Smart Food Swaps

These simple dieting short cuts make the scales creep down and no willpower required. To save calories with smart swaps, simply replace a food you normally eat with a similar food that is lower in calories. This is a “painless” way to save calories!

Suggestions:

• Change high sugar drinks to diet/low sugar or water! Water is the best drink instead of sugary or artificial sweetened. Cutting back on 3 large glasses of cola a day and switching to diet or water, will save you about 500 kcal a day. This will make a difference over the week to your waist line as long as you aren’t having extra treat foods because you think you can.
• Change butter to low fat spreads
• Change full fat cheese to reduced fat. Use mature cheese for flavour and use a controlled portion. Cheese is a good source of protein and calcium whether you use standard or reduced fat. Cottage cheese is a useful add in for those that like it.
• Change high sugar cereals to low sugar plain cereals. You could add in some fruit and a handful of nuts for flavour and nutrition. This is less about the calories and more about having a nutrient rich meal that keeps you full.
• Change full fat milk to semi or skimmed. The UK advice is to include full fat dairy for children up to 2 years of age as they need the energy and nutrients contained in the fat components. For adults semi skimmed is a good swap if you are a high consumer of milk, but if you just add it to your teas/coffees or in cereal once a day it is
  unlikely that this one swap is needed.