List of Healthy Snacks
Are putting on weight due to snacking? We all know that eating at odd hours leads to weight gain. But how do you deal with hunger pangs without starving yourself. To answer one of the most common dilemmas of how to control snacking we have put together a list of healthy snacks alongside some not so healthy snacks. This is done to explain why you should be eating this and not that.
Before we move on to the healthy vs unhealthy snack list you need to understand snacks are just fillers or small bites. Most people eat snacks like a meal and thats where the problem starts. When one samosa becomes two or one sandwich becomes two sandwiches.
To elaborate a little bit more here are some points to note
While snacking eat slowly and enjoy every bite that you eat. Eating slowly makes you chew the food properly and eat less also. This helps you in managing portion and not over eating.
Don’t snack on empty calories even though you can manage the portion because it will add no nutrition and only calories.
You could choose low fat dairy, eggs, seeds and nuts, fruits and veggies as a snacking option.
Lets further explain it with an example on how to control your calories better if you are on a weight loss routine. A man weighing 80 kgs and 175 cms would approximately require 2000 calories in a single day. To break it further he would have a daily quota of 250 calories for 2 snacks in a day. While a women weighing 50 kg and 5 feet 2 inches would require approximately 1400 calories in a day and 175 calories each for snacking twice in a day. This means you can divide your snack for once during mid morning and once in the routine evening. But remember snacking includes your tea/coffee/coke/lemonade etc! Read more
Lemon water weight loss benefits
Do you drink lemon & hot water for weight loss? It’s a very common belief that to lose weight, you should drink hot water (or warm water) and lemon first thing in the morning. Maybe put a pinch of honey in it. There are plenty of people who swear by drinking lemon water for weight loss. Have you ever wondered why drinking warm lemon water would help in weight loss? Or does drinking lemon & hot water even work for weight loss? Read below to find out..
The key ingredient here is the water- Recent research shows that drinking 400 ml of water as soon as you wake up in the morning, raises your metabolic level significantly. Water has significant health benefits. (Metabolic Level is the rate at which your body burns calories to maintain itself) Through the night, your body is deprived of water, and since most of your body processes use water as a medium, your body’s machinery slows down through the night. When you drink water in the morning, it helps to rev the machinery back into gear, so it kicks up the metabolic rate. The lemon has Vitamin C, and honey has its health benefits, since they add vitamins, minerals, and flavour.
So, assuming that your diet, exercise and activity level is the same, and you start drinking lemon water as soon as you wake up, it will increase your metabolic level. With an increase in your metabolic level, your body will burn more calories for the same activity. Same number of calories going on, more calories going out (from your raised metabolic rate). So you will lose some weight from drinking lemon water in the short term. But once your body gets used to lemon and hot water, the weight loss will really slow down or stop.
So, drinking hot water and lemon is good for health. But, can you lose 5 lbs of weight, from drinking hot water, lemon and honey in the morning? No. Will drinking hot water and lemon reduce any fat? No.
Lemon Detox Diet & Raw Banana Diet
[Caution: The diets below are not endorsed by Fitho, since both the Lemon Detox Diet and the Raw Banana diet can be very unhealthy and can have serious health side effects.]
Every season, there is a new fad diet that does the round. This time there are two fad diets in different parts of the world- The Raw Banana Diet and the Lemon Detox Diet.

Dr GORI @ flickr
Raw Banana Diet- Apparently in Japan its such a huge rage that supermarkets and grocery stores are out of Bananas. Infact, Dole, the banana company has increased imports of bananas up to 25% to meet the demand for bananas. We could not find clear origins of this raw banana diet, but what is crazy about this raw banana diet is that people actually believe they might lose weight on it. For the raw banana diet, they want you to start your day with a banana (or as many as you like) with a glass of water at room temperature. Through the day, you can eat anything for lunch and dinner. A 3 p.m. snack is acceptable. No desserts and no meals after 8 p.m. And you have to go to bed by midnight.
How could that make any one lose weight? Maybe most of these people who lost weight on the diet never had breakfast. And eating a good breakfast is a key tool in a healthy nutrition and weight loss plan. So, if you eat 2-3 bananas for breakfast, you’ll fill yourself up for the morning. So, you probably won’t dig into the unhealthy snacking options at work. You’re off desserts in this raw banana diet, so that cuts off carbohydrates with a high glycemic index, that promote fat storage in your body. But you can eat anything for dinner and lunch? What happened to portion control to lose weight. The other key that might work for people is that this diet needs you to eat all meals before 8 p.m, so if you’ve eaten lots of carbs (rice, etc) for dinner, you’ve probably burnt some of it by the time you sleep. Also, since you’re getting enough sleep, it’ll help you manage your weight.
The raw banana diet is an unscientific way to approach weight loss. People who have issues with portion control could gain weight on this diet. The good thing about this diet is it promotes a healthy breakfast and dinner much before you sleep. And its not a crash diet- those are the worst for your health.

martjusha @ flickr
Lemon Detox Diet- The lemon detox diet is all the rage in Australia. Beyonce Knowles, on the lemon detox diet apparently had some success, so a huge mass of people has decided to follow it blindly, not considering the side effects of the lemon detox diet. This lemon detox diet has you drinking 6-9 glasses per day, for 5 to 14 days of a special concoction made from Madal Bal Natural Tree Syrup, Lemon Juice, Cayenne Pepper and water. That’s all. This is a starvation diet, that can have serious side effects on your health. This is the mother of all crash diets.
How can someone be nourishing their body with a diet that contains barely any calories, no solids, no protein, minimal fat and inadequate vitamins and minerals. Since your body will not be getting enough calories, it will go into starvation mode, a.k.a. fat storing mode. To maintain your bodily functions, your body will cannibalize on its own muscle. So, instead of losing fat, you will lose muscle and lean body mass, and stay away from the lemon detox diet or the raw banana diet.
Also as soon as you return to a normal diet, your body will be in a mode to store all that food as fat!
Can you imagine how much you would eat after you’ve deprived your body and brain of all that food?





