What can you eat?
People on a diet love to say, "No lunch. I am on a diet," or "nothing after 6." They make good sound bites, but don't generally mean anything where real dieting is concerned.
In my Dieting Basic, part 2, I touched on "changing food preferences" as part of your overall game plan to lose weight. Food preferences, however, can be very confusing. Different sources suggest different weight-loss food types. To start you off, below is a good starting point to fill you up, not starve you, to strip your excess fat away.
Food to make you lose weight:
1. Whole grain bread:
This is made from grain kernels not fully refined into flour. Typically denser in texture and darker in color than loaves from finely-milled flour, and tastes bitter too, compared to your regular bread. It makes you feel fuller for longer periods because it takes a lot longer time to digest than an ordinary loaf of bread.
This bread type has more nutritional value than their regular counterparts. It has more vitamins, minerals and fiber; has higher amounts of antioxidants, lignans, phenolic acids and other elements that have shown to help reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
2. Fish:
Fish is low in fat, high in protein as red meat and contains a lot of Omega 3 fatty acids, one of the main building blocks of a body's cells. Omega 3 fatty acids help your body repair the damage done on it through years of poor diet.
Three servings of fish per week is what major medical associations suggest for a healthy diet.
3. Spinach (Spinacia oleracea):
Is an edible flowering plant of the Amaranthaceae family. It is native to central and southwestern Asia. And it is nature's grocery of nutrients.
Two cups of chopped spinach contains 13 calories and 2 grams of carbohydrates and every serving gives you folic acid, manganese, beta-carotene, protein, lutein (a potent anti-oxidant), magnesium, vitamin C and K. It can be eaten raw as salad, steamed, sautéed, or anyway which way, yet maintaining its nutritional value.
The downside? It is high in sodium.
4. Olive oil:
It is the greatest source of monounsaturated fat and is the only vegetable oil that can be consumed as it is - right from the olive fruit.
Olive oil is good in controlling the bad cholesterol, LDL, and raising the levels of the good cholesterol, HDL. No naturally produced oil has as much amount of monounsaturated fat as olive oil.
One tablespoon of olive oil contains 125 calories; it contains antioxidants, flavonoids, beta-carotene and vitamin E, among others.
5. Pink grapefruit:
Also known as "ruby red" grapefruit, is packed with nutrients to help you lose weight, yet stay healthy. Half a grapefruit has 40 calories, 45 mg of vitamin C, lycopene, prectin, beta-carotene and potassium. Not to mention tasty, too. It is good to have at breakfast or tossed into a salad, with spinach for an extra nutritional punch.
No single type of food can make you lose weight. But the point is to have consistency in what you eat. Much study has gone into this and there's no need to reinvent the wheel.
