Losing weight doesn’t have to be miserable. Contrary to popular belief, your diet doesn’t have to be limited to salads and bland chicken breast. What if I told you that you could still lose weight and continue to eat your favorite foods? What if I told you that you can still eat that cheesy pepperoni pizza? What if I told you that you can enjoy your buffalo wings and french fries? Well it’s true, you can! The key is to change the ingredients in your meal and change the way you cook your meal.
To explain this concept to you, I will be using pepperoni pizza as my example.
The ingredients needed for this meal are:
Pre made pizza bread
Marinara
Peperoni
Mozzarella cheese
Step 1: If possible, substitute ingredients for fat free ingredients.
Substituting ingredients for fat free ingredients will save you a lot of calories. In this example, the mozzarella cheese can be substituted for fat free mozzarella cheese.
Kraft’s fat free mozzarella cheese: 45 calories per serving
Kraft’s regular mozzarella cheese: 80 calories per serving
As you can see, substituting the ingredient with a fat free version saves us 35 calories per serving. You can’t even taste the difference between the fat free cheese and regular cheese!
Step 2: Find the lowest calorie version of your ingredient possible.
We can not find fat free substitutes for every ingredient, so the next option is to find the lowest calorie option possible for the ingredients. We will be doing this for the premade pizza dough and marinara.This will require searching through multiple brands of marina jars and premade pizza dough to find the best choice. For example, instead of buying Prego Marinara sauce which is 70 calories per serving, settle for Barilla Classic Marinara sauce which is 50 calories per serving. It doesn’t seem like a big difference, but calories add up!
Step 3: Substitute turkey for red meat.
Red meat carries a lot of extra fat and calories that will hinder us from achieving our weight goals. We don’t always want to eat chicken so we can substitute turkey for the red meat. For example, instead of buying pepperoni to put on our pizza we can substitute it with turkey pepperoni. From my point of view, regular pepperoni tastes better than the turkey pepperoni, but turkey still mimics the taste well and satisfies my pizza cravings.
The Hormel turkey pepperoni: 80 calories per serving
Hormel red meat pepperoni: 150 calories per servings
Step 4: Avoid frying when possible.
Oil carries a lot of fat and calories so frying your food will add unnecessary calories. Instead of frying your food, consider putting your meal in the oven or air fryer instead.
For example, instead of frying wings, cook it in an air fryer. It will still come up crispy and juicy and save you from cleaning up the oil mess.
As you can see, we made a pepperoni pizza while saving a ton of calories. Dieting doesn’t have to be miserable, it is supposed to be sustainable in the long run so you can stick to it. If you eat foods that you don’t like it is only a matter of time before you quit. Dieting is a lifestyle and it can only be a commitment if the foods you eat are enjoyable.