You have to extend your scope about side dishes: true story on how experimenting with side dishes helped me lose 6 kg in 7 weeks and my top 12 favourite healthy side dishes I came up with along the way

Hey there my willpowered awesome fatass friends, I brought some tips for you that has grown from my personal experience.

I started my CICO project in july, with a BMI of 37 - brought it down to 35. I worked on changing what I eat and i also work out twice a week (50% cardio and 50% simple fitness, nothing hard).

TLDR; A healthy side dish isn't meant to be a boring salad. Go and experiment with mixing all sorts of vegetables with all sorts of herbs and spices. Cook them, grill them or steam them. You have to experiment, try and fail, but the results will always worth it. Careful with the oil added, it's worth buying an oil spray for this purpose.

The greatest realization that helped me stick with my food plan is I realized the importance of side dishes. In my country (CE Europe) every side dish is either potato or rice and that's it. Restaurants, take-aways don't put much effort into this, nor did my family really. These have fairly high calories, because mostly the way they were cooked (high in oil). Vegetables as side dish are spreading, but there isn't much fantasy in it yet.

I wanted to change that in my diet.

I pulled the focus away from the main part of the dish (namely, the meat) and kept it simple: every lunch is basically a version of cooked chicken breast or cooked fish. I play around with the spices. That's it. I keep that simple.

Ever since I started experimenting with side dishes, I started to love eating healthy food for lunch. I also bought a grill pan, which added some additional fun to the cooking. There is a huge variety out there and it's worth trying all them out.

Now here are my Top 12 healthy tasty side-dishes I love to make:

1. Steamed broccoli - plain and simple. Consider grating some (really not much) smoked cheese on it. Don't oversteam it, it's easy to fall prey to that
2. Cooked brussels-sprouts - first you gotta steam them so the inside is soft, then in a pan add olive oil and salt and cook'em till brownish. Just amazing.
3. Steamed spinach with garlic - probably my absolute favourite.
4. Grilled eggplant slices. Experiment with some herbs, but salt, pepper and some garlic always does the trick. Super filling, super tasty.
5. Grilled zuchhini slices - same as above. Add parmesan for extra awesomeness.
6. Carrot slices with honey and chili - i cook the carrot in an oven, then mix it with a honey-chili mixture. Careful with the honey's high calorie value though.
7. Long green beans - either cook them in an oven (works as an alternative to french fries) or just grill them. Spray some olive oil around, add salt and pepper.
8. Grilled bell pepper with purple onion. Use olive oil, but careful with the spicing as the onion brings quite a taste. The salt+pepper combo is great, also pro tip: smoked paprika spice is just amazing.
9. Bulgur - oh hey this isn't a vegetable! That's true, but the bulgur is an excellent alternative to rice. Bulgur salads are really addictive. Add some tomatoes, bell peppers and a hint of yoghurt.
10. Quinoa - another great rice alternative.
11. Greek salad - the feta cheese can add some calorie and make sure not to drown it in olive oil.
12. Champignons - I got two things for this: either cook'em sliced with red onion and a bit of cream or put them into the oven as whole heads, put some cream cheese mixed with chives there. It bring more calories for sure, but still pretty manageable. Always add fresh parsley.

And there are still a lot more. Buy all sorts of spices and frosted or fresh veggies then start experimenting around. For me it was an enormous help with my weight-loss, I think it could be useful for you as well.

submitted by /u/Vitruvius_Corvinus
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