You just can’t beat vegetables for low calorie nourishing food. Veggies are packed with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. But there’s so much more to these colorful foods that makes them ideal for weight loss.

Vegetables tend to have a high water and fiber content. Both water and fiber increase the bulk or volume of foods. This in turn reduces the energy density or calories. When the ratio of calories to weight is high, a food is considered to be high-energy dense. In other words, a small amount of food can have a high number of calories.

Low energy dense foods such as vegetables have relatively few calories by weight. This means you can eat more food for the same number of calories as an energy dense food such as pecan pie.

Low energy dense foods can fill you up and provide you with a sense of when you’ve had enough BEFORE you overeat. They also help to displace high calorie food you might otherwise consume.

If you are not a veggie fan and can’t imagine ever enjoying vegetables, I hope you will give them another chance. Exploring the wide range of flavors and textures of vegetables can be an adventure. As I continue to learn about the health benefits of vegetables, I am motivated to discover new and delicious flavors in the foods I prepare for meals and snacks. I hope in time you feel the same!

Image by shannonpatrick17 via Flickr

Low Calorie Vegetables: 100 Calories or Less

artichoke, cooked 1 medium 60 calories

asparagus, cooked ½ cup 85 calories

beets, cooked ½ cup 37 calories

bok choy, cooked 1 cup 20 calories

broccoli, raw ½ cup 26 calories

brussel sprouts, cooked ½ cup 28 calories

cabbage, cooked ½ cup 17 calories

carrots, cooked ½ cup 35 calories

carrots, raw ½ cup 27 calories

carrots, raw 1 large 30 calories

cauliflower, cooked ½ cup 15 calories

celery, raw ½ cup sliced 10 calories

celery, raw 1 stalk 5 calories

cucumber, raw ½ medium 20 calories

edible podded peas, cooked ½ cup 22 calories

eggplant, cooked ½ cup 17 calories

fennel, raw ½ cup 15 calories

green peas (English peas), cooked 67 calories

jicama, raw ½ cup 25 calories

kale, cooked 1 cup 36 calories

lettuce, raw 1 cup 5 calories

onions, raw ½ cup sliced 23 calories

radishes, raw ½ cup sliced 9 calories

spinach, cooked ½ cup 20 calories

sweet green peppers, raw ½ cup sliced 9 calories

sweet potato, baked ½ cup 90 calories

sweet red peppers, raw ½ cup sliced 14 calories

sweet yellow corn, cooked 65 calories

swiss chard, cooked 1 cup 35 calories

tomato, raw 1 medium 25 calories

turnips, cooked 1 cup cubed 33 calories

white mushrooms, raw ½ cup sliced 8 calories

winter squash, baked (all varieties) ½ cup 40 calories

zucchini, raw 1/2 cup sliced 9 calories

Certain veggies are good raw or cooked others you will need to cook to enjoy. This doesn’t have to be time consuming or difficult. Most vegetables can be easily prepared and cooked in minutes with a microwave oven.

If you have the time, you just can’t beat the flavor of sliced roasted veggies. Brush veggies with a very light coating of olive oil, add seasoning, and then roast in a 425-degree oven. Watch the time. Some veggies brown up nicely in as little as ten minutes or so (small tomato wedges) whereas others might take as long as 30 to 40 minutes (sweet potato slices).

Here are a few more tips on how to get veggies in your diet more often:

1. Cut up veggies to be eaten raw at the beginning of the week. Keep them in a translucent container in the refrigerator in clear view when you open the fridge door. Having veggies ready to grab and eat makes them more appealing.

2. Get creative with salads! Salads can be so much more than iceberg lettuce and tomatoes. Think spinach or mixed leafy greens. How about beets, broccoli, carrots, jicama, cauliflower, cucumber, peas, onions, celery or fennel in addition to or instead of tomatoes?

3. Toss cherry tomatoes, halved with lightly cooked broccoli florets, a little olive oil, lemon juice, and seasoning.

4. Enjoy cut veggies with a low cal dip. You can make your own healthy dip by blending low fat cottage cheese with nonfat plain yogurt. Add seasoning, mix, and enjoy!

5. Add veggies to soups, salads, stir-fry dishes, casseroles, omelets, sandwiches, and more.

Check out my previous articles for some additional low calorie snack ideas:

1. Low Calorie Dairy Snacks

2. Healthy Low Calorie Fruit

3. Healthy Low Calorie Beverages

4. 28 Healthy Low Calorie Snack Foods to Go

5. Low Calorie Healthy Carbs: 100 Calories or Less

6. Low Calorie Meat, Poultry, Fish, and Seafood: 100 Calories or Less

Till next time, watch those calories and eat healthy foods!

calories Health Maintenance weight loss

Did you enjoy turkey for Thanksgiving? Not everyone is a turkey fan or chooses to partake of turkey for this holiday but many if not most Americans do. Turkey is lean nutritious meat that can be enjoyed all year round but that hasn’t been true for long. At one time 90 percent of all turkey meat was sold as the whole bird during the holiday season of November and December.

Turkey has become more popular in large part because individual turkey pieces such as breasts, tenderloins, cutlets and ground turkey are now available. And, of course, there’s the option to purchase pre-cooked turkey as deli slices or otherwise. When eating turkey meant having to purchase, prepare, and cook the whole bird it just wasn’t as appealing to do very often. Thankfully that’s changed.

Although, I may not have included turkey in my list of the top ten foods for women and weight loss, it does rank high on the list of healthy choices. Ounce for ounce turkey breast without the skin has more protein and less fat than beef or pork. A three-ounce serving of skinless boneless turkey breast has about 115 calories with 26 grams of protein, 1 gram of fat, and 0 grams of saturated fat. (Chicken is similar but not quite as good. A three ounce serving of skinless boneless chicken breast has about 140 calories with 26 grams of protein, 3 grams of fat, and close to 1 gram of saturated fat.) Turkey is also an excellent source of iron, zinc, and many B vitamins including riboflavin, B6, and B12.

So if you are watching your calorie intake and nutrition, turkey meat can be a great choice. Even the dark meat is relatively lean compared with other meats but it does have more total fat, saturated fat, and calories than breast meat. What you want to watch, however, is the ground turkey.

Ground turkey typically has significantly more fat. It ranges from 85 to 99 percent fat free. The amount of fat varies depending on whether the ground turkey includes a mix of dark and light meat along with some skin or if it is prepared from breast meat only. Something to keep in mind is that 85 percent fat free does not mean the turkey has 15 percent fat but rather that it is about 15 percent fat by weight. This actually translates into about 51 percent fat in terms of calories. See Weight Loss Success: Are You Buying the Best Products? for a better explanation of how that works.)

Adding low fat turkey meat to a recipe can boost the protein content of a dish while keeping the calorie count down. I’ve found turkey to be a great choice for preparing low calorie nutritious meals. I’ll share a few recipes with you for turkey meals with 350 calories or less per serving. You may have used up your turkey leftovers for this season but keep these recipes handy and you may very well find yourself preparing turkey breast more often!

1. Turkey with Curried Cream Sauce
2. Turkey Waldorf Salad
3. Turkey Pizza
4. Turkey Apple Gyros

Want more ideas? Check out the online recipe sites. Lots of recipes I’ve found call for ground turkey. But it’s quite easy to substitute chopped cooked turkey to save time and possibly calories. Just keep in mind the ratio of 4 to 3. For example, as a general rule, 4 ounces of uncooked meat will become about 3 ounces of cooked meat if you are cooking whole cuts. Ground meat will yield somewhat less.

Till next time, watch those calories and eat healthy!

calories Health Maintenance weight loss weight management