Eat Spicy Food
Hot and spicy peppers have been scientifically proven to increase your metabolism, however, the main advantage of eating spicy foods is that you eat a lot slower and therefore get fuller faster. Also, adding spice and heat to your meals can make certain healthy meals a lot more bearable.
Keep Junk food out of Sight
For most people, the saying ‘out of sight, and out of mind’ applies when it comes to junk food. It will be much easier to resist plantain chips you don’t have it in your office drawer. Similarly, this step is much more likely to be effective if you can replace unhealthy junk foods and snacks with healthy snacks such as fresh fruit or nuts.
Eat More Soups
In Nigeria, we are blessed with different kinds of flavourful, bold and uniquely flavoured soups ranging from the rich beloved Egusi soup to the light Pepper soup amongst many others.
In most cases, these soups are so nutritionally dense but its benefits can be neutralized by excessive use of fats such as palm oil which when combined with carbohydrates from the swallow can lead to weight gain.
As a result, to avoid this issue, occasionally, one can choose to eat soups alone without any swallow or reach for wholegrain swallow options that can better serve your body. Grains such as fornio, or sorghum can be ground up into powders and used instead of options such as poundo yam
Eat at Home more often
The beauty of eating homemade meals is that you can control what goes into your food and tailor it completely to your dietary and health needs. For instance, if you suffer from High Blood Pressure then you need to carefully monitor your sodium intake and eating more homemade food will help you to do this.
Most commercially made food are loaded with excessive sodium from all the artificial flavourings used to achieve the taste. Therefore, homemade meals can often be the healthiest!
Eat More Vegetables
Whenever possible try to sneak vegetables into your meals. This can be done by either blending them up and adding to your meals or by simply adding fresh tomatoes, carrots or even a side salad to your meals. This will not only help to fill you up but will ensure you consume your recommended daily fibre intake which helps with digestion and purification of the body.
No one likes vegetables at first, but vegetables are packed with nutritional benefits that our bodies need to function right. Start by sneaking it in into your regular cooked meals if you do not like the taste of raw vegetables.
Ideally, your meals should be made up of 50% vegetables, so keep this in mind when planning future meals
Hopefully, these tips can help you kick-start your weight loss journey. By simply making these changes, you will notice a substantial amount of difference in your body. Lastly! Do not forget that variety is key! Doing the same routine and eating the same boring food everyday is bound to leave you right where you started, and for you to truly live a healthy lifestyle you need to find balance.
—————————————————————————
NAZOM CHUKUWUMA
Nazom is a healthy nigerian food and lifestyle blogger. Nazomscorner is all about a lifestyle change that can help you and your family eat better quality foods, balanced and tasty meals made from pure unprocessed foods, live an active lifestyle through easy to moderate exercises that can be done anywhere at any time to help you get healthier and stronger.
http://www.nazomscorner.com/ @Nazomscorner
