When you begin a weight-loss diet, your success depends on wise food choices. Forget single-food menus or impossible calorie limits and focus on balanced nutrition first, and calorie reduction next. Food from every food group will give your body the nutrition it needs to stay healthy as you increase exercise and decrease your calorie intake. Selecting items within these groups that have less fat and sugar will help you reach your weight goals.
Vegetables
Eat more nutrient-dense vegetables instead of those with greater water content while dieting. While cucumbers and celery have rock-bottom calorie counts, their vitamin and mineral content is low. Add them to nutritious lettuce salads or take advantage of foods such as cooked spinach, which provides significant vitamins A, B, C, E and K, iron, potassium, calcium and magnesium in just 20 calories per ½-cup serving. Carrots, bell peppers and broccoli have similar benefits.
Fruits
Plant-based foods such as fruits and vegetables also contain large amounts of dietary fiber, which the National Institutes of Health recognizes as weight-loss aids. As in vegetables, the fiber in fruits such as strawberries, pears and cantaloupes fills you up in few calories and provides substantial vitamin C. Plums, apricots and a handful of grapes make sweet snacks or desserts with only 35 calories or less.
Grains
The greater protein contents of many grain foods increase their calorie counts but shouldn't keep them off your diet menus. A low-sugar wheat-bran cereal delivers 100 percent of your daily iron and certain B vitamin needs, along with filling fiber, and servings of some brands total less than 80 calories. Corn tortillas and single slices of whole-wheat bread are nutritious staples with similar nutrition with under 70 calories.
Protein
Always include protein foods on your diet menus for energy and a healthy blood count. Low-fat protein choices with about 100 calories or less include 3-oz. servings of tuna, cod, perch and haddock or 2-oz. servings of lean deli ham and roasted turkey breast. Half-cup portions of black, kidney or pinto beans offer high protein and additional iron, potassium and magnesium content, which justifies their 115 calories.
Dairy
Be sure to get your calcium and vitamin D by drinking fat-free milk daily while dieting. The American Heart Association recommends three 1-cup servings per day, at 83 calories each, to give you complete daily values . Plain fat-free yogurt, at 127 calories, also supplies high calcium, and can substitute as a strong protein source.
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