The sweet-tasting spud is surprisingly nutritional – and surprisingly versatile.

Sweet potatoes are much better for you than you’d expect, containing lots of fibre and plenty of vitamins and nutrients and are perfect to include on your Lose Baby Weight healthy eating plan. But what can this sweet yet savoury spud do for our health?

Low on the GI

Sweet potatoes are much better for your blood sugar than their white counterparts. Sweet potatoes rank much lower on the glycaemic index than white potatoes, and this means that their glycaemic load is lower than a white potato. In simple terms, sweet potatoes are processed more slowly, meaning that your blood sugar levels don’t spike – instead, the sugar from sweet potatoes is processed slowly, keeping your blood sugar levels stable. This helps to prevent cravings for fatty, sugary foods.

Searching for a healthy alternative to rice or pasta? Look no further than polenta. This clever little grain, a diet staple of 16th century Italy, is popping up all over the place, and with good reason.

Packed full of complex carbohydrates, fibre and nutrients like zinc and iron, it’s a fabulous inclusion to any healthy eating or weight loss plan.

Simply put, polenta is made from ground maize (sometimes referred to as cornmeal). As this fine yellow or white powder is free from wheat and other additives, it makes a great option for those following both a low fat foods or gluten free diet. Lumpy in texture, polenta resembles a cross between mashed potato and mushed up pasta (but tastes for more delicious than it looks).

I love bread and it is part of my diet – but too much of anything can be a bad thing and as wheat is included in so many foods today we thought we would outline how you could end up eating too much and the common side effects.

It is for this reason that in our Healthy Mummy smoothies that we made them gluten free (and dairy free) so if you are avoiding gluten or wheat then you can still enjoy our smoothies

Alcohol can play havoc with your weight loss because it is not just a normal food or drink product.

Alcohol is metabolized completely differently to other foodstuffs, which means that when alcohol is present in your body, calories from food and drink are not broken down as easily, which can cause weight gain.

When alcohol is consumed, as soon as it reaches your liver, it gets immediate attention from your digestive system. If you drink very quickly, your liver cannot process all of the alcohol in one go, leaving it to be dealt with by other bodily systems – hence the feeling of being drunk.

Fibre is an essential nutrient required to help you digest food properly. Getting plenty of fibre will make sure that the digestive tract functions properly and will also help to keep you feeling full.

It is also essential for good health and also significantly helps weight loss which is why we ensured that the Healthy Mummy Smoothie on our weight loss plans is higher in fibre than any other product.

A fibre deficiency, could lead to constipation, high levels of sugar and cholesterol and haemorrhoids.  It’s important that when you increase your intake of fibre you increase your intake of water, too, to make sure that your body can handle that extra fibre. Below is a list of foods rich in fibre.

Fibre rich foods

Passion Fruit

Passion fruit is a tropical fruit, purplish coloured on the outside with yellow-orange seeds and pulp on the inside. Passion fruits are super versatile and can be used in all sorts of ways, but they are also super high in fibre. For a 1 cup serving of passion fruit pulp, you get 98% of your daily recommended intake of fibre. Per passion fruit, you get 1.9g of fibre.

As we mentioned recently in our blog breakfast foods for weight loss many cultures don’t distinguish between morning and evening foods. And even more contrasting, most cultures don’t rely on bread and sandwiches for lunch. Since these other cultures aren’t suffering from an obesity epidemic, I think we can all read between the lines and see there must be something wrong with what we are eating.

And that brings us back to the good old fashioned sandwich.

Most people think lunch should be two pieces of bread and a filling. Often the bread is processed white wheat (and as we should all know white bread is a simple carb full of empty calories). Most people think they are being healthy if they hold the mayo even though the filling is still fatty meats and cheeses.

Faddy diets come and go, but what has been proven time and time again is that to lose weight effectively and keep it off in the long term, you have to adopt a healthy eating plan which is easy to stick to, and more importantly, does not leave you feeling hungry between meals.

Lots of the research around weight loss in recent years has focused on something called the Glycemic Index (GI), which is a measure of the effects which eating certain foods has on the blood sugar levels and we have ensured that everything on the Lose Baby Weight plans is Low GI.

Carbohydrates are an essential element of a healthy, balanced diet, but when trying to lose pregnancy weight or trying to lose stomach fat many people mistakenly think that they have to cut out carbohydrates completely.

However, this is not necessarily the case and the trick is to understand the different sorts of rice and grains on the market and plan your weight loss meals accordingly.

White rice

White rice comes in many different types, such as basmati and long grain. Compared with other starchy foods such as potatoes, rice is low in calories. It is also very easy to source, as it is sold in nearly every supermarket and food store. However, the refining process associated with making the rice white strips away many of the valuable vitamins and minerals in the rice and also reduces its dietary fibre. These factors mean that white rice may not be the best choice for those trying to lose weight or following a weight loss plan.

No carbohydrate weight loss diets have been the big news of the weight loss and losing stomach fat world in recent years but many people find these diets faddy and hard to stick to over the long term and at Lose Baby Weight we don’t believe in banning carbs.

Carbohydrates such as pasta, bread and potatoes are an essential part of a healthy balanced diet, but for those who are trying to shed a few kilos it is important to know the difference between the different sorts of pasta and noodles on the market as some are more appropriate for a healthy eating regime than others.

Regular White Pasta

Whatever the shape you prefer, basic white pasta has roughly the same amount of calories, and comes in at around 357 calories per 100 grams of pasta. This in itself does not make pasta a hugely calorific food. However, the two main problems with regular pasta are that the sauces served with it are often laden with cream, oil or butter, and the energy hit from this sort of carbohydrate is not long lasting, meaning after eating you may be hungry shortly after finishing the meal.

The key to healthy weight loss is finding the sorts of foods which can be eaten in plentiful quantities and which will keep you feeling satisfied between meals, meaning that regular white pasta is perhaps not the ideal choice.

Whenever we are trying to lose weight or trying to lose stomach fat we assume that this means no bread or carbohydrates.  And this is because the big trend in the weight loss world over the past decade or so has been diets which eliminate carbohydrates completely.

Some of these weight loss diets, such as Atkins, advocate eating huge amounts of protein and fat but no carbohydrates, and promise dramatic weight loss results. Many people however find these sorts of restrictive diets very hard to stick to, and want a more balanced way to lose weight. One of the foods which people miss the most when cutting out carbs is bread. If following a low-fat, calorie controlled diet, is it still possible to eat bread and lose weight?

The basics

In basic terms, anyone will lose weight if they are taking in less energy through their food than they are spending every day. Foods which are very low in calories include fruit and vegetables, and foods which are higher in calories include the carbs like bread, pasta and potatoes. The key to losing weight and sticking to a diet is eating a wide range of foods from all of the different food groups. People trying to shift a few kilos don’t need to cut out bread completely, but it is important to understand that some breads are more appropriate for dieters than others.