Some great diet drink recipes.
Get fit with diet drinks
Most of us at some time have gone on a diet and our reasons for dieting can be quite varied. Some people just want to lose a few pounds before a big event or date. Perhaps you’ve actually been told to lose weight - or follow a certain diet - for medical reasons by your doctor. Perhaps you want to impress the team coach that you’re serious about getting really fit for team selection or perhaps you just feel you need to lose a little weight.
Whatever your reason is for going on a diet don’t just think the diet applies to what you eat. There are a lot of different diet methods out there, but most of them are focused on what you eat, not what you drink. For many people this is difficult because they don't know how to cook.
However, thinking about what you drink whilst you’re dieting is as important as what you eat. Also, please remember that a diet needs to be a balanced one, so please don’t try and diet solely on drinks. It’s always a good idea to ask a dietician at your medical centre, like the one here at Hampshire College.
Drinking and diets
The ultimate diet drink has to be water. It doesn’t need to be any special bottled water, tap water is fine and of course it’s the cheapest option. One ‘drink’ you really need to avoid whilst on a diet is alcohol.
Oh No - you say! Why - you say? Well, to take wine as one example, in one glass of wine there are over 100 calories! So, if you don’t cut out alcohol all together at least be aware of how many calories are in each drink you take. After all there’s no point in having an elaborate food diet plan that you stick to, only to end up perplexed as to why you’re not losing weight.
Even drinking diet sodas is no guarantee of helping you lose weight! The following are, what I hope you will find, some tasty diet drink recipes that you can substitute for other alcoholic, sugary and calorie laden drinks whilst on your diet.
A lot of these diet recipes can use all sorts of different berries. Living in Western Massachusetts, or at least being here whilst we’re in college, is lucky for us as with it’s abundant forests and parklands there is a readily available free source of many of these berries. Even better a good walk looking for them will be useful exercise as part of the diet program.
Smoothies
Quite simply - Smoothies are great and you can even use them as a meal replacement for one meal a day. They contain solids like fruits, nuts and oats along with liquids like low fat milk, yoghurt, fruit juices and water. All you do is combine them all together in a food processor and produce the liquefied consumable. Below are some simple smoothie diet drink recipes to get you started, but I’m sure you’ll see - just about anything can work, use your imagination and experiment a bit.
Banana Porridge
1 or 2 small bananas
1 tablespoon of fine porridge oats
7 fl oz of low fat milk
2 ice cubes
Blend for 30 seconds = 1 serving.
Drink with Fruit and Nut
1 tablespoon chopped walnuts
¼ cup wheat germ
¾ cup fresh orange juice
1 medium nectarine, peeled and cubed
2 small apricots, peeled and cubed
2 large tablespoons low fat/fat free natural vanilla yoghurt (can be frozen)
1 cup crushed ice
Mix and blend the fruits and nuts, add the yoghurt, wheat germ, orange juice and ice and blend to the consistency you like = 3 servings
Blueberry Chill
½ cup low fat milk
1 cup low fat vanilla ice cream
2 cups frozen blueberries
Blend until smoothie consistency is to your liking = 2 servings.
Triple Coloured Shake
5 strawberries
7 Raspberries
1 Banana
2 Kiwi fruits - peel and cut them each into four pieces
11 fl oz of low fat/ fat free natural yoghurt
1 medium size glass of low fat milk
Blend to a consistency of your liking, just add more milk to thin it if necessary = 2 servings.
Thick and Luscious
1 large ripe mango
6 oz strawberries
1 banana
½ medium glass of mango juice
When blending leave it thick! = 1 serving
Pecan Honey
3 scoops low fat vanilla ice cream
2 teaspoons of finely chopped pecan nuts
1 teaspoon ‘runny’ honey
Blend to the consistency you want = 1 serving
Also, when served dust the top with cinnamon and a little more finely chopped pecan nut. Even better serve in a glass chilled in a fridge for 15 minutes.