Three principles of slimming and light eating: vegetable soup helps lose weight

With the arrival of spring, it’s time to get rid of your heavy winter clothes and even eat lighter foods! Nutritionists pointed out that people generally believe that light meals are fine as long as they are low in calories. However, in addition to helping people to have slim figures, light meals must also be low in salt, sugar and oil to be healthy and burden-free. It is recommended that people use seasonal ingredients at home to simply make colorful salad bowls and eat them with main meals.

Use plenty of seasonal vegetables to make colorful vegetable soups that are slim and light, and are healthy and low in calories. (Photography by Huang Zhiwen)

Three principles of light diet for slimming

Chen Bofang, a nutritionist at Taipei City United Hospital’s Zhongxiao Branch, said that “light food”, as the name implies, is food that makes the body light and burden-free, but it is not limited to weight loss. There are three main principles for making light food:

1. In addition to being low in calories, it also emphasizes low oil, low sugar, low salt, and natural features, which can make the body achieve overall health.

2. Light meals require simple preparation. Too many complicated preparation processes and refined ingredients often greatly reduce the nutritional value of the food and also greatly reduce consumers' willingness to make light meals.

3. Simply put, light meals are seasonal ingredients, simple preparation, natural seasoning, and healthy cooking.

Nutritionist Chen Bofang mentioned that light meals should be nutritious and not burdensome. People can aim to eat a balanced intake of the six major food categories. In addition, the principle of selecting healthy ingredients from the six major categories can be simply divided into five points:

1. Make good use of seasonal vegetables and fruits in a variety of colors, such as red and yellow peppers, fungus, leafy green vegetables, mushrooms, etc.

2. Add appropriate amounts of whole grains to dishes to increase the feeling of fullness, such as brown rice, whole grain rice, pumpkin, yam, and sweet potato.

3. Increase protein with soy products and fish, such as tofu, dried tofu, edamame, and black beans.

4. Good oils can add flavor to dishes, such as unprocessed nuts, black and white sesame seeds, and olive oil.

5. Add moderate amounts of low-fat dairy products to dishes, such as low-fat yogurt, low-fat cheese, and low-fat milk.

Colorful vegetable pot

Nutritionist Chen Bofang recommends preparing red and yellow peppers, cucumbers, 100cc of low-fat yogurt, 5 nuts, and 5 raisins. When making them, wash the red and yellow peppers and cucumbers, cut them into strips (can be chilled), place them on a plate, pour low-fat yogurt on them, and sprinkle with chopped nuts and raisins.

The burden-free weight loss through light meals has a very good effect, but people are also reminded not to think that light meals mean eating many meals with zero calories. Excessive calorie intake will not effectively reduce weight. Relatively low calorie intake will not allow normal physiological functions to function. In addition to harming the body, it is also easy to give up halfway due to excessive hunger. It is recommended that the daily calorie limit should not be less than 1000 calories in order to maintain normal physiological functions.