By Sapana Vibhandik
One should drink water to lose weight. But, if you drink vegetable or fruit juices you not only get fiber and antioxidants but many nutrients which help you shed some extra pounds. Among so many vegetables we have picked up Bottle Gourd, which could help you in dealing with that extra weight.
Why Drink Bottle Gourd?
Benefits of using Juice of bottle gourd can prove to be helpful for you, in certain ways:
1) If you have been thinking that, cucumber is a vegetable having high water content. Then you are wrong. Bottle Gourd comprises of 97 percent water content. On the contrary, cucumber is believed to have 96 percent water in it.
2) Bottle gourd is green in color. So what’s so special about it? It has been found that juice of green vegetables, also known by the name of ‘Green Juice’, is full of chlorophyll. This presence of chlorophyll helps in oxygenation of the body, improved blood circulation, and detoxification of body etc.
3) Such bodily advantages would keep you recharged even after exhausting workouts. Hence, bottle gourd juice could be your next post-workout drink.
The fiber of this vegetable would not give unnecessary hunger pangs to you.
4) The antioxidants present in it would help in controlling your calorie intake. Not only this, they would even in accelerating the rate of metabolism and better digestion.
5) It neither contains fat nor calories derived from fats. If the previous line has got you confused, you must know that calorie is a unit of measurement, with which energy of a food is measured. All food containing fat has calories. But all calorie foods don’t necessarily contain fat.
Since you are a weight-conscious person, this little information could help you with your monthly grocery shopping.
6) It is rich in Vitamin C; this plays a pivotal role in losing pounds and kilograms. How? First it guides fat to the body parts, where its storage is needed. Second the fat which is already present inside your body could get slashed with vitamin C’s acid.
7) Other than this, it also contains nutrients like potassium, iron, and sodium etc. You should know that potassium is one of those nutrients, which is reviewed as effective for burning fat.
8) If you choose to drink the juice of this vegetable, you would be lauded with some health benefits like prevention of gray 
hair, maintains the blood pressure of a body, gives healthy skin and improves digestive system etc.
Why Juice for Weight Loss?
When one consumes juice, all the nutritional, mineral and vitamin value, directly gets in touch with their bloodstream. Even if it is said that a juice cannot replace water, but if you see the other way round. It’s also true that water cannot replace a nutritive juice. Both of them have their own importance. Hence their balanced combined use is suggestible.
Why Vegetable Juice and Not Fruit Juice?
Fruits contain ‘Natural or Good Sugar’. This good sugar can prove to be bad when consumed excessively. For making a fruit juice, lots of fruits would be needed to blend. This preparation process would a fruit juice rich, with unnecessary sugars. One can drink vegetable juice almost every day, but daily ingestion of fruit juice is something we would not recommend at all.
If you do so, there would be a rise in the level of fructose (i.e. fruit sugar) in your blood. Consequently, along with having weight issues you would also have issues like diabetes, poor metabolism, memory impairment and aggravated hypertension etc.
How to Make Bottle Gourd Juice?
Before we tell you the recipe of Calabash or Lauki Juice, let us whisper in your ears, the secret of buying a fresh bottle gourd. The freshness of a bottle gourd could be judged by its stem.
If the stem appears to be wrinkled and/or cracked, this means it’s definitely not ideal for your juice.
It is always advised to drink fresh juice because a juice freshly made contains certain enzymes which help its quick digestion. Also high water content of bottle gourd is one of the factors, which facilitate its easy digestion in the body.
Things to keep in mind
Before Making the Juice
- Before using a bottle gourd for juicing, taste a small piece of it.
- Your selected Bottle Gourd must not taste bitter if it does just throw it away. As it could give you the fatal, ‘Bottle Gourd poisoning’.
- Don’t think of blending raw pieces of the Vegetable for juice. As the toxic substance in raw pieces could prove to be damaging both for the stomach and intestine.
- ALWAYS boil it for 2 mins (or put it in hot water for a while) before blending it.
Making the Juice for 2 Servings
- Wash, peel and chop 1 medium size bottle gourd. When you cut it, don’t forget to taste a small part of it.
- Remove the seeds to make the straining process easy.
- Put the pieces of bottle gourd meat in the hot water for 5 minutes or boil it for just 2 minutes.
- Take a blender (not juicer) put in pieces of bottle gourd and 4 sliced pieces of Amla (gooseberry), in it.
- We have asked used to use a blender, as they don’t separate fiber from the vegetable. Since fiber of bottle gourd only contains most of the goodness. It’s better to blend it.
- If you want you could also add spice like Ginger, Mint, and Black pepper etc.
- To cut down its bitterness, add 2-3 drops of Lemon Juice along with water in the blender.
- Since the vegetable already contains Sodium in it. It’s preferable not to add salt into the Juice separately, especially if you are suffering from hypertension.
- You should NEVER mix the juice of Bottle Gourd with any other juice: Reference. Blend, until it’s smooth and then strain the mixture using a sieve.
How Much Juice Should I Drink Daily?
You could drink 250 ml or one and a half teacup of bottle gourd juice each time, for twice a day.
The first round of juice should be taken with empty stomach in early mornings. The next round could be ingested 2 hours after having lunch.
If you think your body would require only one round juice in the morning. Then go for it. But, don’t try to exert yourself. If you do so, you may lose an abnormal amount of weight which could make you weak.
Just because you have chubby cheeks, fat arms, loose thighs or a big round tummy etc, doesn’t mean you are overweight. Before you decide to lose weight, don’t forget to visit the Link below.
Do not consume more than 200 ml at a time if you are Kapha Dosha.
If you don’t know your Dosha type, take the Dosha Test.
Just like weight loss cannot be attained by performing just one exercise; similarly, you should couple your regular water intake vegetable juice every day.
Juice of Bottle Gourd can show its positive effect only when, all the necessary precautions to use it would be followed. Along with this, proper healthy diet and muscle toning exercises each day can prove you, how juicing is one of the effective yet easy ways to lose weight.
(Sapana is a mommy blogger; she likes to write about mother and baby health and fitness on her parenting blog: www.GoMama247.com. Sapana has lost 15kg of pregnancy weight naturally in 4 months, 2 times in her life.)
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