Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Superfoods and weightloss

I know that I'm a little behind the times, but I feel like the latest nutritional buzz word is "superfood".  According to urbandictionary.com, a super food is,

"a food that is so high in trace minerals and other nutrition that has never been isolated to make a supplement. Therefore a superfood cannot be replaced with a supplement."

 Normally when I think of a food that is high in nutrition and minerals I think of coarse grainy stuff like granola.  Granola isn't bad, but the texture kills me after a while.  Or the title superfood is only reserved for nasty greens like kale and stuff that breaks your jaw while chewing it.  Nevertheless, I decided that I would try to consciously add a superfood to my diet once a week.  I was ready to steel myself and suck it up until I actually researched what foods are superfoods.  Health.com came up with a list of 27 superfoods that are good for you and will help you lose weight.  Here is their list seperated up into various food groups:

  • Grains and starch
    • oats
    • brown rice
    • almonds
    • potatoes
    • pine nuts
    • pearl barley
    • quinoa
  • Fruit and vegetables
    • avocados
    • blueberries
    • broccoli
    • pears
    • grapefruit
    • bananas
    • oranges
    • plantains
  • Dairy:
    • cheese (fresh goat or feta) [I wish brie was here, le sigh]
    • low fat milk
  • Proteins:
    • black, white, kidney, garbanzo beans
    • lentils
    • salmon
    • eggs
  • Other:
    • wine
    • dark chocolate
    • green tea
I must say I was SUPER surprised!  Except for three things (grapefruit, goat and feta cheese, and wine) I actually like most everything on this list.  In fact, I eat a lot of these foods already.  So here is what I would like to do.  Once a month, I want to highlight a SuperRecipies.  A SuperRecipe is a recipe that contains at least two superfoods and is under 400 calories a serving for a meal and 200 calories for a snack.  I'm basing my calorie cutoff on my personal Calorie max of 1,400 Cals/ day.  That means that I can portion off my day into 400 cals/meal and have 200 calories left over for snacks.

So stayed tuned for these tasty recipes and please share any of your SuperRecipes!

2 comments:

  1. I'm sitting here eating TJ's Channa Masala - garbonzo bean masala. Yo. It's totally yummy. And it was frozen in the freezer at work so I actually had time to eat it between my noon meeting and the rest of my workday.

    I'm on the bandwagon too with 30 pounds to lose. Guess we'll be the boring diet girls at con this year! Fruity rum drink? Hmm, too many calories. Glass of wine? Oh heck, sure, that's a good snack, and it's a super food!

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    Replies
    1. It's good to know that someone else at con will be working to resist the siren call of con kibble. We'll watch out for each other!

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