Effective Ways For Weight Loss With Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits and vegetables are part of a well-balanced and healthy eating plan. There are many different ways to lose or maintain a healthy weight. Using more fruits and vegetables along with whole grains and lean meats, nuts, and beans is a safe and healthy one.

Helping control your weight is not the only benefit of eating more fruits and vegetables. Diets rich in fruits and vegetables may reduce the risk of some types of cancer and other chronic diseases. Fruits and vegetables also provide essential vitamins and minerals, fibre, and other substances that are important for good health.

High quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables can help you lose weight when incorporated into your daily diet. They are typically much lower in calories for the volume, and are high in a wide range of nutrients. Replacing unhealthy, processed foods with a variety of healthy produce will fill you up and satisfy your desires. Food addiction can be curbed by including more than the recommended five servings a day making weight loss efforts more successful.

What’s The Truth About Fruit and Vegetable

Eating more fruit and veg is essential both for good health and to help us lose weight. Most fruits and vegetables are low in calories and fat, and high in fibre – three essential ingredients for successful weight loss. Most also contain plenty of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, all of which are important for helping us to look and feel our best and to protect us from disease.

Many fruits and vegetables actually weigh a lot, adding bulk to our diet, but they don’t provide that many calories. For example, a meal consisting of a 150g grilled chicken breast, a 300g jacket potato, 20g of butter and 30g lettuce provides a total weight of 500g and provides 780 calories. Swap that meal for a 100g chicken breast, a 200g potato, 5g of butter, 50g cabbage and 45g carrots and you still have an overall weight of 500g, but for just 470 calories.

Even though these fruit and veggies contain more calories, you don’t need to avoid them. They are still an important source of many different nutrients and the fibre they contain will help to fill you up so you’re less likely to want to snack on fatty and sugary foods. The key is to add them to your food diary so that the calories they provide are included in your daily total.

Which Fruit and Vegetables are Best For Weight Loss

Come up with a strategy to boost your intake of fruits and vegetables. Knowing when and how you will be having your produce during the day is better than haphazardly eating. A simple idea is to simply replace one or two meals a day with fresh, raw choices. Consider blending a fruit or green smoothie in the morning to replace breakfast. Wash and cut up vegetables and fruits to snack on during the morning and then eat a large fresh salad for lunch.

Incorporate fresh juice into your afternoon for a boost of energy. Try a variety of different exotic fruits and unfamiliar vegetables each week to keep your diet interesting. Purchase a raw food cookbook and try the recipes that call for a large amount of fresh vegetables. Aside from salads and soups, some recipes can be made that will mimic your favorite dish. A weight loss diet using fresh fruits and vegetables will only work if you fill your days with lots of healthy produce.

Diet Plan For Weight Loss With Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits:

You may have heard that fruits aren’t the best to eat when following a weight loss plan because of their sugar content. While it’s true fruit contains fructose, a simple sugar that is easily converted to body fat, the benefits of eating fruit far outweigh their sugar content. Some fruits, however, are better than others in terms of their fructose content and overall nutritional value. The best fruits to include in your fruit and vegetable diet are:

  • strawberries
  • apples (green contain the least sugar)
  • blueberries
  • grapefruit
  • pears
  • oranges
  • boysenberries
  • papaya
  • cranberries (including cranberry juice)
  • blackberries
  • guava
  • cantaloupe

The following fruits contain the most sugar and should be eaten less frequently:

  • grapes
  • bananas
  • dried fruit
  • coconut (also contains a fair amount of fat)
  • dates
  • canned and processed fruit

Raw fruit is always the best in terms of nutritional value. If you need to “alter” fruit in anyway, cooked, baked or steamed is better than boiled. Boiling lowers the nutritional value. Fruit juice does count as a fruit but contains less fiber than fruit itself so fruit is preferred over fruit juice.

Vegetables:

Vegetables, like fruits, are rich in nutrients. They have one main advantage over fruits: they are a complex carbohydrate. Your body doesn’t convert complex carbohydrates into fat as easily as fructose (or simple sugars). Vegetables also tend to be lower in total calories than fruits so you can eat to your heart’s content without any affect on your weight loss goals.

Vegetables also lower your risk of various cancers and heart disease. Finally, like fruit, vegetables are best eaten raw or steamed (without oil or butter).  Some vegetables are better than others. The best vegetables to incorporate in your fruit and vegetable diet are:

  • green beans
  • broccoli
  • carrots
  • mushrooms
  • celery
  • cabbage
  • lettuce
  • onions
  • tomato
  • zucchini
  • turnip greens
  • turnips
  • artichokes
  • alfalfa sprouts
  • brussels sprouts
  • collard greens
  • leeks
  • eggplant
  • kale
  • okra
  • scallions
  • summer squash
  • spinach

Now see, none of that was too painful now was it? Honestly, the fruit and vegetable diet is like anything else that is good for you but not necessarily exciting or rewarding: it just takes some getting used to. Work is good for us but we don’t really like it. We have to condition ourselves to get up every day and put our time in. And, if we stick at it and keep plowing forward, our income improves and our lives get better. The same is true of a fruit and vegetable diet. Good things will come of it and you will feel better about yourself and your life if you stick with it!

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