Non-fat Salad Dressing For 1200 Calorie DASH Diet

When on the 1200 calorie DASH diet, try this non-fat Russian salad dressing. Created by Joyce Goldstein for Dr.Ornish and published in his bestseller book “Eat More, Weight Less”, this healthy salad dressing will enhance your diet and make it both palatable and adherent to the DASH principles.

Do you already feel how hard it is to stick to a 1200 calorie DASH diet? In this case, the healthy salad dressing recipe helps you keep your use of oils down.

This is an ideal dressing for a tomato, cucumber and red onion salad. It can be used with lettuce, and it is nice on potato salad.

It is also low sodium, yet it doesn’t feel so due to the presence of tomato and vinegar. One portion (2 tbsp) of this salad dressing contains 72 mg of sodium.

Unfortunately, it contains sugar, which counts against your fat/sweets allowance. If you think about it though, everything tasty in life has either fat, or sugar, or both.

Ingredients

• 1 tsp dry mustard
• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 4 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 cup of non-fat plain yogurt
• pepper
• (optional) salt

Directions

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk together well. If you don’t have dry mustard, Dijon mustrd is just fine.

1200 Calorie DASH Diet: Low Fat Salad Dressing

When on 1200 calorie DASH diet, every calorie counts. Using low fat salad dressing is one of the best way to make sure you don’t use more oils in your diet than DASH diet requires of you. To remind, your diet allows you only 1.5 portions of fats AND sweets per day, which translates into one and a half teaspoon of olive oil ( and no sweets!).

Truth is, salad dressings contain a lot of oil. Much more than you want in your 1200 calorie DASH DIET.

Human mind works in funny ways. It knows that “salad is healthy” and subconsciously allows you to eat as much salad as you want. Dressing included. Even at the restaurant, as long as you ate salad, you feel safe about your food choices. You let your guard down.

All I can say, beware of salad dressing.

Low fat salad dressing made at home should become your only choice if you want to adhere to the 1200 calorie DASH diet.

If you have never made one, here comes…

how to make low fat salad dressing

Oil is what changes viscosity of the dressing. Without oil, it is simply a liquid. What can replace oil in your dressing?

1. Mustard. Mustard gives salad dressing a smooth silky structure. Try honey mustard dressing with peppercorn.
2. Blended berries. Thaw raspberry mix or use fresh strawberries. Blend a cup of berries, add balsamic or red wine vinegar, a couple of drops of oil and salt to taste- and voila! you have just made low fat salad dressing
3. Water from boiled beans. This is a discovery made by one of the top chefs in Los Angeles, a co-author of Dr. Ornish’es book who took a challenge to create no fat salad dressings that suit the Ornish Diet. If you boil your beans in small amount of water, you will notice that it feels sort of starchy. Add some vinegar, dried herbs, pepper and salt, and your dressing is super healthy and very tasty.

There are at least two other super foods that are a great base for a low fat salad dressing. I will publish my own low fat salad dressing recipes in my new e-book: 1200 calorie DASH Diet Plan.

Hope you find these three tips helpful, and please come back for more.

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Kale Juice Recipe for 1200 calorie DASH diet

Here is a kale juice recipe perfect for your 1200 calorie DASH diet or the 1600 calorie DASH diet. It uses pineapple – a fruit that lowers blood pressure. The pineapple diet for hypertension is becoming popular and is said to help because pineapple introduces a high amount of Potassium into your diet while being very low in Sodium.

You should treat any diet that uses a single “miracle ingredient” with caution. The 1200 calorie DASH diet made with whole foods, including fruit like pineapple, is much more beneficial and scientifically proven to work. I must correct myself – the Harvard research used the 2000 calorie DASH diet, but they did not restrict the weight or gender of participants. Losing weight was not a part of the research. That’s why the 2000 calorie DASH diet was used – it provides enough calories for the majority of the study’s subjects.

The 1200 calorie DASH diet is one of your best choices if

• you are a woman,
• you are not tall and averagely built,
• you are leading a sedentary lifestyle,
• and you want to lose weight and lower blood pressure.

If all these conditions are met,  the 1200 calorie DASH diet will create the right calorie deficit and you won’t starve yourself. Just make sure you don’t restrict calories for too long.

This Pineapple Kale Juice recipe is very good for individuals with dry and aging skin. It hydrates dry skin from within. If you drink it regularly, you may get a 33% improvement of micro-circulation in your skin.

It also contains cancer-fighting and anti-inflammatory agents.

Not to mention that taking 500mg of Vitamin C daily lowers high blood pressure by 5 points according to a new study by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Both kale and pineapple contain a lot of vitamin C.

Pineapple Kale Juice Recipe For 1200 Calorie DASH Diet

Pineapple Kale Juice Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 small pineapple, cleaned
• 8 leaves of curly kale
• 1/2 of English cucumber
• 1 slice of lemon (optional)

Directions

1. Clean the pineapple and cut it in pieces that fit your juicer. You don’t need to core it.
2. Wash cucumber and cut it lengthwise. You can clean the skin if you feel concerned about pesticides.
3. Feed pineapple and kale (alternate pieces) into the juicer.
   Throw the pulp away. If your pineapple is ripe and sweet, you can add
   one slice of lemon to your juice. However, most pineapples bought at
   the store are not sweet enough, so lemon juice is not needed.
4. Juice the cucumber. Mix well.

This amount produces about 750 ml of juice. You can store kale juice in a tightly closed jar for up to two days.

If you don’t have time to juice kale and pineapple every day, the shortcut is to juice kale and freeze it in an ice cube tray, then add it daily to a cup of Dole pineapple juice. Fresh prepared juices are always better, but don’t let this perfectionist thinking get in the way of you drinking canned juice to lower blood pressure. In my opinion, it’s better to do this than to drink no juice at all.

What recipes do you use to lower blood pressure? Leave a comment and help other people improve their diet.

Green Smoothie For 1200 Calorie Dash Diet

The green smoothie can help transform your body so quickly, you will be mad at yourself for not trying it earlier.
I first heard a passionate “ode to green smoothie” from Victoria Boutenko, a raw food enthusiast whose whole family is called “the raw family.”  Victoria gave a compelling argument for using green smoothies:

 ”A molecule of chlorophyll closely resembles a molecule of human blood. According to the teachings of Dr. Ann Wigmore, consuming chlorophyll is like receiving a healthy blood transfusion. Many people do not consume enough greens, even those who stay on a raw food diet. By drinking two or three cups of green smoothies daily you will consume enough greens for the day to nourish your body, and all of the beneficial nutrients will be well assimilated.

Green smoothies are easy to make, and quick to clean up after. In contrast, juicing greens is time consuming, messy, and expensive. Many people abandon drinking green juices on a regular basis for those reasons. To prepare a pitcher of green smoothie takes less than 5 minutes, including cleaning.”

That good for you and that easy to make? I have been making green smoothies ever since.

Some people try to make a green smoothie and get a foamy, unpalatable mixture.  They get turned off by  this. You can make your green smoothies tasty by adding fruit to them. Fruit contains soluble fiber as opposed to the insoluble fiber in green leafy vegetables. Soluble fiber makes the texture of a green smoothie creamy and delicious. The perfect green smoothie has 60% fruit and 40% greens.

Green smoothie for 1200 calorie diet

The green smoothie is a great food to lower blood pressure. Remember that the DASH diet lowers blood pressure by combining foods that are rich is Potassium and Magnesium. Making banana smoothies while on your 1200 calorie diet is a great idea because you take in your Potassium together with all the goodness of greens and it gets absorbed easily.

Here is a simple recipe that we call “Shrek’s Delight” due to its swampy look and green colour:

Green Smoothie Recipe – Shrek’s Delight

Ingredients:

• 1 cup spinach or kale
• 1 banana
• 1 cup almond milk
• Add water to taste

Directions:

1. Wash spinach and kale;  peel banana
2. Blend all ingredients together and add water or almond milk to taste

It’s important to not consume any empty calories when on 1200 calorie DASH diet – you simply cannot afford it. Green smoothies are low in calories and high in blood pressure lowering ingredients. You will surely receive maximum nutrition while on a restricted calorie diet. This helps you to keep losing weight.

You can add ground flax meal to increase the health benefits of your green smoothie.

Enjoy!

If you want to read the results of Victoria’s research on the diet of the chimps (whose DNA makeup resembles that of a human about 94%) , here is her own explanation of how she arrived at the need to eat more greens: Victoria Boutenko About Need For A Green Smoothie

Low Fat Broccoli Potato Soup – DASH Diet Meal Recipe

This low fat broccoli potato soup is an easy and tasty DASH diet meal. If you are on a 1200 calorie DASH diet, one portion of it provides you with all the veggies you need in a day.

For fans of the traditional cream of broccoli soup, this soup will taste a bit different. This is a vegan meal, and the healthiest version of this soup possible. Not only will it work to lower your blood pressure as a part of your 1200 or 1600 calorie meal plan, it will also be a great heart disease and cancer prevention meal. All the ingredients that may not be beneficial for you (such as chicken broth and dairy products) are replaced.

Low Fat Broccoli Potato Soup - Dash Diet Meal Recipe

My family found it very tasty “as is”, so give it a try. I’d appreciate your comments, especially if you made substitutions, so that other people can benefit from your experience.

If you feel that adjusting to a new diet is stressful enough, so you would prefer the meal to be as tasty as possible while adhering to the DASH diet guidelines, I will provide substitutions for you:

• This soup doesn’t include sharp cheddar cheese. On the DASH diet, you are allowed about one and a half oz of LOW FAT cheese per day, so go ahead and grate some cheese on top of your portion. 1,5 oz is a cube with about 1 inch long side. You can consider vegan cheese, too.
• This is a vegan meal and for those of you who doesn’t mind eating meat, the taste will be further improved by adding chicken broth. Use chicken broth instead of water. Understand, though, that this way you will use  or exceed your daily fat allotment and increase total calories. Chicken broth cubes, however convenient, are not a good choice here. So if you really want this soup to be a chicken soup, I suggest that you boil a chicken breast first, and use the bouillon, while using chicken breast in another meal such as sandwich or pasta.

Low Fat Broccoli Potato Soup

Ingredients: 

• 1 leek , washed and cut with greens included
• 1 onion
• 5 medium potatoes, peeled
• 1 cup cauliflower
• 5 cups broccoli (a bunch of broccoli)
• 3 or more cups of water
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 cup almond milk, unsweetened
• black pepper, salt (for low-sodium diet, no salt. Add some lemon and pepper seasoning to the bowl instead)
• Herbs de Provence or Italian seasoning
• (optional) 4 sun-dried tomatoes, cut, with oil squeezed out