In the first part of this article I talked about why fruits and vegetables might be just what you need to give you the winning edge in managing your weight. (Fruits and Vegetables Best Choice for 2009) Today I would like to share my thoughts on how you might make it easier to regularly include more fruits and vegetables in your diet.

The cost of fresh fruits and vegetables especially off-season might dampen your enthusiasm for my suggestion. Unfortunately, some of the least healthy food is also the least expensive. There are many reasons for this including certain government policies that made sense 40-50 years ago but not any longer. However, that’s a topic for another day.

Hopefully we may see some changes in government policy and otherwise that might make fruits and vegetables more affordable in the near future. In the meantime, I have some suggestions that may help a little. When you plan your food budget do keep in mind the enormous health benefits of fruits and vegetables as well as the opportunity to more easily manage your weight.

Cost of Fruits and Vegetables

•Minimize your costs by buying fresh fruits and vegetables by season (whenever possible buy local and organic). Imported produce can sometimes be more expensive than what is grown in the United States.

•When fresh is limited or not available, choose to buy less expensive canned fruits or vegetables. You may also find frozen to be cheaper than fresh. The nutritional value of frozen is as good and might even be better than fresh. Canned produce may have somewhat less in the way of certain nutrients but is still a good choice.

(Note: Choose canned or frozen options without added sugar, syrup, cream sauces, or other ingredients that add calories.)

•Whenever possible, avoid buying pre-cut fruits and vegetables for enormous savings. The convenience may be nice but you pay dearly for that.

The cost of fruits and vegetables may or may not be an issue for you but what about meal and snack ideas? And what kind of simple changes might you make in your routine to make it more likely that fruits and vegetables are a part of your diet more often?

Tips for Simplifying

•Pick one day at the beginning of your week to wash and cut fruits and vegetables. Put each in a separate container, if necessary. (Add a little lemon juice to cut apples and pears to keep them from browning. Or just leave these whole to eat fresh as is.)

Now you have a supply of fruits and vegetables ready for snacks or to include in a meal later in the week. This will not only save you precious minutes when its time to cook but will also make it more likely you will grab one of these containers for a ready-to-eat, healthy, and low calorie snack.

•Add leafy greens (such as spinach, red leaf lettuce, romaine), tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, green peppers, and more to sandwiches and lighten up on the meat and cheese.

•Don’t forget fruit. Thinly sliced apples can make a great addition to a turkey or chicken sandwich for extra flavor and nutrition. Sliced bananas or, better yet, low calorie berries go well with peanut or other nut butters instead of jelly or jam.

•Add chopped veggies to broth based soups (whether homemade or canned), stir-fried dishes, pasta, omelets, and pizza toppings. Eat more veggies and there is less room for higher calorie pasta, rice, or bread.

•Strive for having half your plate at mealtime filled with fruits and vegetables. Do eat off of smaller plates for smaller portions and fewer calories.

•Potatoes eaten with the skin can be a healthy choice; however, do limit how much you eat. They have a high starch (carbohydrates) content and as such are more similar to bread or cereals with respect to calorie count.

Recipe Ideas

If you need a bit of inspiration when it comes to additional ideas on ways to prepare fruit or vegetables, what you may need are photos and recipes that make your mouth water. Here’s just a few of the places I go for inspiration both offline and on.

The next time you are at a shop with a magazine rack, flip through a few issues of some of the better cooking magazines. I especially like the magazines geared for vegetarians. You don’t need to be a vegetarian to get inspired and enjoy the recipes you’ll find!

The latest issue of Vegetarian times (January 2009) caught my eye with the lead story of “Lose Weight, Gain Energy: 35 satisfying recipes under 300 calories”. After only a minute or two looking at the enticing photos and recipes and I was hooked. I don’t buy magazines very often but this one came home with me!

No time for magazines? No problem. There are lots of great online sites for inspiration:

Check out Flickr photos (online) for pictures of vegetarian recipes from around the world. Not all of the photos will appeal to you (or feature fruits and vegetables) but the ones that do are sure to inspire you to be more creative with your meals and snacks.

Flickr Vegetarian Group

Have you had a chance to read my review article of some of the best online sites for low calorie and healthy recipes?

Healthy Low Calorie Recipes: 8 Super Sites

Veggie Meal Plans (A blog site with lots of good recipes and sometimes very appealing food photos.)

Fruits and Vegetables Matter

One of my favorite all around recipe sites is RecipeZaar. What I especially like is the ability to drill down and find specific kinds of recipes. I did a basic search for low calorie fruit recipes and came up with over 6,000 recipes. I took a look at the calorie counts for some of the recipes and many were on the high side. So I then chose to “filter by nutrition” and did a search for low calorie fruit recipes with less than 100 calories per serving.

This narrowed the results down to 198. At that point I could have chosen to filter by course (breakfast, snack, main dish, etc.), ingredient, preparation (time to make, simple, etc.) or occasion (seasonal, holiday, etc.). Very nice!

(Note: If the link for the filter for low calorie fruit recipes with 100 calories or less per serving doesn’t work, just do your own search at www.recipezaar.com following my tip.)

Low Calorie Fruit Recipes

A search at RecipeZaar for low calorie vegetable recipes with 100 calories or less per serving turned up 48 recipes:

Low Calorie Vegetable Recipes

For more about nutrition and the value of fruits and vegetables for weight loss you might want to read:

Fruits and Vegetables: Nutrition Source, Harvard School of Public Health

Last but not least, I wanted to share with you a list I came across at Health.com (Health magazine) for the 10 best supermarket chains. These are the stores selected by six prominent health experts as being the best of the largest chain stores for delivering the freshest and healthiest food possible.

These stores may not be available where you live. That doesn’t mean you are out of luck. There are a number of smaller chain stores and other grocery stores with an outstanding selection of healthy choices that did not make this list because of size.

In addition, some of the stores listed may not be the best for you based on cost. And just because a chain store may have received high marks in general doesn’t mean a particular branch store where you live is as good. It may not have the kind of management necessary to assure the same high quality guidelines as the same shop in another city.

1. Whole Foods
2. Safeway
3. Harris Teeter
4. Trader Joe’s
5. Hannaford
6. Albertson’s
7. Food Lion
8. Publix Super Markets
9. Pathmark
10. Super Target

If you have some time, I would encourage you to read the original article to see what some of these shops offer and what kinds of things matter when it comes to making healthy choices: America’s Healthiest Grocery Stores

Do start out the New Year with a plan. Eat more fruits and veggies. Good luck with this and best wishes for achieving and maintaining a healthy weight!

Health Maintenance weight loss

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