Friends who have the habit of eating late-night snacks often face the most frustrating problem—weight gain. With less activity at night, it's hard to burn calories, making it easy for fat to accumulate, and you'll soon find yourself with a "pot belly." However, today I'm here to tell you about healthy late-night snacks that can even help you lose weight. You'll be pleasantly surprised after reading this!
1. Brown Rice Porridge
It is said that brown rice porridge was a custom-made dish for Chiang Kai-shek by Soong Mei-ling. Back then, Chiang Kai-shek's stomach ailment would flare up from time to time, and Soong Mei-ling advised him to drink brown rice porridge in moderation. Brown rice is nutritious and aids digestion, which was indeed very beneficial for his stomach condition. Choosing brown rice porridge for a late-night snack won't burden your digestive system; on the contrary, it's beneficial. The method is also simple: wash and soak the brown rice and other grains, then steam and cook them in an electric rice cooker. You can add sea salt or black sugar to make it savory or sweet.
2. Baked Sweet Potato
For sweet potatoes, the red-fleshed ones are tastier, while the white-fleshed ones are drier, and purple sweet potatoes are even drier. Small purple sweet potatoes can be cooked directly in the microwave. A small baked sweet potato (about 100g) has about 100 calories. Eating it bite by bite while blowing on it can increase your sense of psychological satisfaction and make you feel full.
3. Tomato
Tomatoes are also a top choice for a late-night snack. Experimental research has found that tomatoes contain very few calories. Every 100 grams of tomato has only 19 calories. Therefore, for people who habitually eat late-night snacks but are afraid of gaining weight, you might as well eat more tomatoes at this time. There are many ways to eat them, but it's best to eat them raw or in a salad to avoid nutrient loss.
There are many benefits to eating tomatoes at night. The lycopene in tomatoes has powerful antioxidant functions that can eliminate excess oxygen free radicals, thus helping you delay skin aging. Lycopene also has a great weight-loss effect; it can inhibit the increase of fat cells, helping you achieve your weight loss goal.
Tomatoes contain a large amount of dietary fiber, which helps the growth of probiotics in the intestines. In addition, tomatoes are rich in pectin, both of which can fill your stomach, stimulate the satiety center in your brain, and also remove acidic metabolic waste from your intestines, helping you complete intestinal detoxification while you sleep.
4. Soy Milk and Soy Products
Soy milk and various soy products have relatively low calories, making them a good choice for a late-night snack. Moreover, the rich calcium in beans helps with weight loss and sleep. People who are used to staying up late might as well squeeze a glass of soy milk for themselves, which can not only make you feel full but also warm your stomach. As a late-night snack, cooking a bowl of soy milk with black beans and red dates is also an excellent choice, because black beans have a higher protein content and also contain a certain amount of iron.
5. Natural Dried Fruits
Many people believe that dried fruits have low nutritional value and are just a snack to satisfy cravings. In fact, this kind of thinking is wrong. Dried fruits are not only rich in dietary fiber but are also easy to digest, and their nutritional value is by no means inferior to fresh fruits. Most importantly, they are convenient to carry and preserve, making them a snack suitable for all ages. Natural fruits rich in various vitamins are dried to make dried fruits, which can be said to be a natural and convenient snack.
Before eating dried fruits, you must first learn to distinguish "dried fruits" from "preserved fruits" or "candied fruits." Jujubes, raisins, longan dried, dried persimmons, tangerine peel cakes, dried apricots, dried figs, dried apples, etc., are all dried fruits. These products are easy to buy. Their common characteristic is that they are completely unsweetened, unsalted, un-oiled, without any additives, and are in a natural state after the fruit is simply dried and concentrated. Otherwise, they are not only unhealthy but also higher in calories.
Real dried fruits are products made by drying fruits. This drying process concentrates the sugar, protein, fat, and various minerals in the fruit. Dietary fiber and some heat-resistant antioxidant components and vitamins are also concentrated. Therefore, natural dried fruits like raisins, mangoes, and dried apricots can help the body supplement minerals such as potassium and calcium, as well as dietary fiber, and are especially suitable for consumption when sweating a lot in the summer. For the elderly with indigestion or who are afraid of the cold, dried fruits can be a supplementary source of fruit nutrition.
6. Yogurt
Yogurt, rich in protein and calcium, not only promotes intestinal peristalsis and improves constipation but also helps boost immunity. People with lactose intolerance can also eat it. However, you need to be careful when choosing; don't mistakenly select yogurt drinks or flavored beverages, as their effects are not the same as yogurt! Low-fat yogurt is a good choice. The calcium it contains can help you burn fat faster without excessive fat intake, which is very beneficial for healthy weight loss.
7. Foods Rich in Calcium and Magnesium
Nutrition experts believe that a combination of calcium and magnesium can act as a natural relaxant and sedative. Milk is rich in calcium and is also a well-known weight-loss food. Nuts contain more magnesium. For example, walnuts are often used to treat symptoms like neurasthenia, insomnia, forgetfulness, and dreaminess. Therefore, if you want to relax your nerves and stabilize your mood at night, you might as well have some milk and walnuts.
8. Foods Rich in B Vitamins
B vitamins can regulate metabolism, stabilize a person's mood, and alleviate feelings of irritability. Whole grains are rich in B vitamins. Who wants to work late at night? Therefore, working overtime at night can make people feel extremely irritable. Therefore, for a late-night snack, whole grains such as oats, barley, brown rice, whole wheat bread, and whole wheat crackers are recommended.
Once summer arrives, many people enjoy drinking ice-cold beer and eating grilled skewers on the roadside. A big problem with this is the alternation of hot and cold, which can cause considerable harm to gastrointestinal function. If you also eat some unwashed vegetables or even some spoiled food, it can lead to gastritis or enteritis. In comparison, aren't the late-night snacks mentioned above much healthier?
Actually, in the summer and autumn, the high temperature often keeps the human nervous system in a state of tension, and the function of certain glands is also affected, often leading to weakened digestion and loss of appetite. Therefore, we should appropriately eat more light and easily digestible foods, such as soy products, fresh vegetables, and melons and fruits, and eat less greasy food!