48 Healthy Sweet Potato Recipes for Weight Loss (2024)

FAQs

What is the best way to eat sweet potatoes for weight loss? ›

However, depending on how they're cooked and any condiments or sides, they can also spike your blood sugar and have high amounts of added fat, sugar, and calories. For the most weight loss-friendly version, boil sweet potatoes for 30 minutes and enjoy with herbs, spices, hot sauce, a little Parmesan, or garlic.

Mindful portions: While sweet potatoes are nutritious, they still contain calories. Pay attention to portion sizes to avoid overconsumption. Aim for one medium-sized sweet potato per serving, which is approximately 130-150 grams or about the size of your fist.

Boiling sweet potatoes retains more beta-carotene and makes the nutrient more absorbable than other cooking methods such as baking or frying. Up to 92% of the nutrient can be retained by limiting the cook time, such as boiling in a pot with a tightly covered lid for 20 minutes.

Although both veggies are very close in fiber, protein, vitamin C, and magnesium, sweet potatoes are the healthier option because they are lower in overall calories, lower in carbohydrates, and higher in beta carotene (vitamin A).

As we know, sweet potato has several benefits that make it worth including in your weight loss diet. So, by incorporating it into healthy meals and watching your portion sizes, you may find that it does support your weight loss goals and results in getting rid of unwanted belly fat.

In a nutrition battle between a banana and sweet potato, the sweet potato would come out ahead. A baked sweet potato has the same calories per gram as a banana, yet has one gram more fiber and five grams less sugar per medium serving.

How to tell if sweet potatoes have gone bad. If your sweet potato is soft in spots, smells rotten, or oozes a mysterious liquid, that potato should be discarded. Another sign that sweet potatoes have taken a turn for the worse is if they start growing stalky purplish sprouts.

If you enjoy sweet potatoes, you can absolutely enjoy them daily. However, eating multiple sweet potatoes every day could cause a harmless condition called carotenodermia, where your skin turns yellow-orange. You may also want to be cautious about your sweet potato intake if you have a history of kidney stones.

~ Eating sweet potatoes for breakfast or lunch can provide you with sustained energy throughout the day. They can also be a great post-workout meal due to their balance of complex carbs and nutrients.

Therefore, from a nutritional standpoint, boiling rather than baking should be recommended for cooking sweet potato. Boiling may theoretically be best, but sweet potatoes are so incredibly healthy that the actual best way to prepare them is whichever way will get you to eat the most of them!

What to pair with sweet potatoes? ›

If you're serving your oven baked sweet potatoes as a side dish, pair them with your favorite protein or vegetarian chili. For a topping, stick to butter, Greek yogurt, or sour cream, or try adding a dollop of cilantro lime dressing, tzatziki, chipotle sauce, pesto, guacamole, or a drizzle of tahini sauce.

One small sweet potato contains half the calories as a piece of toast. Vitamins A and C don't even register on the charts for bread, while sweet potatoes offer a good source of vitamin C and some potassium.

If you want to eat a smaller portion of sweet potatoes to limit your carbs, consider adding them cooked and diced to soup or salad. You can also slice a cooked sweet potato in half and top it with a protein and perhaps another low-carb ingredient for a quick meal.

Oatmeal swallow made from blended oats is one healthy swallow packed with lots of benefits such as important vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. It is one type of swallow that can help aid digestion, lower blood sugar and cholesterol, and is great for weight loss.

Is rice good for weight loss? Rice also has the benefit of expanding to three times its original volume, so it can be quite filling. This can help one eat less overall - a strategy some use to support weight management when rice consumption is paired with a healthy diet.

Sweet potatoes are a perf addition to any healthy weight loss diet (except keto) because they contain fiber, they're filling, and they're lower in calories and carbs than other starches like rice or pasta.

During 30-day no sugar challenges, participants are encouraged to fill up on whole, nutrient-dense foods, including: Vegetables: broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, carrots, asparagus, zucchini, sweet potatoes, etc.

If you enjoy sweet potatoes, you can absolutely enjoy them daily. However, eating multiple sweet potatoes every day could cause a harmless condition called carotenodermia, where your skin turns yellow-orange. You may also want to be cautious about your sweet potato intake if you have a history of kidney stones.

In general, you can expect cooked sweet potatoes to weigh around 75-80% of their raw weight. For example, if you start with a raw sweet potato that weighs 500 grams, you can expect the cooked sweet potato to weigh around 375-400 grams.