In winter, we eat more than usual and mostly high-calorie food. We also do not move much, because in cold weather it is much more pleasant to wrap ourselves in a blanket and not waste precious heat.
How do you support your body when it's cold outside, and sometimes even at home?
These 3 unique products will help you maintain your weight in the winter and at the same time provide your body with the nutrients it so badly needs at this time of year:
Pumpkin
Pumpkin is an inexpensive vegetable available in stores from fall to spring. And it is during this period that it can serve as a source of nutrients your body needs. That's why in winter, compared to "off-season" vegetables, pumpkin is a champion in terms of vitamin and mineral content.
At the same time, it is low in calories: 100 grams of the vegetable contain only 22 calories.
Pumpkin can be eaten as a hot puree soup, vegetable side dish, warm salad, milk porridge – millet, rice, oat groats are perfectly combined with it.
The easiest way to cook pumpkin in a useful and delicious way – cut it into thin slices, splash with olive oil, lightly salt and bake in the oven. In this case, you will get a complete vegetable side dish full of nutrients for immunity, heart health, skin and eyes.
Oatmeal
Oatmeal is one of the most nutrient-rich foods and therefore a great option for winter meals. It warms you up, cooks quickly and keeps you feeling full for a long time, unlike the quick sources of carbohydrates that many people consume in the morning, such as: pastries, sweet bars, sugary and carbonated drinks.
Oatmeal grains take quite long to break down and digest in our digestive tract, which in turn provides the body with energy for a long time. Which means that you won't feel hungry for quite a long time and still get a lot of energy from the food.
By the way, one cup of oatmeal also contains a little more than 15% of the daily value of fiber, and when combined with fruit or berries, it will be a great breakfast for you.
Mushrooms
In winter, we lack vitamin D due to spending more time indoors and little time in the sun. Mushrooms will be an additional source of this vitamin, especially for vegans and vegetarians, during the winter months. But you can't appreciate mushrooms just for their vitamin D content. A serving of shiitake mushrooms will noticeably improve your immune system thanks to their high content of B vitamins, vitamin D, selenium, niacin and 7 of the 8 essential amino acids. This can be really helpful in winter, when our immune system is often under pressure from all sorts of viral infections.
I will end this article by sharing a few tips on how to eat right during the cold season to maximize comfort and health benefits:
- Cream soups in the diet give a quick feeling of satiety due to their volume and fiber content, and are high in nutritional value. They should be eaten more often in winter, as should hot foods in general.
- Eat 4-6 times a day in small portions – this will help you develop the habit of not overeating.
- Drink more warm, both plain water and herbal and berry teas with lemon, raspberry, rosehip, currant. They will not only warm the body, but also solve the issues of hydration, and therefore better digestion of all the food that the body has received during the day.
- Add more spices to your food. I love the smell of cardamom in warm tea, cloves in concoctions, cinnamon in cookies, black pepper and bay leaf in soups.