Diet

Weight Loss Foods

By now if you have read some of our articles you will be getting bored of hearing it over and over………… the quickest way to lose weight is through education. Weight loss foods need not be boring, tasteless or difficult to prepare. They are often also quite affordable and if people only took as little as 5 minutes a day to look at what they are buying and find out a bit more information about the food they eat, they would make the changes required in their lives to create they destiny they want and deserve.

A List of Safe Foods That You Can Consume:

Whole grain products and carbohydrates that are starchy are foods that are considered safe. This would include traditional oatmeal, sweet potatoes, yams, brown grain, multi-grain cereal, beans, lentils, millets, sprouted bread, whole wheat pasta and beans. These foods are good when it comes to providing you the right type of carbohydrates. Again we stress that you should look at a list showing you the GI index of food before you buy, especially carbohydrates, as they are the food group with the greatest effect on the results of your weight loss program.

Vegetables, especially green ones, are very important no matter who you are or no matter what your preferences are. Simply put, without them, you miss out on a rich source of nutrients that you need to optimize your body’s functions. The better your body functions, the easier it will be to lose weight. They are also guilt free eating! Stuff your face, don’t worry about the calories, they are nothing compared to the benefits. In some cases it takes more energy to digest vegetables than you get from eating them.
Examples of vegetables are broccoli, asparagus, spinach, lettuce, peppers (bell peppers and hot peppers), tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, cucumbers and zucchini. There are many, many, many tasty, gorgeous healthy dishes you can make with vegetables. Guilt free!

Fruits are also important for the reason that the nutritional content that they have is very beneficial to everyone. Fruits contain vitamins and minerals that you essentially need for a healthy body. The problem as with all things, there are good fruits and bad fruits. For example avocados are high in fat but are good fruits because they are very nutritious and don’t stimulate insulin very highly, which means they are not very fattening. Bananas on the other hand are great when unripe, but when they get ripe, they are highly insulinogenic (insulin producing), so can be fattening. Examples of other healthy fruits are blueberries, oranges, apples and peaches.

Protein is a very important part of any healthy diet, there are many sources available, but for the purposes of weight loss, you need to focus on unprocessed meats. Home-made burgers are great examples of food full fresh beef as opposed to most ready-made burgers which will contain carbohydrates and other rusk which are fattening as they stimulate insulin. Proteins will have fat in it, but if you stick to sources of protein with good fat, these will aid your health and weight loss. We recommend chicken, beef, all kinds of oily fish, eggs (a great source of protein).

It is also important to be careful of what you cook with. Cooking oils like Olive oil, sunflower oil, flaxseed oils are good for you as they are rich in mono-unsaturated fats which are not highly fat inducing and which the body uses for example, to repair and build new nervous tissue in the body .

Foods That You Should Incorporate In Your Diet Plans

Tea is a drink which is rich in anti-oxidants and very healthy overall, as long as it is a herbal tea or red bush tea (rooibos tea). Normal tea contrary to popular belief still has a strong content of caffeine in it. In the short term caffeine can increase your metabolic rate, but chronic use leads can stimulate fat gain. I know this is not what people commonly believe but it’s true. Caffeine stimulates your sympathetic nervous system, which releases adrenaline into your system. The problem is the adrenaline, increases your blood sugar levels which then stimulates the release of insulin in your body. Insulin stimulates fat deposition…… That’s it’s Job! The second reason why too much caffeine in tea or coffee is bad is because when you body gets used to this outside source of stimulus, your internal mechanisms for maintaining your metabolic rate gets suppressed, so when you’re not getting a boost, your storing even more fat initially………… I haven’t even mentioned the addictive properties.

Chocolates can also be considered as beneficial for your body, because they are full of anti-oxidants which help to detoxify the body and reduce long term damage that is hazardous to your health. NOT all chocolates will do you good. The standard chocolate milk chocolate bar that is found in abundance at almost every convenience store will make you fat if you eat too much of it. We recommend you avoid them altogether. You should dark chocolates, particularly chocolates high in cocoa concentration or from raw chocolate sources. We provide a range of choices of healthy raw foods for you to use as a guide and to choose from in our resources section.

Nuts are good quick snack, are tasty and great for an energy boost. They are high in fats and should be eaten with caution. But they do not stimulate the release of insulin greatly in your body as much as carbohydrates. Some nuts are healthier than the other from the point of view of their concentration of unsaturated fat and also they make your body more alkaline, which aids weight loss. Some examples of nuts which can be used as a healthy snack are almonds, walnuts, brazil nuts and hazel nuts.

Think Outside The Box

I don’t recommend you keep drinking tea and coffee but for those of you who must, there are a range of herbal teas and coffees which have recurrent testimonials from everyday people and have been researched by scientists with regards to their weight loss benefits. One such line of drinks which we have come across is the “Organogold” range of products. They have green teas, coffees and hot chocolate which are infused with the natural herb “Ganoderma” which has been reported to boost the immune system of the body, alkalize the body chemistry, improve the body tissue oxygenation which overall helps to make you healthier and can aid weight loss.