Lighten up your Summer Diet
The secret to ANY weight loss is to choose healthy foods and take in fewer calories than you burn.
it's just easier to make better food choices in summertime, when heavy, high-calorie dishes seem less appealing. The best foods for weight loss in summer are light, refreshing and, most important, keep you out of the hot kitchen.
The single easiest way to trim calories from your summer diet, experts say, is to load up on nature’s bounty. Produce is at its peak in summer. Delicious fruits and vegetables abound at farmers' markets and in your local grocery. Besides being low in calories, produce is loaded with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber.
To keep your cool and cut your time in the kitchen, start with cut-up fruit and washed greens. Add rotisserie chicken, cold soups, and pre-threaded kabobs when you need something a bit heartier.
Here are some suggestions to help you lighten up your calorie intake and create weight loss during the summer.
1. Chilled Soups
Chilled soups like gazpacho or cucumber-dill that contain lots of chunky vegetables are a great way to start a meal.
2. Watermelon
Who doesn’t love diving into a crisp, juicy slice of watermelon when it's hot outside? Also, get your daily water intake since half of the watermelon comes from water!
3. Grilled Veggies
Keep a plate of grilled onions, bell peppers, zucchini, carrots, eggplant, asparagus, and garlic in your fridge. You can use them to make dishes like:
- vegetable and goat cheese salads
- vegetable pitas
- vegetable, ricotta, and fresh herb pasta and frittatas
4. Salads
Salads make for quick, healthy meals -- with no recipes required.
Give the produce a quick rinse; slice, dice, toss fruits, vegetables, low-fat cheese, a handful of toasted nuts with some salad greens and a light raspberry or ginger vinaigrette, and you have a cool and crunchy low calorie meal in minutes. To lower calories even more, flavor your salads with herbs from the garden so you can go light on the dressing.
Your breakfast and/or lunch could be a bowl of seasonal fresh fruit.
In summer you can munch on melons and in wintertime enjoy a bowl of persimmons.
Make a fruit salad out of a combination of any of the following: chopped
apples, berries, peaches, pomegranates, grapefruit . . . the possibilities are endless.
These two recipes above are a wonderful and healthy way to start your day. Even if adding one of these recipes to your daily routine is the only change you make, you will have added valuable nutrients and fiber to your diet!!
5. Beverages
Healthy smoothies, coffee drinks, teas and are just the ticket tow quench thirst and keep hydrated during the summer.
My Favorite Green Smoothie
1 young coconut water or 1 cup water
3 ripe fresh or frozen bananas
1 rib celery
2-3 leaves kale or collards stems removed
Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth and creamy.
Variation #1: Substitute 1 of the bananas for 1 large mango.
Variation #2: Substitute 1 of the bananas for 1 large mango and substitute the celery for 1 Fuji apple.
The trick to green smoothies is not to add too many greens at first. The smoothie should
be sweet and pleasurable to drink. If you don’t have any fresh green to put in your smoothies you can substitute fresh greens for your favorite green powder such as wheatgrass, spirulina, blue green algae or chlorella.
Lemon Spritzer. 12 ounces of lemon sparkling water mixed with the juice of 1 lemon and 1/4 cup pomegranate juice, served over ice (35 calories)
6: Fruit-Based Desserts
Ditch high-calorie desserts and opt for these naturally sweet treats that can tame the most ferocious sweet tooth.
- raw chocolate covered frozen banana sundaes made with low-fat ice cream or frozen yogurt
- pineapple with pureed berry sauce.
- grilled white peaches with blackberries
- healthy raw Chocolate.
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