Fruits and Vegetables for good health & weight-loss

Fruits and vegetables are a part of every well-balanced and healthy eating plan.  Using more fruits and vegetables along with whole grains, nuts, and beans is a safe and healthy alternative to animal products.

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, fiber, and other substances that are important for good health.

To lose weight, you must eat fewer calories than your body uses. But, this doesn’t mean that you have to eat less. Instead, just replace the high calorie, fatty and unhealthy ingredients with healthier, low calorie ingredients such as fruits and vegetable.

Some vegetables too can provide very high calories (potatoes, arbi, tapioca & other tubers) than the others. They can be replaced with leafy, green vegetables, and other colourful choices such as red, yellow and green bell-peppers, lettuces, peas, beetroots, turnips, carrots , zucchini, asparagus, spinach etc.

If you rely on animal proteins, you can replace the red & fatty meats with lean and healthier choices such as fish, sea-foods and chicken etc. Plan a few days in the week, when you are completely off-meats. This will reduce the stress on your digestive tract, and ensure that the 

Eat a lot of veggies & include healthy plant based protein sources such as beans, legumes, lentils and nuts. These ingredients are a rich source of protein, and are very low on calories, fat and cholesterol.

They are also rich in vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants that help you live healthy and disease-free.

Snack-Healthy: To satisfy the pre and post lunch hunger pangs, grab a fruit. Fiber rich fruits help you feel full, and also help reduce cholesterol and flush out the toxins. Fruits such as apples, guava, peaches, pears, kiwis, oranges, grapes, plums or a cup of berries (strawberries, cherries, blueberries, blackberries or cranberries would be your best bet. 

Fruit juices too provide the nutrients contained by the fruit, but they do not provide the natural fibers, which are crucial to manage cholesterol, blood sugar and keep the colon/digestive system functioning at its optimum level., 

For those dessert lovers, there are so many options available, that may cause a problem of plenty. For your post meal dessert, some chopped fruits mixed with Yogurt or low fat cream can satisfy your craving for a dessert, without using any added sugars/sweeteners.

Adding more fruits and veggies is certainly a more nutritious and healthier practice. However, any drastic changes to your regular diet are not recommended, as it is more likely to fail. Your food/diet habits have evolved based on ethnicity, customs & culture, demographics and food sources available in your geographic region. So, any sudden changes to your diet may be extremely difficult to  implement. 

Instead, you can try to make small changes to your diet, one by one. just make a list of what you generally eat, and the vegetable/fruits that are to be added to your diet. Over a period of time, replace the unhealthy items from your meals & add something healthier.

Not everybody can be put on the same diet plan, as everybody has different nutritional requirement. Some fruits and vegetables may be beneficial to some people, but yield negative results in some people. 

So, a consultation with a dietitian/nutritionist and your doctor would be a wise option. The dietitian would be able to suggest the accurate changes to your diet, based upon your physical and medical conditions. This would help you a great deal in achieving your long and short term fitness goals, and would ensure that your body gets the optimum nutrition.

GO GREEN..STAY HEALTHY..LIVE BETTER 

an initiative by medical professionals at- http://www.echemist.in