When you are focused on healthy eating and are heading to the supermarket to do the weekly shop, there are a few items that should be left on the shelves if you are trying to lose pregnancy weight.
If you’re following the Lose Baby Weight 28 Day Challenge you will already have your shopping list ready to go. If not, read on to find out what you should definitely keep off the list.
Of course, there are some obvious culprits that you already know are not recommended in our healthy eating plans (think donuts, cakes, chocolate biscuits, lollies, ice cream).
But here are 5 others that you might not have thought twice about before now.
Flavoured yoghurts
Here at Lose Baby Weight we love adding yoghurt to our Healthy Mummy Smoothies, or using it as a healthy eating snack with berries or nuts.
But the type of yoghurt we recommend is natural or Greek yoghurt. The reason? Flavoured yoghurts and those that are advertised as ‘lite’ are often filled with unnecessary sugar – either to sweeten the small amounts of fruit in there or to add more flavour after removing some of the fat content.
Compare the two:
100g of Jalna Natural Greek Yoghurt contains 4.8g of sugar (4.7g are naturally occurring sugars from lactose) while 100g of Ski D’Lite 99% Fat Free Passionfruit Yoghurt contains 12.6g of sugar.
Muesli bars and processed snack bars
While they market themselves as convenient healthy snacks, the majority of these are loaded up with excess sugars, additives and preservatives.
Even those bars marketed to kids are full of sugar (an Uncle Toby’s Forest Fruits Muesli Bar contains 2 tsp sugar per bar).
When it comes to protein bars, you are much better off getting your protein hit from natural sources such as nuts, yoghurt or cheese.
It is very difficult to find a protein bar that doesn’t contain sugar and isn’t high in calories (an Aussie Bodies HPLC Choc Crunch Protein Bar contains 378 calories per bar).
Breakfast drinks
Are you ever tempted by the drinks in the supermarket that claim to have the goodness of cereal and milk? You are better off leaving them out of your healthy eating diet.
A single 250ml carton of Sanitarium Up and Go contains a whopping 19g of sugar (that’s almost 5 teaspoons – a Milky Way contains 4 tsp). Not the best way to kick start your day.
Instead, tuck into a home made Healthy Mummy Smoothie in the morning. They’re packed with herbs like fenugreek (great if you’re breast feeding), psyllium husks to aid digestion, and contain no dairy, caffeine, wheat, salt or fillers.
Flavoured milk
We all know that calcium is important, and milk is a great source of calcium. But the high calorie, sugar filled flavoured milks are definitely not recommended as part of a healthy eating plan.
A 300ml bottle of Chocolate Moove contains more than 7 teaspoons of sugar. That’s more sugar than 12 red frogs.
Enjoy your calcium from your Healthy Mummy Smoothie, or from yoghurt, low fat cheeses and even nuts.
Stir fry and simmer sauces
These may seem like a convenient way to prepare a healthy veggie-packed meal when you are trying to lose pregnancy weight.
But the majority of these sauces contain vast amounts of sugar and salt, and lots of additives and preservatives that are just not needed when you can easily make your own.
Why not try our healthy eating Orange and Pineapple Chicken or this delicious Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry. Both are made using a homemade marinade or stir fry sauce.
Need to stock up on Healthy Mummy Smoothies? Then see our shop here
And join our 28 Day Weight Loss Challenges here