Avoid these 5 junk foods to ensure diet success

When you're ready to start dieting, it's important to focus on eating foods rich in nutritional value. Here are five junk foods to avoid for diet success.

Dieting is hard no matter how you go about it.

• Whether you're cutting out your favourite foods or reducing your portion size, dieting can require more thought and self-restraint than normal.
• But it can also make you feel healthier, slimmer and happier.

Fast food is full of unhealthy trans fats and loaded with additives to make it taste good and extend its shelf life.

• There isn't much nutritional value in most fast foods, and typically, the portion sizes are much too large. You're basically just consuming empty calories that only serve to pack on extra pounds.

Pancakes don't seem like they'd be filled with unhealthy ingredients, but they usually are.

• If you get pancakes from a boxed mix, you may be consuming up to five grams of trans fat in each cup!
• The suggested daily maximum of the nasty stuff is two grams, so in one meal, you've already consumed your three-day quota.

Your best bet is to make homemade pancake batter.

Diet sodas might seem like a healthy choice when you're trying to cut down on calories, but they are actually notoriously bad for you.

• Artificial sweeteners have been linked to overeating, obesity, and in some cases, type 2 diabetes.
• The chemicals in artificial sweeteners can overstimulate taste receptors, making us prefer extra-sweet flavours to the healthy, natural flavours of vegetables and fruits.
• They've also been linked to interference in serotonin levels, which can cause sleep disturbances. Healthy sleep is an integral part of weight loss because it helps your body's metabolism and digestion stay on track.

Potato chips taste great because they're loaded with a harmful substance called MSG, or sodium salt of glutamic acid. It's thought to cause headaches and digestive issues if consumed in large doses.

• Potato chip manufacturers don't have to list the amount of MSG in their packages, so it's hard to tell how much you're consuming in a bag of chips.

Lunch meats go through a great amount of processing, and by the time they're packaged and sold they're loaded with extra sodium and nitrates.

• This can cause you to retain water and increase your blood pressure, leading to heart problems. They also contain added oils and sweeteners, which increase its fat and carbohydrate content.