Fresh fruits and vegetables are foods with low energy density, meaning that they contain few calories. Many fruits and vegetables, including sprouts, berries, leafy greens, apples and citrus fruit, also contain high amounts of water and fiber. This combination keeps the calories low but makes the food filling, helping you stick to your diet plan. Following a diet of fruit and salads can help you lose weight quickly if you attend to your nutritional requirements and control your portion sizes.
Nutritional Balance
Your key challenge in following a diet of fruit and salads for an extended period concerns your nutritional requirements. Eating only leafy greens and fresh fruit does not provide a diet sufficiently diverse to give you energy and keep you healthy. Add protein to your salads by garnishing them with unsweetened nuts or seeds. Make a dressing with nonfat Greek yogurt, chopped cucumber and garlic. Top your salad with energizing whole grains and legumes, such as couscous, edamame, amaranth, lentils, wild rice or hummus. A couple of times a week, add grilled salmon or skinless chicken to your salad. Limit your total intake to around 1,500 calories for women and 1,800 calories for men and you can lose up to 10 lbs. in one month.
Fat Intake
If you regularly order salads at cafes and restaurants, you may be eating more fat than you think. Salad dressings and fried toppings may contain trans fat and saturated fat. The American Heart Association's recommendations for healthy people over 2 years old include eliminating sources of trans fat and limiting intake of saturated fat to under 7 percent of your total caloric consumption. Your overall diet should contain about one-third of calories from sources of healthy fat. Eat foods containing monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats such as lightly prepared fish, seeds, nuts and vegetable oil, particularly olive oil.
Maintaining Weight Loss
Eating a plant-based diet with diverse foods can support weight loss. However, maintaining your weight loss demands making lifestyle changes. If you follow too restrictive a diet, you can experience difficulty sticking to it beyond a short-term period. Give yourself flexibility between low-calorie, nutrient-dense foods to keep your diet interesting, healthful and sustainable. Base every meal and snack on fresh, whole foods, preferably from plant sources, but allow other foods, such as low-fat cheese, as a garnish.
Fat-Burning Foods
Incorporate fat-burning foods into your fruit and salad diet to promote weight loss. Start your day with unsweetened grapefruit or grapefruit juice. The fiber fills you up while the vitamin C helps dilute fat in your body. Spice up your salad with chili pepper, which contains capsaicin, a chemical compound that boosts your metabolism for up to 20 minutes after you eat it. Replace fattening desserts with a bowl of raspberries and blueberries, packed with antioxidants and fiber. You digest berries quickly, which means you absorb less fat.
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