Cucumbers and Lose Weight

Fruits and vegetables, including cucumbers, aren't just good for your overall health, they're a welcome addition to weight loss diets. Cucumbers provide generous amounts of essential nutrients, including vitamins C and K, and they have some nutritional properties that make them helpful for weight loss. You don't have to stick to cucumber slices served plain, though -- you can include cucumber in a range of delicious weight loss-friendly dishes.

Weight Loss Benefits from Eating Cucumbers

When you're trying to lose weight, including low-calorie foods like cucumbers in your diet helps you lower your calorie intake to shed pounds. Cucumbers are very low in calories -- a cup of sliced cucumber has just 14 calories, which is less than 1 percent of the daily calorie "budget" on a weight loss-friendly 1,500-calorie diet. Even eating a large portion size won't make you pack on the pounds. A medium peeled cucumber has just 24 calories, and a large unpeeled cuke still has just 45 calories. Because cucumber is low in calories even with a large portion size, it's a very low energy density food. Filling your diet with such foods is beneficial for weight loss, because they'll fill you up when you're following a calorie-controlled diet.

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Other Nutritional Benefits

You'll get other nutritional benefits from cucumbers, helping keep you healthy on your weight loss journey. Eating half an unpeeled cucumber provides you with roughly one-third of the daily value for vitamin K, an essential nutrient that helps your blood clot. You'll also get 7 percent of the daily value for vitamin C, an antioxidant that also supports collagen production, which keeps your bones, skin and hair strong. Cucumber also contains several phytonutrients -- beneficial plant compounds -- according to a review published in "Fitoterapia" in 2013. These compounds provide antioxidant benefits and might offer antidiabetic benefits, notes the review, and cucumber seeds help fight constipation. These benefits may also indirectly help with your weight loss -- by nourishing your body with nutritious foods, like cucumber, you're more likely to feel energized to lead an active, healthy lifestyle.

Classic Serving Tips: 
Salads

Use cucumbers as a base for salads to help you lose weight. Eating a low-calorie cucumber salad before meals helps fill you up, and gives your brain time to process "full" signals so you don't overeat your main course. Try a mixture of chopped cucumbers, tomatoes, fresh basil and lemon juice for a low-fat salad, or sliced cucumbers, red grapefruit, fennel and white wine vinaigrette for a sweet-and-sour option. Alternatively, mix cucumber chunks with spinach and red peppers for a filing green salad, and add a handful of mint leaves for refreshing flavor.

Low-Cal Cucumber Beverages

When you're dieting, it's best to limit your liquid calorie intake, because liquid calories don't trigger feelings of fullness like solid foods. And those calories can really add up -- about half of Americans drink sugary drinks daily, and 25 percent of people take in at least 200 calories from sugary drinks. Use cucumbers to make beverages as a compromise between sugary drinks and plain water. You'll still get refreshing flavor, but your beverage will be relatively low in calories. Steep your water with cucumber and lemon slices for refreshing flavored water, and try adding muddled basil or mint leaves for an herbal twist. Add fresh or frozen cucumber to your fruit smoothies -- cucumber pairs especially well with unsweetened coconut water, lime juice, a few chunks of frozen pineapple, and a handful of cilantro or parsley. Or go for a greens-filled smoothie made with unsweetened iced green tea, romaine, kale, parsley, cucumber, celery and just a squeeze of lemon juice.

Low-Cal Cucumber "Noodles"

Use a spiral cutter to make cucumber "noodles" to eat in place of pasta to cut calories. While cucumber won't have the texture of real pasta, it offers a bright and crisp flavor and texture that works well in pasta-based dishes. For example, top cucumber noodles with raw tomato sauce -- made from pureed sun-dried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, olive oil and garlic -- or top them with bean sprouts, chicken and pad Thai sauce for raw pad Thai. 

Subbing out pasta for cucumber will save you lots of calories, even if you spiral-cut an entire cucumber and eat a few cups of "noodles." For example, eating a spiral-cut medium cucumber instead of a cup of cooked rice noodles saves you 166 calories -- enough to lose 7 pounds of fat if you make this switch three times a week for a year, not counting any weight loss from other dietary changes. Using cucumber "noodles" instead of spaghetti saves you even more calories -- 197 calories per serving, or the equivalent of almost 9 pounds of fat if you made this switch three times a week for a year.

How Cucumber Promotes Weight Loss

The cucumber is a vegetable that is a part of the same family as the zucchini, pumpkin and squash. About 90 percent of the cucumber is water. It is low in calories, yet contains essential nutrients that you can fill up on at the dinner table as well as in between meals. As a result, the cucumber helps to promote weight loss, which in turn can help you to prevent many other diseases.

Cleansing Properties

The cucumber works like a diuretic, which not only helps you to lose fat cells, but water weight as well. It essentially helps to remove excess body fluids and fat cells by breaking down the fat cells so that they can be eliminated from the body. 

Cucumbers contain silicon and sulphur, which help to stimulate the kidneys to cleanse the body from the accumulated uric acid, which is often the result of being overweight. The kidneys also aid in breaking down fat cells to be removed from the body.

In addition to the diuretic effect, the cucumber contains powerful antioxidant vitamins such as vitamins A, C and E to help remove toxins and fat cells. They help to clean your systems at a cellular level, to remove pockets of fat and toxins that have built up in your body and underneath your skin. Cucumbers can help you to achieve your weight loss goals gradually over time.

Increased Energy Levels

Cucumbers are high in fiber, which is essential when it comes to weight loss, as it helps to get your bowels functioning again so that wastes can be eliminated. Fiber not only helps to clean your digestive tract, but the rest of your body as well. This helps to increase your metabolism so that you will have more energy to help the body to burn off fat cells by engaging in exercise. 

Tartrate acid is another component in the cucumber that increases energy and promotes weight loss. It basically helps the body to convert carbohydrates into energy, so that they will not be stored as fat cells.

Low in Calories

Cucumbers are very low in calories. 1 cup of sliced cucumbers contains only about 13.52 calories, while the high levels of nutrients and water content will help to fill you up without the calories. Therefore, cucumbers are the perfect addition to any green salad, as well as a great vegetable to snack on in between meals.

Alkalizing

Cucumbers have an alkalizing effect on the body to help restore the pH level in your blood. This is crucial if you want to lose weight, as an acidic environment in the body can make it difficult to lose weight. This is due to the fact that too many acids in the blood or body can damage your organs and blood vessels. In order for your body to protect itself from these acids, it stores them away in pockets of fat. In order for you to lose weight, you need to restore the pH balance, so that these fat pockets can be eliminated from the body.