You might have noticed that here in Nigeria it is quite difficult to get the right type of food to incorporate in our diets since our foods are not really found on the web. Which foods to eat to help us lose weight and burn fat, and which foods to avoid. Generally we would try to avoid food that are rich in simple carbohydrates, and embrace those rich in protein.
However, below is a list of various kinds of foods to decrease your intake of when trying to lose weight using the Nigerian diet. Note that I did not say you should completely stop taking them, but try to reduce them to the smallest amount possible! The nigerian Diet consists of various kinds of food, but majority of our foods, especially for the yorubas, are oily, and starchy!
Foods to decrease intake of in the Nigerian diet include:
1. Pounded yam: popularly called iyan, contains a lot of starch. Try to reduce intake of this.
2. Amala: made from the back of the yams so is pretty much starch too.
3. Garri: simply just cassava flour! Its known to be one of the promoters of big flabby tummy
4. Tuwo shinkafa: pounded rice so more or less contains as much carbs as white rice.
5. Soups: I suggest you avoid Nigerian soups when you are trying to lose weight because most of them contain so much oils. However some soups like okro soup, if cooked without oils can be very very good to incorporate into your weight loss program using the Nigerian diet.
6. Ofada rice, white rice
7. Akpu, also another cassava product, which is high in simple carbs and intake of it should be reduced. Akpu is also known to promote bulging tummies!
Please note that you should not totally eliminate the above carbohydrate foods from your diet, but try to limit intake of them to as little as possible.
Foods to increase intake of in our diet include:
1. As always, Beans. This contains high amount of protein, and are good building blocks for muscle. They are also one of the fat burning foods
2. Fish: Fish is very high in protein content
3. Fruits: Water melons, apples, oranges, bananas, etc
4. vegetables: with very little oil in it. vegetables are high in fiber content.
5. chicken and turkey: try peeling off the skin before taking these!
6. ukpa (of ibo origin) also high in protein content.
7: bean cake: moi-moi.
So now we can see that despite the fact that our foods are not really listed and classified popularly, there are various foods we can eat to loose weight!
When I started my weight loss program it was a hard task. Avoiding rice and eba was a very big deal for me, but I knew I had to do something about the tummy. so I stuck to eggs for breakfast, beans for lunch, vegetables for dinner, and fruits in between. those weeks seemed like the hardest in my life, but within a short period, I began to see results!
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