While trying to lose / watch your weight are you always bothered about making correct choices about the foods, menus or ingredients to pick just because you are bothered about your calorie intake? Look no further… Try these healthier versions of high-calorie foods that keep up the flavour without increasing the calories.
Having some substitution strategies up your sleeve can save a lot of guilt and time on the treadmill. Being health conscious you don’t need to make big changes to your diet to see noticeable results. Just by adding, deleting and substituting a few foods, you can convert an unhealthy diet to a healthy one.
You can substitute a whole lot of foods / ingredients with their healthier versions:
Oil
- Using pre-seasoned iron cookware will keep food from sticking to the bottom of the vessel and would lead to lesser usage of oil.
- Applesauce can replace up to half of the butter or oil in baked foods such as cakes, brownies, muffins and cookies.
- Vinegar or lemon juice can be used for salad dressings instead of oils.
- Use alternate methods of cooking like roasting, microwave cooking, stir-frying rather than deep / shallow frying.
Cream:
use unflavoured non-fat yoghurt
Sugar:
Splenda and stevia are sugar replacement products that perform well in sweets and baked goods and are calorie-free. They do not decompose on heating at such high temperatures.
Replace non-vegetarian foods with vegetables:
Vegetables are low in calories because of their high water and fibre content. You can increase your vegetable intake whenever having non-veg food. Try having:
- stir-fried vegetables / salads with meat
- kebabs / cutlets / patties / sandwiches / pizzas with less meat and more veggies
High-calorie beverages with a low-calorie beverage:
This can be done by replacing beverages such as coffee, soft drinks and alcoholic beverages with water, salt lemonade, tea with low or no sugar, green tea, etc.
High-fat meat with lean meat:
There are huge differences in the number of calories in lean and fatty meats. Replacing mutton with chicken or fish apart from decreasing fat intake also improves the quality of fat intake. Chicken and fish contain more unsaturated fat calories rather than saturated fat calories.
High-calorie sauces or toppings with low-calorie alternatives:
Nowadays low-calorie versions are available of most kinds of mayonnaise, salad dressings, sandwich spreads and numerous other foods. Light mayonnaise has 25 calories lesser per serving compared to regular mayonnaise.
In turn, you can also prepare your own sandwich spreads and salad dressings using hung curd and mixing them up with various herbs and spices.
Replace refined grains with whole grains:
Whole grains such as brown rice, whole wheat and foods made with them contain more fibre and are thus lesser in (effective) calories than refined grains such as white rice, refined flour and foods made with them. e.g. a cup of regular pasta contains 221 calories, compared to just 174 in a cup of whole-wheat pasta.
High-calorie dessert with low-calorie dessert:
If you have a sweet tooth and your meals are incomplete without a sweet entree, then substitute high-calorie desserts with low-calorie option. A small bowl of ice cream has 143 calories. This can be replaced by a bowl of your favourite fruit with 1 teaspoon honey or low-fat vanilla or fruit yoghurt as dessert.
Now who said low cal diet was all about eating boring foods??
NutriMantra 