paragraphs). For example, all of our dishes cover more than half of the daily fiber requirement - Chipotle Chili even all of it - and provide you with at least 30g of protein per glass, some of the calories of which are already burned off again during digestion.

You can also increase calorie consumption by moving more in everyday life or by doing sports . Due to the higher turnover, you are automatically in a calorie deficit if you do not eat more than usual.

Diet should not be neglected when losing weight. Provide yourself and your body with the right foods to stay efficient and healthy. These include primarily protein, complex carbohydrates and fiber as well as high-quality fats - preferably from unprocessed and whole foods in order to enjoy the full health benefits.

When losing weight, you should focus on foods rich in protein and fiber as well as natural whole foods (mostly unprocessed ingredients). Protein and fiber keep you full for longer than simple carbohydrates or fats, and whole foods provide you with exactly these nutrients as well as vitamins and minerals.

Proteins have several advantages when it comes to weight loss:

• They fill you up for a long time and protect against food cravings.

• They increase calorie consumption because the body has to use more energy to break it down, thus increasing thermogenesis. Thermogenesis is a natural process in the body that occurs when food is broken down and heat is produced. Depending on the composition of the food, more or less energy is burned/heat is produced. With fats only 2% of the supplied energy is used, with carbohydrates 5-10% and with protein 20-30%. The higher the protein content of the food, the higher the heat production and the higher the calorie consumption. This means: you burn more calories with a high protein consumption than with a high carbohydrate or fat consumption - and all without your intervention!

• Proteins also protect against muscle breakdown in a calorie deficit. This is also important when losing weight because a higher proportion of muscle in the body requires more energy/calories than a lower proportion of muscle.

Eating a high-protein diet doesn't mean you have to eat tons of protein from meat and eggs and/or drink protein shakes. With a balanced diet - also vegan or vegetarian - you cover the daily protein requirement (> 0.8g protein per kilogram of body weight) without much effort. High protein foods are listed below.

Dietary fiber is the secret weapon to avoid starving yourself while losing weight. The macronutrient has more benefits than its name suggests:

• They fill you up for a long time because on the one hand they are digested slowly or not at all by the body and on the other hand they swell up in the gastrointestinal tract and signal satiety.

• By stretching the stomach and the slow digestion process, they protect against food cravings .

• Dietary fiber has only 2 kcal per gram - that is only half as much as carbohydrates and protein (4.1 kcal each) and a quarter of the energy value of fat (9.3 kcal). Therefore, the more fiber a food contains, the fewer calories it has. For example, 100g of wholemeal spaghetti have about 30 kcal less than non-wholemeal spaghetti and twice as much fiber. 30 calories may not be a lot, but the health benefits are all the greater because:

• Dietary fiber is essential for proper digestion . Insoluble fiber swells up in the gastrointestinal tract, thus accelerating the passage of all food components through the intestines and loosening the stool. If you eat too little fiber, you will quickly suffer from constipation, which means that waste products, harmful substances or toxins cannot be excreted.

• Last but not least, (soluble) fiber is important for the immune system . Soluble fiber like pectin, oligofructose, inulin and other prebiotics are the food for the bacteria that live in the gut. If the latter are not sufficiently supplied, the immune system suffers (more on this in this article ) as well as the digestive process. This type of fiber plays an essential role in sugar and fat metabolism. If these are impaired, sugar and fat molecules can hardly be broken down, which results in diabetes, increased cholesterol and blood pressure levels, inflammation, fatty liver and other metabolic (metabolic) disorders.

At least 30g of fiber should be consumed daily. It's difficult to cover this amount in one meal or food, so it's important to eat many of the foods listed below multiple times a day.

If you're not used to eating lots of fiber, you should slowly increase your daily intake . The body does not get used to the changed composition of food overnight and reacts with flatulence or an unpleasant feeling of fullness.

In principle, it is also important to drink enough when consuming roughage, since roughage in the gastrointestinal tract requires liquid to swell up. If you drink too little, fiber consumption can lead to constipation.

A wholefood-plant-based diet is recommended, especially when losing weight (but also in general). This diet can be roughly translated as “ wholesome, plant-based, natural diet ” and provides exactly what the body needs: a lot of complex carbohydrates, i.e. fiber, easily digestible proteins, little unhealthy (animal) fats and many vitamins and minerals .

The focus and benefit of whole foods is fiber. Food is consumed in the most natural state possible . For example, instead of apple juice, use a whole apple (including the skin), instead of peanut butter, whole peanuts, fruit and vegetables with the skin on as far as possible, whole grain products, and enough legumes and seeds. The less processed a product is and the more of it eaten, the better. Most of the vitamins, minerals and fiber are found in the skins of fruits, vegetables and grains, so these should never be thrown away.

A wholesome, plant-based diet is important when losing weight because you are allowed to eat less. So the food you eat should be of high quality , otherwise you will damage your health and you will not be able to perform. In addition, high-fiber and plant-based foods have the advantage over animal foods, such as cheese, that they have fewer calories . You can therefore fill the plate relatively normally, continue to eat a lot and save calories at the same time. So when you lose weight, a trick you can use to trick your brain.

Whether you choose proteins from animal or plant-based foods is up to you. Both sources have their advantages and disadvantages. Animal proteins have the advantage that they can be better utilized by the body due to the similarity to the body's own protein structure and often also have a higher biological value*. On the other hand, vegetable proteins have the advantage that the respective foods contain more dietary fiber , which is actually consumed in far too small quantities (if at all) by the majority of the population anyway and supports you enormously in losing weight.

A mix of animal and vegetable proteins is best, as their combination can even exceed the value 100 (= measure of the amount of food protein absorbed by the body), eg potatoes + eggs in a ratio of 65:35 reach 136; Meat + brown rice in a ratio of 55:45 come to 128.

*But there are also exceptions: For example, dry soya slices contain 50g protein per 100g, but turkey meat or Parmesan/mountain cheese “only” 29g/100g each.

• Nuts and products made therefrom, eg nut butter, nut flour

• lentils, legumes

• cores

• Whole grain cereals and products such as flour, bread

• tofu, tempeh

• mushrooms, broccoli

• Meat fish

• ham

• eggs

• Dairy products, especially cheese

Note for people who want to lose weight: protein-rich animal foods often have a high energy and fat density and hardly any fiber. Therefore, prefer plant-based protein sources.

A mix of soluble and insoluble dietary fibers is also recommended. Both have different functions and thus complement each other in terms of their effect.

• (Whole grain) cereals: always choose the whole grain variant, e.g. whole grain bread, whole grain flour, whole grain pasta, whole grain rice, ...

• Legumes/beans/lentils and products made from them, e.g. soy products (particularly soy chunks)

• Nuts, seeds, cores and products made from these, eg flour, pulp

• Fruit and vegetables, especially the dried version

In the case of dried fruit, you have to be careful when losing weight: Liquid is lost during the drying process, which means that the dried product has a much higher number of calories, eg 100g of dried plums come to around 252 kcal/; fresh plums, however, only to 43 kcal!

Löwenanteil can help you lose weight all day long for a number of reasons.

Five of our dishes consist only of legumes in all possible forms and a range of different vegetables; two of our dishes also contain minced beef or chicken. So you cover at least 30g of your protein daily requirement with one glass of each dish.

Since the dishes are also packed with whole foods, you also cover at least half of the daily recommended amount of fiber with one glass each; with a glass of chipotle chilli even the entire daily requirement and you can continue to enjoy many vitamins and minerals.

Because our dishes provide sufficient fiber and protein, they are very practical in everyday life. You no longer need to worry about a weight-loss-friendly lunch at work or on your next trip that best combines everything. You can eat the dishes both warm and cold, or try them out creatively if you have more time, feel like it or feel like it. Just take a look at our recipe blog .

If you don't eat the whole dish, you can easily store it in the fridge thanks to the glass packaging and/or take it home with you in a leak-proof manner.

It doesn't matter whether you count your calories while losing weight or not, support is always provided. The nutritional values ​​are given per 100g AND per jar on each label, so you can easily enter them into your app. If you don't want to eat/eat the whole glass, you don't need a scale to find out how much you "may" eat/have eaten. Because our dishes are packaged in transparent glass, you can easily portion them.

If you don't count calories, you can still make sure that you're getting the best from our dishes by providing the nutritional values.

Hopefully you've already realized that you don't have to chastise yourself when you lose weight. Of course, you can eat very strictly to get to your goal; But you can also take it a little easier. At the end of the day, it makes up the quantity and calorie deficit to successfully lose weight.

However, if you want to be on the safe side and also want to eat "simply healthy and balanced" between the main meals, we recommend healthy snacks/desserts such as our Snack Balls. These consist almost entirely of nuts, dried fruit and protein powder and thus provide a decent amount of fiber and protein (per serving = one pack ~10g protein).