Slimming Foods

Slimming foods aren't magical foods that you take one night, go to bed fat and wake up the next morning a svelte thin person.  If there were such a food, every farmer would have a crop of it and people growing and selling illegal substances would change to it as a cash crop. However, there are slimming foods that are lower in calories but still contain a wealth of nutrients that help your body function at its optimal. When your body does that, weight loss is far easier.

Even though there is no magic bullet, the African mango has proven to be a huge benefit to those who wish to lose weight. Studies using it as a supplement show there is an increase in weight loss when added to the diet.

While the acai berry proponents tout it as a weight loss hero, the results aren't quite as clear. No one has preformed any studies on the acai berry for weight loss so there's no hard and firm truth in whether it will help you lose weight faster. There are some anecdotal claims but nothing standardized or any blind study on the acai.

Everyone knows that celery is clearly the number one weight loss food. It's filling, crunchy and contains few calories. Besides carrot sticks, most people think of celery immediately when they think of diet foods.  The high fiber content of both, the crunching action as you chew, the low calorie yet high nutrient value of each make it a good choice for a diet.

Most fruits and vegetables, perhaps with the exception of the avocado, are naturally high in fiber, low in fat, contain few calories for their volume and many nutrients. These are all slimming foods including the avocao. However, other foods don't fall into the veggie and fruit group can help you shed pounds also.

Oatmeal, surprisingly, is one of those foods. It's high soluble fiber and includes about 13 grams of protein, about 15 percent of your daily-required amount. The oatmeal is filling and yet one cup only contains 147 calories. That is, 147 before you begin the regimen of adding butter, milk and sugar to it. You can keep a bowl of oatmeal as a diet food by simply substituting fresh apples, nuts, raisins and skim milk for the sugar, butter and whole milk. If you need to add sugar, use it sparingly.

The apples you add to the oatmeal are also on the list of slimming foods. Because of the high fiber content of the apple and low calorie count, it fills you up and not out as some foods do.  While nuts and raisins aren't normally in the family of diet foods, the addition of a few for the purpose of flavor and sweetening add a couple of extra calories, but also increase the nutritional content.

Slimming foods that contain a large amount of plant fiber are often more difficult for the body to digest. These foods may require the body use more or close to the same amount of calories in the digestion process than the food contains, creating a negative or very low calorie count while still providing an abundance of nutrition. These slimming foods are often the core of many fad diets on the market.

• Acai Berry
  
  The Acai Berry has been touted as a wonder food but is it?
• African Mango
  
  The African Mango is one of the worlds most powerful diet foods as many studies have shown.