Author Name: StartRight
Are you on a diet? Planning to shed those extra kilos? Then you must have come across various dietary myths like “Avoid carbs” or “Avoid fats” or “Avoid proteins”. Although studies showed that all the essential nutrients is required to maintain a healthy and disease-free body, regarding a single nutrient as the root cause of your obesity or solution to any chronic disease does not yield a positive health outcome.
A diet devoid of carbohydrate or fat or any other nutrient is an outdated trend. It is very boring if your plate doesn’t have all the essential nutrients that are required for a healthy body and mind. Your dietary habit signifies the risk of disease and also your health status.
Your success depends on your diet. If you are healthy, you can work out ways to achieve your goal.
Rely on a single nutrient diet to lose weight; you will end up with various other complications due to insufficient nutrition. Research shows that sugars play a very important role in food safety, quality, and palatability.
The problem is, if your diet lacks a variety, it will make you feel restricted and eventually becomes boring. One cannot follow a single nutrient diet for a longer period; soon they tend to break the monotony. The diet you follow will eventually make or break the goal that you have set for yourself. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be boring. There are ways to experiment with your food and make it interesting. You must eat the food you crave and still stay fit.
There are ways through which you can stick to a plant-based diet and not feel restricted as well:
A plant-based diet gives you a wide variety of options to choose from. So you don’t need to stick to any particular nutrient if you want to lose weight. You can experiment with the below-mentioned ways.
• Explore new fruits and vegetables: Add new vegetables and fruits to your diet. Keep changing the fruits and vegetables to prepare new dishes. Learn new recipes and add freshness to your diet plan.
• Experiment with your recipes: Read cookbooks and new articles. Know more about how you can cook the same vegetable in different other ways. It can be boiled or baked or sautéed. Don’t hesitate to explore and experiment with your recipes.
• Dine at an ethnic restaurant: Opt for ethnic restaurants like Indian, Greek, Thai, Chinese, Italian, or Mexican. Here you will get a variety of options for plant-based food and it will be easier to select a meal without diverting from your core diet and satisfy your taste buds at the same time.
• Mix and Match Salads: The salads you eat need not be boring. You can have a variety of options for salads like fruit salads, bean salads, corn salads, fruit and nut salads, garden salads, vegetable salads, etc. You can also mix two or three varieties of fruits, vegetables, and nuts to your salads as per your taste buds.
As you can see that there is no reason to get bored by sticking to a single nutrient diet when your goal is to reduce weight and not to ignore your taste buds. With a plant-based diet, you don’t have to compromise or restrict yourself from having the choicest dish of yours. You have a wide variety of options to experiment with. Moreover, you get proper nutrition if you stick to a plant-based diet and not just a single nutrient diet. A plant-based diet provides you an adequate amount of essential nutrients and thereby prevents diseases caused due to nutrition insufficiency.
Reference:
- What’s your health worth? Food & Health Survey 2015. International Food Information Council website.
http://www.foodinsight.org/sites/default/files/2015%20Food%20and%20Health%20Survey%20-%20FINAL.pdf - US Department of Agriculture, US Department of Health and Human Services. Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015–2020: 8th Edition.
https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/chapter-1/ - Goldfein KR, Slavin JL. Why sugar is added to food: food science 101. Compr Rev Food Sci Food Saf. 2015;14(5):644-656.
