Best Diet Food:
Top Five Best Dieting Foods
What you eat and what you don't eat will have a large effect on how quickly you take off pounds, and more importantly, how long you keep those pounds off. There are certain foods you really should be eating on a regular basis for lots of good, healthy reasons. They come from all food categories, but every one of them has one thing in common: they pack a lot of nutritional punch when it comes to their calories. Here's a list of five diet foods that will help you stay healthy and lose weight.
1. Whole grain breads
If you've been paying attention, you know that bad carbs are the current diet buster. If you just stay away from all carbs, some popular diets proclaim, you'll lose weight no matter what else you eat. That's not only wrong, it's downright dangerous for both your health, and your diet.
Instead of cutting out carbs, you should be aiming to reduce them to a healthy portion of your diet -- which most experts agree is about 50-60% of your caloric intake. That means if you're on a 1500 calorie a day diet, you should be striving to get about 900 calories a day from grains, fruits, and vegetables.
Whole grain breads offer a lot of nutritional value. Replace your two slices of white toast with 1/2 a cup of oatmeal or whole grain cereal, and for about the same number of calories, you'll be getting three times the vitamins, amino acids, and roughage that your body needs to function. You'll feel full far longer, too -- because you've given your body something to work on that will take a while to digest.
2. Fish
Fish is low in fat, as high in protein as red meat, and provides something that most other proteins don't -- omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 3 is one of the main building blocks your cells need. If your body doesn't get enough Omega 3, it will try to construct cells from other fatty acids. The problem lies in those cells not being as flexible, and not quite the right shape.
By providing enough Omega 3 for your body to utilize, you'll be healing the damage done through years of a poor diet. And since fish, as a general rule, have fewer calories than most meats, you'll be saving calories, too. Just remember that you're REPLACING portions of meat with fish, not adding them to what you already eat.
3. Spinach
At 13 calories and 2 grams of carbohydrate in 2 cups of chopped raw spinach, this is one of the lowest cost sources of nutrition you can offer your body. Every serving gives you folic acid, manganese, beta-carotene, protein, lutein (a potent anti-oxidant), magnesium, vitamin C, and vitamin K. You can eat it raw in salads, steamed as a side dish, or sautéed in a tiny bit of oil for a different taste, and you still reap all the nutritional benefits.
4. Pink Grapefruit
With only 40 calories in half of a grapefruit, you're getting 45 mg of vitamin C, lycopene, pectin, beta-carotene, and potassium. Grapefruit is versatile and tasty. Eat it for breakfast, or toss it into a salad with spinach for an extra punch to enhance the nutritional quality of your diet.
5. Olive Oil
Your body does need some fat to process vitamins and use them properly. Olive oil is a mono-unsaturated fat that is the primary source of fat in the popular Mediterranean diet. It contains antioxidants, flavonoids, beta-carotene, and vitamin E, among others. One tablespoon has a whopping 125 calories, but drizzled on a 13 calorie spinach salad with a touch of lemon juice and some garlic, you still have a meal with less than 150 calories -- and a whole lot of healthy fuel for your body.
Most importantly, don't base your diet around any single ONE food item or ingredient. The best way to lose weight is to eat a healthy variety of foods to make sure you get all the essential nutrients that your body needs daily.
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