Is beans good for weight loss?

Yes. A 200 g serving of boiled beans is about 232 calories and gives you about 15 g of protein and 13 g of fibre. Each tablespoon of palm oil that ends up on your plate adds about 120 calories.

Maybe someone told you beans is too heavy for weight loss, or that the ewa agoyin you buy on your way home is what is adding the kilos. If that has made you nervous about every mudu of beans you buy, I understand.

I’m Odunayo, a pharmacist and nutrition coach, and beans stay on my clients’ plates. On this page I’ll show you the calories in beans the way we cook them in Nigeria, why beans keep you full, where the oil comes in, and how much to serve. Beans carry a Tuesday lunch and a Saturday dinner in our Nigerian food time table.

Calories in beans

Here is the same 200 g of boiled beans as plain beans, ewa agoyin and beans porridge. The plain beans figure comes from USDA FoodData Central. I built the ewa agoyin and beans porridge figures from that database’s records for boiled beans, palm oil, onion and, for the porridge, tomato, so they show the calories before your pepper and seasoning.

Our brown beans (oloyin) and white beans are both cowpeas, and every cooked figure on this page uses the database’s record for boiled cowpeas.

You will see calorie figures for beans online that don’t agree, and most of the gap comes from whether the beans were measured dry or cooked. Per 100 g, dry beans are about 336 calories and boiled beans about 116, because beans take in a lot of water as they cook. A cup of dry beans is about 561 calories, and a cup of boiled beans about 198.

So when you count, count cooked beans, and weigh them the same way each time.

Moi moi and akara are beans too. The oil, egg and fish in them change so much from one kitchen to the next that I’d rather not give you one figure that may be far from yours.

How beans help with weight loss

Put 200 g of boiled beans beside 200 g of cooked white rice. The beans are about 232 calories with 15.5 g of protein and 13 g of fibre. The rice is about 260 calories with 5.4 g of protein and 0.8 g of fibre. To see how beans compare with the other carbs you eat, read my guide to the best carbs for weight loss.

In a review of nine feeding trials, meals with beans and other pulses gave 31% more fullness than meals with the same calories.

The same review found that people ate no less at their next meal, so beans help most when the portion on your plate is already planned. If you’d like the portions planned for you, our customised meal plan does that.

Across 21 trials, adding about one serving of beans or other pulses a day led to about 0.34 kg more weight loss over roughly six weeks, even in diets that weren’t set up to cut calories.

You may be wondering whether beans is a protein or a carbohydrate. It’s both: 200 g of boiled beans gives about 41.5 g of carbohydrate alongside its 15.5 g of protein, so I count it as the carb of the meal and as part of the protein. For more ways to add protein to your plate, see my guide to high protein foods in Nigeria.

Palm oil in beans

One tablespoon of palm oil is about 120 calories. The same 200 g of beans comes to about 364 calories with one tablespoon of palm oil in the agoyin sauce, and about 605 with three. Three tablespoons of oil alone add about 361 calories, more than the beans themselves.

When you cook at home, measure the oil into the pot with a spoon, then divide it by the number of plates the pot will serve. Spoon the sauce over your beans instead of pouring it, and count the bread you eat with it.

You can keep your agoyin. A plate of 200 g beans with one tablespoon of palm oil, onion and two slices of white bread (about 50 g) comes to about 497 calories. Add a second tablespoon of oil and the same plate is about 618.

Does beans make you fat

Weight goes up when you regularly eat more calories than your body uses, and that can happen with any food, beans included.

200 g of boiled beans is about 28 calories fewer than 200 g of cooked white rice, with nearly three times the protein.

Where beans add up is in the extras: the second and third spoon of oil, the bread, the second plate. Even plain, a 300 g plate of boiled beans is about 348 calories.

Gas and bloating from beans

Beans contain sugars your gut can’t digest on its own, and the bacteria in your large intestine ferment them, which makes the gas.

In a study of nine cowpea varieties at the University of Port Harcourt, soaking the beans for 12 hours and cooking them for 30 minutes removed most of these sugars. Pour the soaking water away and cook in fresh water.

If you’re not used to eating beans, start with a smaller portion and build up over a few weeks. If beans give you pain, or bloating that doesn’t settle, talk to your doctor.

How much beans to eat for weight loss

I’d make 150 g to 200 g of cooked beans the main portion of one meal, with vegetables on the side.

Here is one plate. Take 150 g of boiled beans, 150 g of boiled unripe plantain and one tablespoon of palm oil in the sauce. It comes to about 476 calories and gives about 13 g of protein, before your pepper and onion.

The lighter agoyin and bread above, at about 497 calories, is another plate that fits a weight-loss day.

You can eat beans every day if it fits your calorie target, and eating beans at night is fine too. I generally don’t recommend going below 1,200 calories a day.

Weigh your beans and measure your oil for the first week or two, so your eyes learn what 200 g and one tablespoon look like on your own plate. Our Nigerian food time table puts beans with plantain and beans porridge into a full week of meals.

A customised Nigerian meal plan

Our customised meal plan for everyone tells you what to eat and how much of it, planned around the Nigerian foods you enjoy, your goals and your daily schedule, with a guide to what to order on the days you eat out.