One of the healthiest foods that many people are still not making good use of in their day-to-day diet plan is coconut.
Coconut has been proven to provide a wide range of health benefits, including boosting your heart health, improving your skin’s health, enhancing your body composition, and providing a good source of usable energy.
The primary reason why some people are still not including it into their daily diet is simply because they don’t know how to go about adding it in.
So let’s walk you through some quick ideas so that you don’t miss out on what coconut has to offer any longer.
Use coconut milk in smoothies: First, for added taste and healthy fats, consider using coconut milk when preparing your fresh fruit smoothies.
This works particularly well if you’re preparing a smoothie with bananas or pineapples, so definitely consider those two fruit options.
Add dried coconut to your oats: Next, consider adding some dried coconut to your morning bowl of oatmeal.
This is a fast and easy way to add some healthy fats to start your day and will definitely boost the flavour.
You always want to choose unsweetened oatmeal varieties and then add ingredients yourself to keep the sugar content down. This method helps you accomplish just that.
Add coconut oil into baked goods: When it comes to your baking, consider swapping out olive oil for coconut oil.
In many recipes, you can easily make this swap while still maintaining the overall integrity of the recipe, so it’s an easy replacement to make.
Plus, it’ll add a hint of coconut flavour, which most people definitely enjoy.
Flavour protein shakes with dried coconut: The next quick way to incorporate coconut into your diet plan is with protein shakes. Start adding some dried coconut to those to increase the healthy fat content as well.
Many people are in the habit of using flaxseed oil or dried flaxseeds, but coconut flakes are a great substitute.
Hydrate with coconut water: Finally, don’t overlook hydrating with coconut water.
While coconut water won’t provide nearly the same degree of healthy fats as dried coconut provides you, coconut water is a very good source of electrolytes, so it will help you maintain proper concentration levels in the body.
For those who are regularly keeping active, this is a very important thing and for this reason, more and more people are starting to opt for coconut water rather than a typical sports beverage after they complete their hard training workout sessions.
Coconut water does contain a few calories, however, so just be sure that you add those to your daily total so you aren’t gaining weight because of this addition.
So there you have some fast and easy ways to start adding more coconut to your day. Get these in and you will reap the health benefits that this powerful food has to offer.
Cabel McElderry is a local personal trainer and nutrition coach. For more information on fitness and nutrition, visit the Fitness F/X website at www.fitnessfx.com.