The types of delicious, fresh foods in Vietnamese eating
You won’t encounter a lot of fat or carbs in Vietnamese. You can eat very, very clean with ingredients fresh and healthy. The portions themselves are smaller and are generally lighter on stomach. You can eat Vietnamese food all day if you wanted to, feel full, feel healthy, and minimize the calories you take in.
You’re eating more vegetables
When you eat Vietnamese food, you’re eating many fresh vegetables including celery, carrots, cucumber, peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, spinach, and more. Add to that the long list of herbs used and you’ve got some massively healthy meal options to pull from. With veggies, know you aren’t getting very much fat or carbs.
What it takes to lose weight with eating
Although many variables do play into weight loss, how to lose weight with Vietnamese cuisine involves knowing what you’re taking into your body. How to lose weight is to eat fewer calories compared to the calories you consume in a day. For different weights, the amount of calories needed to survive is different per person. So knowing your calories eaten need to be less than calories burned, one can either increase calories being burned through exercise or minimize calories eaten.
Watch for carbs when eating
While Vietnamese is an excellent weight loss diet, you also need to watch for carbs. If you eat many carbs, you will feel sluggish and it’ll convert into fat you don’t need. In some dishes – Vietnamese pho, for example – these can easily become packed with carbs in the form of noodles. Rice is also a big carb. While you definitely need carbs to function, eating too much is going to get you more weight. Limit how many carbs you take in!
You are still getting a lot of flavors in Vietnamese
Without pacing in the fat or all the unhealthy stuff, Vietnamese food boasts a unique balance sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or spicy. A lot of herbs are generally used, some with strong medicinal properties. There’s also a big French influence over Vietnamese cuisine, with combinations of street food mixed with high-end flavorful recipes. Ingredients are often local, seasonal, and common which makes it a very healthy, affordable experience.
Start your day off right with a Vietnamese dish
No matter what your weight loss diet is, getting a high-protein meal for breakfast or brunch is helpful. What you eat as your first meal of the day will dictate a lot about the rest of it. Studies demonstrate a high-protein breakfast reduces cravings and has been shown to control calorie intake. You don’t necessarily need to have a big meal or something heavy either. In fact, there’s plenty of light, refreshing, protein-filled dishes to choose from.
Drink more water
Water can be filling. A lot of us don’t drink enough. If you feel like you don’t, water a half hour before your meal can fill you up. Drinking like this, some studies have shown, can cause an increase in weight loss by up to 44 percent over 3 months. Water’s a key ingredient in creating hearty, filling Vietnamese meals perfect for weight loss, including pho and similar broth-based soups. Broths in particular are very healthy, with dozens of benefits to their name.
Cut back on sugar with your Vietnamese meals
Sugars make hunger spike up and down. The less sugar, the better. Vietnamese cooking leans more on salt and spicy rather than sugars. When you control your sugars, you are also lowering insulin levels which will allow your kidneys to function better, more water weight to be lost, reducing bloat, and helping you lose some unnecessary water weight you may be carrying. Sugars, including those in fruit juice, are one of the most fattening things you can have in your body.
Vietnamese is completely unlike other Asian cuisines
If you’ve had Chinese or Thai, Vietnamese cuisine isn’t that. Where Thai is sweet and spicy, Vietnamese is light and refreshing. Eating Vietnamese is almost like committing yourself to very delicious salads and fresh foods, also packed with plenty of protein and carbs. You’ll keep your waistline at an appropriate size, you’ll have energy to work out and get your day done, and there’s no denying yourself because you shouldn’t feel hungry. All in all, Vietnamese cuisine is less spicy, less oily, and healthier than other Asian cuisines.
Vietnamese cooking is filled with whole, unprocessed foods
Another excellent weight loss trick with eating is to consume whole, unprocessed foods. The majority of your diet should be based around whole foods. They are overall healthier, contain more nutrients and fibre, will help fill you up, and are more likely to keep you from overeating. There’s few foods processed in Vietnamese cooking. In fact, at restaurants like TorontoPHO, we do our absolute best to avoid any sort of processed foods as they oftentimes contain preservatives, empty calories, or toxins we don’t need.
Will I still need to exercise to lose weight if I eat Vietnamese?
Although no one has to exercise to lose weight, most people will and either way, exercise helps. The value of exercise is that you burn calories, whether you’re lifting weights or working a cardiovascular machine. By burning more calories, you’re reducing the calories you take in on any given day. This makes it easier to keep your body functioning without putting weight on. Successful weight loss usually involves both diet and exercise, with Vietnamese eating being supportive but not necessarily getting you all the way there.
