Sunday, November 3, 2013

Almond Milk for Weightloss?

Is almond milk better than normal milk for weightloss? Well really there is nothing wrong with normal milk, but if you were to to try almond milk in place of regular milk you can save yourself around 100 calories per day per cup of milk, and when looking at a weightloss diet I always try to keep as many of my favourite foods as possible, the fastest way to fail at any diet is to not enjoy it.You can use it anywhere you would normally use regular milk and it's very easy to make.Basically all you need to do to make almond milk is to soak some raw almonds in water for 8-14hours, drain the almonds and add 1 cup to your blender with 2 cups of water and blend at high speed until it turns white and the almonds have all become pulp. From here just strain through a strainer or cheesecloth or something similar (I just use a normal kitchen strainer - takes a little white as the pulp tend to block the strainer quite quickly). You can save the almond pulp to use for making cookies or anything else that calls for almond meal (haven't tried this yet as I'm not much of a cookie person).So this is plain unsweetened almond milk, what I've found that works great in coffee is to add half a vanilla bean (split the bean and scrape the seeds out and add to the blender) and some stevia (a natural sweetener with no calories) before blending, this makes a great addition to coffee - tastes Great and helps with your weightloss plans.Note: If you are not on a weightloss diet try sweetening with your favourite raw honey - yummmm!On the subject of regular milk and its health properties, there are a lot of sites out there that tell you how bad cow's milk is for your health, well I can't say I agree with these sites in the case of those of us who's bodies can digest cow's milk with no problems. I've had milk all of my life and never had any sign of the many adverse health affects that many people claim milk causes.I can fully understand the problems for people with low tolerance to lactose or milk solids, but I have to say I've never had any problems all of my life drinking cow's milk.It might seem a bit strange starting this article with the benefits of almond milk and then stating that cow's milk is fine and causes no problems, but when you are trying to lose weight, it actually is a good idea to look at reducing your intake of cow's milk as it does contain quite a few calories and it has been shown that sometime it can slow your metabolism (i.e. warm glass of milk before bed) down which is not preferred when trying to improve you health and losing weight.