Cut Calories without Losing Taste

To lose weight, you have to create a calorie deficit.  If you attempt to do it through exercise or reduction of intake alone, you will probably burn out before your see results.  A realistic and sustainable approach with health benefits far beyond weight loss, starts with smart substitutions. 

Lowfat Milk vs Whole
One cup of milk represents 28% of the recommended amount of calcium that an adult should consume in a day.  But drinking whole milk, may be adding up to 45 unneeded calories per cup.  A cup of whole milk contains 148 calories vs a cup of 1% at 103 calories.  If you like the full-flavor of the fat, but want to lose the calories, try a few different brands; Publix Organic 1% has a creamy taste as does Mayfield's.

Whole Milk Cheese vs Reduced Fat
Very rarely is cheese the main focus of the meal, so put its calories in proportion to its import.  A whole milk slice of cheddar is 113 calories and represents 30% of the saturated fat that should be consumed in a daily 2000 calorie diet (click here for information on children's daily caloric needs), but a 2% slice of cheese is only 45 calories.  One drawback to the reduced fat is that additional salt is added to replace the taste lost by the fat.  A neat experiment is to forego the cheese and see how much you miss it.  With all the flavors of a well-crafted sandwich, it may not be missed.


Mayo vs Endless Possibilities
If you were asked to put oil, eggs, and vinegar on your sandwich you would cringe, but they combine to make America's #1 condiment: mayo.  This fatty staple of the American sandwich is rich in fat, sodium, and at 57 calories per tablespoon, not much that is healthy.  Losing the mayo, though, means gaining variety in addition to health as the possible substitutes are delicious and endless.  Hummus, which comes in a flavor for every personality, has only 25 calories per tablespoon, and because it is made from protein-rich beans, will help keep you full.  Avocado, is another alternative that though fatty, is a plant-based fat that at 23 calories per tablespoon is loaded with good-for-you elements and a delicious creamy texture.  If you like tang, try tzatziki, which is a yogurt based, Greek favorite flavored with cucumber, garlic and dill that has only 35 calories per tablespoon.  Finally, there is the sandwich-classic of mustard, which at 5 calories per teaspoon is a low-cal winner with plenty of zing.


Ranch Dressing vs Italian
Your salad dressing may be taking your healthy salad and turning it into a caloric nightmare.  Ranch dressing contains 73 calories per tablespoon; but when was the last time anyone used only one tablespoon of dressing?  Switch to Thousand Island and you are down to 58 calories per tablespoon, but switch to Italian and you are down to 43.  Want to reduce the calories further?  Buy an Italian or other vinegar-based dressing that comes separated (i.e. Newman's Own) and pour off half of the oil to cut the calories roughly in half.  You can then save the oil to make another salad dressing of your own. 
If you are using the ranch dressing for dipping veggies, consider tzatziki as a replacement.  It is still milk-based, but has half the calories of ranch dressing per tablespoon serving.

Sour Cream vs Non-Fat Greek Yogurt
These two different foods have the same taste and similar texture, but pack different nutritional punches.  With use of Wendy's packet of sour cream on your baked potato, you consume 60 calories.  If you elected non-fat Greek yogurt instead, at the same serving size, you would only consume 16 calories and get approximately 3x the protein, which means that it will keep you full longer.  You can also substitute non-fat Greek yogurt for buttermilk, sour cream, or mayo in most recipes. 

If none of these suggestions sound like meaningful savings, consider the following day:
Breakfast: replace whole milk over cereal with 1% to save 45 calories
Lunch: replace whole milk cheese with 2% and mayo with hummus to save 100 calories.
Dinner: on a baked potato, where sour cream is replaced by Greek yogurt you will save 44 calorie and switch Ranch dressing to Italian (no extra oil removed) for a 60 calorie savings (assuming a 2 tablespoon serving size).
With every other element of your diet remaining constant, the above simple changes removed 249 calories from your plate in one day or 1743 calories in a week. To burn those 1743 calories, the average woman would need to run 19.2 miles per week at a 9:30 pace or walk 40.3 miles at a 19 minute per mile pace, which would mean approximately 13 hours of walking per week to work off unnecessary calories.  It's probably easier to tell the calories to take a hike!