Fruit to Eat to Lose Weight

 

Weight loss occurs when you burn more calories than you consume. You can exercise more to increase your caloric expenditure, but you will likely have to lower your caloric intake to achieve your health and fitness goals. Not eating or skipping meals is not productive, because it slows your metabolism, making it harder to lose weight. Ideally, you want to remove high-calorie foods from

your diet and replace them with low-calorie foods. Fruit is a nutritious low-calorie food group that can be an ideal replacement for higher-calorie foods.

Grapefruit

Grapefruit is one of the best diet fruits. A medium-sized grapefruit has just 40 calories, and a large grapefruit has just over 60. With a glycemic-index ranking of 25, grapefruit is one of the lowest-glycemic fruits that you can eat. There is one additional benefit that makes Dr. Jonny Bowden, a Los Angeles-based nutrition specialist, recommend grapefruit as one of the best weight-loss fruits. In spring 2006, researchers at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego published a study in the "Journal of Medicinal Food" concluding that grapefruit can improve your insulin resistance and keep your body from wanting to store fat. Although it is unclear how grapefruit increases insulin resistance, Scripps Clinic researchers still recommend it as a diet fruit.

Cantaloupe and Other Melons

Dr. Bowden recommends cantaloupe because it is a what he calls a "high-volume" food. A high-volume food has a large amount of water, fiber and air and a relatively low number of calories. High-volume foods can benefit you because they satisfy your appetite without costing you many calories. Melons such as cantaloupe have particularly high amounts of water. According to Penn State University, water in food remains in your stomach much longer than water that you just drink. This helps to curb your appetite and keeps your brain from signaling that you are hungry and need to eat.

Oranges

The American Council on Exercise suggests adding oranges to your weight-loss diet. A medium-sized orange has only 60 calories and is loaded with vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants. You can conveniently take oranges anywhere you go. They are an ideal replacement for traditional high-calorie snacks such as ice cream, potato chips and pizza. Dr. Bowden says that oranges are ideal as a diet food, but orange juice is not. Orange juice has over 20 g of sugar per serving, which is too much for your diet. In general, solid fruits are better diet foods than juices because juices have often lost most their fiber content.

Guava

Guava is one of the best fruits you can eat if you are trying to lose weight. A medium-sized guava fruit has 8 g of dietary fiber that will help support your weight loss diet. Fiber not only keeps your appetite under control, but also keeps your blood sugar stable by slowing the rate that glucose is absorbed and metabolized. Keeping your blood sugar stable is vital to achieving your weight-loss goals. When you raise your blood-sugar levels, your body releases insulin, which promotes fat storage. You want to prevent insulin release as much as possible if you are trying to lose weight.