mixed fruit in a Protein shake makes a weight loss shake taste great without having to sweeten it with nut milk added sugar, flavored yogurt, honey or some other sweetener. But like any sweetener, fruit contains sugar, so if you add too many high-sugar fruits to your smoothie, it can still spike your blood glucose.
Therefore, smoothies can be a slippery slope for people hoping to lose weight. That is why many of our medical review board dieticians offer warnings when their customers look for shakes to help them lose weight. Protein shakes they are best used as meal replacements, rather than snacks, as their ultimate goal is to achieve a calorie deficit at the end of the day. But as meal replacements, shakes should contain fewer calories than the meals they replace.
Julie Upton, MS, RDco-founder of Appetite for Health Consulting, is one of the registered dietitians on our board who eschews shakes for weight loss. “Eat the calories out of it, instead of drinking them,” he advises. Drinks can be loaded with calories you don’t realize are there, as you’ll learn by reading 40 drinks you should never drink after 40.
Registered Dietitian Nutritionists Tammy Lakatos Shames, RDN, CDN and Lyssie Lakatos, RDN, CDNknown as The twins of nutrition, agreeing that whole fruits outperform blended ones in smoothies. They warn that overloading a smoothie with too much fruit could turn your health drink into a calorie bomb. “Drinking your calories isn’t as satisfying as eating the real food, and you end up eating more calories later in the day,” they say.
As long as you’re careful with the Ingredients that go into your smoothieAnd because of the serving size you consume, fruit-based smoothies can still be part of an effective weight-loss strategy. The key is to keep track of how many calories your ingredients provide. To that end, it helps to avoid high-calorie bananas and avocados in favor of low-calorie ones. low sugar fruits with a high water content to provide sweetness without the high caloric load. Here are the fruits you should be adding to your smoothies, and for more on how to eat healthy, check out The #1 Best Juice to Drink Every Day, Science Says.
An apple is an ideal on-the-go snack. For one thing, it won’t get crushed in your backpack like grapes and berries do. And if you eat the skin, it’s high in fiber, which makes an apple a “low GI” food. “GI” stands for glycemic index, a scale from 0 to 100 that shows how much a food will raise your blood sugar within two hours of eating it. With a GI of 36, apples are pretty low. Eating a whole apple is the best way to reap its weight loss benefits. But mixing apple pieces into a smoothie isn’t a bad second choice. A delicious red apple contains about 62 calories and 12 grams of natural sugar.
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Blueberries contain more antioxidants than any other popular smoothie fruit. One called pterostilbene, which is similar to resveratrol in grapes, has been shown to stimulate liver cells to help break down fat and cholesterol, according to USDA scientists. A cup of blueberries it contains just 64 calories and 9.3 grams of sugars and a full bushel of nutrients, including fiber. You can’t go wrong with a handful in your daily smoothie or as a snack. The anthocyanins that give blueberries their deep blue color are powerful phytochemicals associated with better weight maintenance and a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, according to Advances in Nutrition.
Ripe, juicy melon is nearly 90% water and rich in dietary fiber, making it an ideal fruit for your weight loss-promoting smoothie, as long as you don’t load your smoothie with high-calorie add-ins, including dried fruit. butters a cup of melon it contains 12.6 grams of sugars and 60 calories, which isn’t much for all the nutrients, including beta-carotene, folic acid, vitamin C, and potassium you’re getting.
If you haven’t tried cherries in your smoothie, you’re missing out; they’re delicious. Just don’t forget to face them, first. Cake cherries in particular, they are an excellent fruit for weight loss because they are not only low in calories and sugar (a half cup contains only 48 calories and 10 grams of sugar), but they are also rich in antioxidant compounds called anthocyanins that fight free radicals that contribute to various chronic inflammatory diseases related to obesity. A review of the health benefits of cherries in the magazine. nutrients found that cherry consumption reduced exercise-induced muscle soreness and strength loss, blood pressure, and arthritis, improved sleep, and lowered very low-density lipoprotein, the worst kind of bad cholesterol, and triglycerides.
It’s not the most popular fruit smoothie, but it’s worth a try. Kiwifruit is a good source of fiber, providing at least 3 grams of dietary fiber per serving, which can help reduce the impact of the fruit’s sugar on blood sugar. But don’t peel the fruit; most of the fiber is found in brown skin. Cut it into pieces and mix it well in a blender. Small studies suggest that regular consumption of kiwi can reduce body fat mass and lower blood pressure. A slice of kiwi contains 64 calories and 9 grams of sugars.
A 12-week study involving 91 obese patients demonstrated the potential of eating fresh grapefruit as a powerful weight loss strategy. The investigation in Journal of Medicinal Foods showed that people who ate half a fresh grapefruit before meals lost an average of 3.5 pounds in 12 weeks. The subjects’ insulin response also improved, the study found. So if weight loss is your goal, you can try having grapefruit halves ready for meals. Another option: make a grapefruit-based smoothie to replace a meal. A half a cup of grapefruit sections with juice contains only 37 calories and 8.5 grams of sugars.
Nature’s Candy is loaded with vitamin C to support the immune system, and is high in water and fiber, making it a great fruit for weight maintenance. strawberries they have 49 calories, 7 grams of sugars, and about 3 grams of fiber per 1-cup serving. raspberries they’re even lower in sugar at just 2.6 grams per 57-calorie, ¾-cup serving. They don’t last long in the fridge, so keep your freezer stocked with a bag. Frozen berries (strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries) are just as nutritious as fresh ones.
Watermelon is an example of a fruit that has a high glycemic index, but it’s actually fine for people who are overweight or have high blood sugar because it’s high in water and fiber and low in carbohydrates. A 2019 study in the journal. nutrients compared overweight people who ate daily watermelon snacks or low-fat crackers for four weeks. The researchers found that watermelon made subjects less hungry after eating and decreased body weight, body mass index, blood pressure, and waist-to-hip ratio at the end of the trial. A watermelon cup it delivers just 45 calories and about 9 grams of sugars. look these The 8 Best Smoothie Recipes to Control Blood Sugar.
jeff csatari
Jeff Csatari, a contributing writer for Eat This, Not That!, is responsible for editing books and magazines for Galvanized Media and advising journalism students through the Zinczenko Center for New Media at Moravian University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. read more
