I often prefer to provide a healthy meal recipe ,but I’d like to give you diet food ideas this time.
Remember, If all you have is healthy food in your fridge, you’re forced to make right choices. In fact, it all starts with your grocery store trip. Now these are some good diet food that you’ll enjoy.
Alright, always keep you fridge full with lots of varieties of fresh vegetables. I make sure I have plenty of vegetables like onions, zucchini, spinach, fresh mushrooms, red peppers, broccoli, etc.
Coconut milk is another choice in my fridge. I like to use it to mix in with smoothies, oatmeal, or yogurt for a rich, creamy taste. Not only does coconut milk add a rich, creamy taste to lots of dishes, but it’s also full of healthy saturated fats. Yeah, you heard me…I said healthy saturated fats! Healthy saturated fats like medium chain triglycerides, specifically an MCT called lauric acid.
Diet food in the fridge:
- Chopped walnuts, pecans, almonds – delicious and great sources of healthy fats.
- Cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, and yogurt - Mix cottage or ricotta cheese and yogurt together with chopped nuts and berries for a great mid-morning or mid-afternoon meal.
- Whole flax seeds or chia seeds - grind these in a mini coffee grinder and add to yogurt or salads. Always grind them fresh because the omega-3 polyunsaturated fats are highly unstable and prone to oxidation, creating high levels of free radicals in pre-ground flax.
- Whole eggs – one of natures richest sources of nutrients (and remember, they increase your GOOD cholesterol so stop fearing them).
- Salsa – try to get creative and try some of the exotic varieties of salsas.
- Avocados – love them…plus a great source of healthy fats, fiber, and other nutrients. Try adding them to wraps, salads, or sandwiches.
- Butter – don’t believe the naysayers; butter adds great flavor to anything and can be part of a healthy diet (just keep the quantity small because it is calorie dense…and NEVER use margarine, unless you want to assure yourself a heart attack).
- Nut butters - Get creative and mix together almond butter with sesame seed butter, or even cashew butter with macadamia butter…delicious and unbeatable nutrition!
- Leaf lettuce and spinach along with shredded carrots – for salads with dinner.
- Home-made salad dressing – using balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, and Udo’s Choice oil blend. This is much better than store bought salad dressing which mostly use highly refined soybean oil (full of inflammation-causing free radicals).
- Whole grain wraps and whole grain bread (look for wraps and bread with at least 3-4 grams of fiber per 20 grams of total carbs).
- Rice bran and wheat germ – these may sound way too healthy for some, but they actually add a nice little nutty, crunchy taste to yogurt or smoothies, or can be added when baking muffins or breads to add nutrients and fiber.
Diet food In the freezer:
- Frozen berries – during the local growing season, get only fresh berries, but during the other 10 months of the year, I always keep a supply of frozen blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, cherries, etc. to add to high fiber cereal, oatmeal, cottage cheese, yogurt, or smoothies
- Frozen fish - Try a couple different kinds of fish each week. There are so many varieties out there, you never have to get bored.
- Frozen chicken breasts – very convenient for a quick addition to wraps or chicken sandwiches for quick meals.
- Grass-fed steaks, burgers, and ground beef – Grassfed meats have been shown to have as high as, or even higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids than salmon (without the mercury). Also, grass-fed meats have much higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) compared to typical grain-fed beef.
- Frozen buffalo, ostrich, venison, and other “exotic” lean meats - I can tell you that these are some of the healthiest meats around, and if you’re serious about a lean healthy body, these types of meats are much better for you than the mass produced, hormone-pumped beef and pork that’s sold at most grocery stores.
- Frozen veggies – again, when the growing season is over and I can no longer get local fresh produce, frozen veggies are the best option, since they often have higher nutrient contents compared to the fresh produce that has been shipped thousands of miles, sitting around for weeks before making it to your dinner table.
Diet food In the cabinets:
- Various antioxidant rich teas – green, oolong, white, rooibos are some of the best.
- Whole wheat or whole grain spelt pasta – much higher fiber than normal pastas
- Oat bran and steel cut oats – higher fiber than those little packs of instant oats.
- Cans of coconut milk – to be transferred to a container in the fridge after opening.
- Brown rice and other higher fiber rice – NEVER white rice
- Tomato sauces – delicious, and as I’m sure you’ve heard a million times, they are a great source of lycopene. Just watch out for the brands that are loaded with nasty high fructose corn syrup.
- Stevia – a natural non-caloric sweetener, which is an excellent alternative to the nasty chemical-laden artificial sweeteners like aspartame, saccharine, and sucralose.
- Raw honey – better than processed honey… higher quantities of beneficial nutrients and enzymes. Honey has even been proven in studies to improve glucose metabolism (how you process carbs). I use a teaspoon or so every morning in my teas. Yes, it is pure sugar, but at least it has some nutritional benefits… and let’s be real, a teaspoon of healthier raw honey is only 5 grams of carbs… certainly nothing to worry about.
- Organic maple syrup – none of that high fructose corn syrup Aunt Jemima crap…only real maple syrup can be considered real food. The only time I really use this (because of the high sugar load) is added to my post-workout smoothies to sweeten things up and also elicit an insulin surge to push nutrients into your muscles.
- Organic unsweetened cocoa powder -Mix this into my smoothies for an extra jolt of antioxidants or make my own low-sugar hot cocoa by mixing cocoa powder into hot milk with stevia and a couple melted dark chocolate chunks.
- Cans of black or kidney beans - Add a couple scoops to my Mexican wraps for the fiber and high nutrition content. Also, beans are surprisingly one of the best sources of youth promoting antioxidants!
- Dark chocolate (as dark as possible) – This is one of my treats that satisfies my sweet tooth, plus provides loads of antioxidants at the same time. It’s still calorie dense, so I keep it to just a couple squares; but that is enough to do the trick, so I don’t feel like I need to go out and get cake and ice cream to satisfy my dessert urges.
Lastly, another thing that’s hard to go wrong with is a good variety of fresh fruits and berries. The staples such as bananas, apples, oranges, pears, peaches are good, but I like to also be a little more adventurous and include things like yellow (aka – mexican or champagne) mangoes, pomegranates, kumquats, papaya, star fruit, pineapples, and others. Also, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and cherries are some of the most nutrient and antioxidant-dense fruits you can eat.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this special look into my favorite lean body meals and how I stock my cabinets and fridge. Your tastes are probably quite different than mine, but hopefully this gave you some food diet you can use next time you’re at the grocery store looking to stock up a food diet grocery.
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