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Mediterranean Diet Plan

The Top 100 Weight Loss Tips continues on with article 56 in this series. As I will keep pointing out, my aim is to bring you a set of one hundred unique and relevant articles designed to help you achieve your goal to lose weight.

This post continues with the current theme of looking at the various diet plans that are currently popular. So this time out, it's the turn of the Mediterranean diet plan to come under scrutiny.

This is one that, if you like good tasty food, you will really love to bits!

Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet plan is one that consists of all the good foods that are typically eaten by many people who live close to the European shores of the Mediterranean Sea and mainly includes countries such as Spain, France, Italy and Greece. The typical summer cuisine of these areas is fresh fish caught locally with locally grown salad crops, tomatoes, onions and garlic all drenched in a simple olive oil and vinegar dressing.

It is mostly almost totally devoid of any artificial additives, trans fats or added sugar. The only side of this diet that lets it down (for the locals, that is) is the fact that they include white bread rolls with the meal.

But you can substitute wholemeal rolls to bring it back into alignment. In Italy especially, there is also a heavy reliance on pasta, which used to be made only from wholemeal flour, but thanks to modern processing, is now almost all made from refined white flour, which is a weight gain problem ingredient.

Again, if you like pasta, then substitute with wholemeal (wholegrain) pasta.

Spanish Lentil Stew

The Spanish have a popular dish called lentejas (lentil stew) which ought to be very healthy depending upon what you add to it, as in its basic form it is just lentils, onions, garlic, carrots and potatoes. The Spanish like to add chorizo, salchichas or chistoras, which as all forms of cured sausages and add a lot of animal fats to the dish, so should be avoided.

The addition of a small amount of jamon serrano (parma ham) gives the dish more flavor without adding too many calories.

The French can finish off a really healthy Mediterranean dish with cream laden crepes to load on the calories, so avoid those at all costs!

The basic salad diet itself is wonderfully healthy and low in calories, as it is generally made up of fish and salad. The salad is the key, with its dressing of extra virgin olive oil and vinegar. Both these ingredients are known to reduce levels of bad LDL cholesterol while raising levels of good HDL cholesterol whilst normalizing blood pressure and blood sugar levels.

Garlic

The garlic is often freshly chopped raw into salads along with fresh, raw onions and these are powerful immune system boosters and infection fighters, while being anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal. They cleanse the blood and boost the metabolic rate, meaning your body burns calories faster.

Tomatoes are full of goodness and antioxidants and the big, salad variety that are popularly grown all along the Mediterranean coast are flavorsome and low calorie.

A glass of locally produced red wine is often an important accompaniment to this diet and is a provider of antioxidants and blood normalizing properties that make it an integral part of this healthy diet.

All in all the Mediterranean Diet Plan's basis is sound and designed to keep the body healthy while promoting weight loss as long as you stick to the good parts and avoid the extras that can have the opposite effect.

100 Weight Loss Tips number 55 follows in the next post!

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Posted on Sun, 30 Aug 2009 in Top 100 Weight Loss Tips | 1 Comments