Healthy meals for weight loss might come off as a paradoxical sentence. How can there be such a thing as healthy meals for weight loss?
If you want to lose weight, aren’t you supposed to try your best to avoid food and keep on a strict diet? That’s the usual reaction people have to the phrase healthy meals for weight loss.
The reality of the situation is much more complex though. When it comes to weight loss, as we have said before, there are so many things to take into consideration, that sometimes it is near impossible to find one blanket truth in this field.
When it comes to healthy meals for weight loss they do exist. However, they might not work for everyone, and they definitely won’t work the same on everyone.
Before we get to our list of 4 healthy meals for weight loss, we just want to point out a quick rundown of some single foods that are also very ‘weight-loss-friendly’.
Whole eggs, leafy greens, salmon, cruciferous vegetables, lean beef and chicken breast, boiled potatoes, tuna, beans, soups, cottage cheese, etc.
All of the above mentioned foods are listed by Healthline, as being okay to consume while trying to lose weight.
This is because of the way that gaining weight works. If you aren’t familiar by now, allow us to run a brief explanation on how we gain extra pounds.
How We Gain Weight, And How Healthy Meals For Weight Loss Work
Although one can also gain weight by gaining more muscles, that is much harder to achieve, and borderline always is a desired thing.
The type of weight gain that is undesired and the type that we will show you foods that will help with it, is the type where our body gains weight in the form of fats.
This happens mostly when we consume fats and carbohydrates. Our bodies were built to store fat for many reasons. Mostly however our body stores fat for later use, and to keep us warm.
Fat is usually stored under the skin and above the muscle. Mostly on areas like the stomach, thighs, but also everywhere else, under the skin.
The reason why our body does this is because we are genetically designed to do that. Without getting too much into evolution, essentially random events and mutations brought changes that turned out to be beneficial.
For example, our ancestors did not have food at all times. Instead they had limited amounts of food at specific times.
Thus storing fats for later use when food isn’t there turned out to be very beneficial, and those with this mutation went on to live longer, thus passing their “fat-storing genes” to the next generations.
This is of course a very water down explanation of how our bodies work regarding fats and how evolution played a role on that.
You might be wondering at this point, how comes that carbohydrates, or sugar, makes us fat too? Since our body stores fat, what’s up with sugar?
Since our body uses both fats and sugar as a source of energy, storing sugar for later use is as valuable as storing fats.
There are many processes which our bodies have in place to turn carbohydrates into lipids and then store them as fat.
Thanks to this phenomenon eating sugar can make us put on extra weight, just as much as eating food that contains high amounts of fats.
Now that we have a basic level understanding of how our body works in certain conditions, it is time to ask how healthy meals for weight loss actually work?
Remember how we mentioned that you can also gain weight, through gaining muscle? Well to gain muscle you need to eat a lot of protein.
Unlike sugar and fats protein isn’t used as a source of energy by our body. Instead proteins are the building blocks our body uses to build all of its tissue.
This is the first part of the equation, the second part is that sugar and fats aren’t bad by default. Without them we can’t live! They are our main energy source.
To answer how healthy meals for weight loss actually work we need to look at both of these things, and understand the end result.
By eating mostly proteins, and limiting sugar and fats to only the amount necessary for energy and not giving our body extra to store, we essentially block the process which stores fat.
Healthy meals for weight loss work like this. By being very rich in protein and other nutrients, while also having as little lipids and carbohydrates as possible.
4 Recipes Of Healthy Meals For Weight Loss
With the explanation of how healthy meals for weight loss work out of the way, let us dip our toes into some recipes that you can make.
Black Bean and Rice Enchiladas
Healthy meals for weight loss aren’t that hard to come by if you know where to look. Tasteofhome has a plethora of them and our first entry comes straight from their website.
Ingredients that this meal has: 1 chopped green pepper, 1 chopped onion, 1 can of rinsed and drained black beans, 3 minced garlic cloves, 8 flour tortillas, 1 tablespoon olive oil, etc.
As far as healthy meals for weight loss go, this one is a perfect one mostly for the fact that it doesn’t put down taste in order to become one of teh healthy meals for weight loss that you can do yourself.
You might already have an idea on what healthy meals for weight loss can and cannot be. However, I can’t imagine anyone would have thought that on a list of healthy meals for weight loss, one entry would contain the word ‘Pizza’ in it.
The Zucchini Crust Pizza among others has the following ingredients: two large eggs, quarter of a cup of all purpose flour, 2 cups of shredded zucchini, 2 small tomatoes.
Don’t let the word ‘Pizza’ throw you off. This entry definitely belongs on a list of healthy meals for weight loss. It’s just one very creative entry.
Miso roast pumpkin and beef noodle salad
On a previous post about healthy lunch ideas we found out that salads can be perfect for that. Here we come to realize that salads also are fantastic healthy meals for weight loss. (Internal Link: Get it after posting the previous blog)
This recipe uses the following ingredients: 1 teaspoon honey, 1 teaspoon vinegar, 1 kg piece Kent pumpkin, quarter of a cup of mirin seasoning, 1 and a half teaspoons of Wasabi paste, 2 green shallots, etc.
This dish will clock you about 50 minutes give or take to make. It is definitely a bit longer than your average salad, but totally worth the time and effort.
Pumpkin and zucchini ‘no pasta’ lasagna
Mixing pumpkin and zucchini together to make lasagna is definitely something we hadn’t heard about before researching healthy meals for weight loss. At the same time, we are super happy we found out about this gem.
For this recipe, among other things, you will need: 600 gram butternut pumpkin, 2 large zucchinis, 1 brown onion, 1 tablespoon extra virgin oil, 3 garlic cloves, half a teaspoon ground cinnamon, 250 grams lean beef mince, etc.
This one is an actual meal so prepare to take your time while cooking and preparing this meal. It will take you more than 1 hour.
Providing some sort of understanding about healthy meals for weight loss was our goal here, and we hope we have achieved it. On the meanwhile check out out these ideas for healthy lunch, if you want more.
At the very end, if these recipes were something that you found interesting or that you would like to try, make sure to check the source websites out, as they provide much more similar stuff.
