What’s a healthy breakfast, lunch or dinner depends on what stage of life a person is at and what their needs are at the moment. The needs of a young child are different than those of a teenager and the needs of an adult male are different from a pregnant woman. Elderly people have different needs altogether, as do people who are interested in weight loss.
The challenge with someone who wants to lose weight is for them to have healthy meals that are still in low in calories. Here are some ideas for healthy, low-cal meals.
Don’t Skip Breakfast and Eat a Good One.
Skipping breakfast will mess up a person’s metabolism. Some dietitians believe the metabolic rate can slow down by 25 percent if breakfast is skipped. The body needs nutrients and fluids in the morning to get started. This is especially important for people who want to lose weight, because the body will make up for not getting fuel in the morning by demanding more of it by midmorning. The fuel it will demand will almost certainly be sugar. Then, the sugar will make a person that much hungrier at lunch. A healthy breakfast for someone interested in weight loss would be huevos rancheros, an omelet with ingredients like nonfat cottage cheese, skim milk, and reduced fat Jack cheese all served on corn tortillas.
Keep Lunch Lean
A healthy lunch keeps the energy levels up for the rest of the day. A healthy lunch is a boneless and skinless chicken breast served with fat free Italian dressing, tomato slices, seasoned bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, some angel hair pasta and a handful of green peas.
No Late Dinner
Dinner is many people’s biggest meal of the day and eating a big meal at night is not a good idea. When a person eats late the body will hang on to the calories as fat. On top of this, a person will be too full to eat breakfast in the morning and breakfast is the one meal that shouldn’t be skipped. Indeed, some nutritionists believe that breakfast should be the biggest meal of the day and the amount of food a person eats should taper off as the day goes on.
Between Meals
Between meal snacking doesn’t have to feature junk foods. A healthy snack between breakfast and lunch might be a banana and a couple of vanilla wafers. A snack after dinner can be popcorn. Snacks that are high in complex carbohydrates actually help people with weight loss. When the body doesn’t feel that it’s starving, it’s less likely to compel the person to overeat at lunch or dinner.
Other tips:
The person who wants to lose weight should load up on legumes, whole cooked grains and pasta. These sound fattening, but they’re not. They’ll keep the blood sugar in check and make a person feel full.
Buy a low fat cookbook and learn to cook the recipes. It’s fun. Moreover, low fat meals don’t have to be boring. There’s a world of spices like basil, oregano, paprika, cilantro and tarragon that can truly pleasure the taste buds.
Use yogurt instead of full fat sour cream and trade in other high fat dairy products for low fat alternatives.
