How to choose low-calorie staple foods while losing weight? Healthy alternatives to rice.

Choose Low-Calorie Staple Foods

Reducing calorie intake doesn't mean starving yourself.

How? Eat plenty of low-calorie foods.

Among various food components, fat and carbohydrates are the highest in calories. The more fat and carbohydrates a food contains, the higher its calorie content; conversely, the less fat and carbohydrates a food contains, the lower its calorie content.

Speaking of low-calorie diets, I'm reminded of a pediatric head nurse, from northern China, almost 50 years old, who is still very slim, envied by many younger nurses. She told everyone that she has a dietary habit: she eats sweet potatoes and potatoes two days a week. She doesn't do this for health reasons, but because in the difficult times of the past, rice and steamed buns were luxuries. She ate mostly sweet potatoes, potatoes, and pumpkins because these foods were plentiful and filling. Eating these as a child formed a habit, and even now that conditions have improved, she still eats them every few days.

Some people may have heard that sweet potatoes and potatoes are raw materials for starch extraction. Isn't starch just a carbohydrate? How can something so high in calories help with weight loss? Actually, compared to refined white rice, sweet potatoes and potatoes are not high in calories. While sweet potatoes and potatoes are indeed used industrially to extract starch, it's not because they have the highest calorie content, but because they are easy to grow and suitable for large-scale production.

Comparing the calories of sweet potatoes and potatoes with rice, 100 grams of cooked rice contains approximately 486 kilojoules (116 kilocalories), sweet potatoes approximately 435 kilojoules (104 kilocalories), and potatoes approximately 318 kilojoules (76 kilocalories), a difference of 50 to 160 kilojoules. While it's impossible to replace rice with sweet potatoes or potatoes for every meal, over time, the total calorie loss can be significant. Furthermore, tubers are rich in dietary fiber and vitamins, offering numerous benefits to the gut, and eating them in rotation can also enrich the flavor.

Pumpkin and fresh corn are also suitable staple foods during a weight-loss period. They are both very low in calories; 100 grams of pumpkin contains only 92 kilojoules (22 kilocalories), and 100 grams of fresh corn contains only 444 kilojoules (106 kilocalories).

The most direct way to use pumpkin as a staple food is to steam it in the microwave.

Steaming pumpkin in the microwave results in less nutrient loss than regular steaming, satisfying nutritional needs while maintaining a low-calorie diet.

As for fresh corn, simply boiling it in water as usual is the simplest and lowest-calorie method.

Vegetables are a better choice than fruits.

Besides pumpkin and corn, fruits and vegetables are also low-calorie foods.

Although people commonly refer to both as "fruits and vegetables," in terms of calories, the same weight of vegetables contains only a fraction of the calories of fruit—a significant difference.

Every weight-loss recipe book recommends fruit-based meals. However, the truth is, fruit isn't as low in calories as many people imagine because it contains sugar. It's precisely because of this sugar that people prefer fruit to vegetables. But it's important to understand that sugar is essentially calories, and fruit is not the lowest-calorie food.

100 grams of apple contains approximately 218 kilojoules (52 kilocalories);

100 grams of pear contains approximately 306 kilojoules (73 kilocalories);

100 grams of banana contains approximately 381 kilojoules (91 kilocalories);

In short, fruit only has slightly fewer calories than sweet potatoes and potatoes.

In contrast, most vegetables contain very little sugar, resulting in extremely low calories—only about one-third to one-half the calories of fruits. For example, water celery has only 84 kilojoules (20 kcal), Chinese cabbage only 71 kilojoules (17 kcal), and white radish only 88 kilojoules (21 kcal)... Some vegetables are so low in calories, even less than what the body needs to digest them, that they are called "negative calorie foods."

Although low in calories, vegetables are just as nutritious as fruits. Therefore, in a weight-loss diet, vegetables should make up a larger proportion of the diet than fruits.

When starting a low-calorie diet, it's crucial to first distinguish the calorie content of staple foods from other foods. Potatoes are the best choice for a staple food, as their calorie content falls between that of rice and fruit, providing a minimum level of calorie intake.

Secondly, it's important to maintain a feeling of fullness; that is, you should not feel hungry while satisfying your low-calorie needs. Some low-calorie diets even recommend using apples as a staple food, which is a big mistake. Unlike potatoes and sweet potatoes, apples don't make you feel full easily; the more you eat, the hungrier you'll feel, so they can't be used as a staple food at all.