Are you bored of eating South African meals everyday, for losing weight or staying healthy? Well, you can still eat other cuisines and stay fit and healthy.
The key is to make these foods at home, so you can regulate the ingredients and avoid adding high-fat ingredients to boost flavor. One such dish is pasta.
Here are 5 simple tricks to make a delicious and healthy pasta at home, perfect for your weight loss diet.
Make sure you follow portion control and eat the pasta early if you are having it for dinner.
1. Add lots of veggies
Eating simple pasta without any veggies would mean loading up on carbs. Instead, add lots of sautéed veggies to your pasta, such as corn, broccoli, zucchini, bell peppers, onions, olives and jalapeños. This will also reduce your overall consumption of carbs-loaded pasta and increase your fiber intake.
2. Choose whole grains or millet based pasta
Do not choose pasta made from refined flour. Prefer choosing pasta with whole grains like wheat or millet-based pasta. Refined flour has more calories, is difficult to digest and has less nutritional value, compared to whole grain options.
3. Avoid pink sauce pasta
Many people enjoy the pink pasta – best of both worlds – red and white. However, mixing tomatoes with dairy may not be the healthiest choice. This is because citric acid present in tomatoes does not work well with lactic acid present in dairy products, according to nutritionists. This can lead to undigested metabolic waste that lies in your gut for hours. So it is best to choose only one sauce at a time.
4. Use liberal amount of oil
You may think you are making a healthier choice by using less amount of olive oil in your pasta. However, this is the opposite of what you should be doing. Go liberal in using cold pressed olive oil, which helps lubricate your GI tract and move digested foods smoothly, thus preventing the pasta from sitting in your gut for hours together.
5. Don’t forget the protein
Along with veggies, do not forget to add sources of protein in your pasta. Protein should fill 1/4 of your pasta plate or bowl. You can add lean chicken or fresh fish like salmon in your pasta. If you are making a vegetarian pasta, add legumes such as white beans
