Weight Loss With Vegetable Soup - Beat the Diet Cravings With Cheap, Healthy Soup

Have you often been left looking at the fridge and the cupboards wondering what you can have for lunch while sticking to your diet plan? Have you ended up grabbing something not so good because you are hungry and there's nothing suitable to hand and a lack of time to prepare anything else?

Vegetable soup is a useful part of any weight loss diet as it can be very low in calories and fat, and it will fill that hole in your stomach and stop the cravings - at least for a while! It is also a healthy option providing much needed fresh vegetables in the diet that can so easily be missed out.

The benefits are:

• Low in fat
• Low in calories
• Filling
• Healthy
• Cheap
• Can be made in bulk

You can of course stock up on packets, pots and cans to provide the instant, off the shelf soup. But a much better method is to make it yourself. It will be cheaper and probably healthier, and most likely tastier in a natural way rather than flavour enhanced with salt and other additives. But, you say, "time is short and I can't make up soup every day". The answer to that is to make it up in bulk once week.

Vegetable soup is ideal for making up in bulk as vegetables are available cheaply in large packets. They can also be very cheap if you can find a good market with in-season products and look out for any special offers for those almost out of date or damaged items. When they are going to be boiled and pulped it doesn't matter if they are a funny shape to begin with! Root vegetables such as carrots, parsnips, swede and potatoes are ideal, along with things like pumpkin and other squashes, and of course beans and greens. Try to choose a variety of vegetables that will go well together, and don't be afraid to experiment. You will soon learn which vegetables provide a good base, which add a nice flavour, and which can be overpowering if used in excess.

There are many recipes available for soup, probably far too many as they are actually very simple to make well. They are also simple to make badly if you don't bother thinking about seasoning and flavours. Simply taking a bag of carrots, boiling them up and blending them to a puree will not produce something you will look forward to eating. If you don't like the soup you make then how will you eat it rather than the nice fatty, sugary things in the back of the fridge?

The essential technique is to use a little butter or olive oil (or low fat spray!) to brown some onions. Once brown add pepper and spices and some cornflour to help thicken the soup. At the same time boil the chopped vegetables in a covering of water until soft. Add the onion mix and then blend. What vegetables you use will give the soup its base flavour and then the spices and any herbs used will enhance it. Don't forget to add a little salt to taste.

This can all be done in a large pan that will make enough soup for the week. We just keep it on the stove and heat it up again each day as needed! But you can put it into pots in the fridge if you feel the need. It can be frozen in pots as well. By learning the skill of quality soup making you will always have a way of eating healthily and avoiding the bad foods. There is no better time than the present to learn and the best way to learn is to just have a go.

For those times when you have run out of soup and don't have time for another batch then you may want to check out the various appetite suppressants on the market - just to get you over the soup-less days.

To find out more about weight loss and diets go to Weight Loss Reviewer.

Derek Phillips
http://weightlossreviewer.co.uk/

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