Eat These Fruits and Vegetables to Lose Weight

Want to lose a few pounds?

Eating unprocessed foods like fruits and vegetables are a terrific way to lose weight and improve your health at the same time.

Compared to overly processed packaged foods that often contain high amounts of salt, fat and sugar and calories, basic fruits and vegetables are a much better option.

Fruits and vegetables contain vitamins, minerals, and fiber, which are essential to good health.

If you want to lose weight, add these fruits and vegetables into your diet as a replacement for processed foods, at least a few times per week.

Apples

A medium sized apple only has around 75 calories, but does an outstanding job of curbing hunger. Participants in a long-term, multi-year caloric restriction diet turned to them to make the strict program easier. One study showed that eating an apple 15 minutes before a meal caused people to reduce their caloric intake by 15 percent during the meal itself. A single apple will give you more than 15 percent of the daily recommended amount of fiber for your diet! Learn more about the health benefits of eating apples.

Kale, Collard Greens, Swiss Chard, Spinach

Although different leafy greens have varying amounts of fiber and vitamins between them, study after study shows that eating any of them will dramatically improve the quality of your diet, giving you a big dose of vitamins, minerals and fiber, in a very small caloric package. An entire cup of kale only has 34 calories! If you enjoy leafy greens, you can essentially eat as many of them as you’d like. Just take it easy on the salad dressing if you are eating them raw, because dressings can quickly add a ton of calories.

Broccoli

One of the healthiest vegetables you can eat also has one of the fewest number of calories per serving. One cup only has around 31 calories. Don’t add too much butter or cheese, or dip your raw broccoli in large amounts of dressing, because you will end up adding a lot of empty calories to an otherwise extremely healthy dish. Learn more about the health benefits of broccoli.

Blueberries, Raspberries and Strawberries and other Berries

Studies have shown that berries have among the highest antioxidants of any fruits, and are right up there on the charts with the leafy green vegetables we mentioned before like kale. What’s also great about berries is that although they taste very sweet, they have a relatively low glycemic index compared to many other fruits. In fact, most varieties come in at under 50 in the index (which makes them low!), and blueberries are just barely higher, at 53. Berries are high in vitamin C and other vitamins, and have a large amount of fiber. A cup of most types of berries have well under 100 calories. A cup of raspberries has 64 calories. A cup of strawberries has 48 calories. A cup of blackberries has 62 calories. Just stay away from the cream and sugar, or berries canned in syrup!

Sweet Potatoes

Unlike regular potatoes, which are not typically associated with losing weight, sweet potatoes are both incredibly healthy and helpful when it comes to weight loss. A sweet potato is a good source of vitamin C, vitamin B12 and vitamin D, as well as minerals iron and magnesium. They are even associated with lowering blood pressure.

Did we leave out any other fruits and vegetables that you think we should have included? Leave a comment and tell us why.