5 Tasty Food Swaps

Even the small things add up to help you meet your weight loss goals. Try some of these smart swaps and you’ll save hundreds of calories every day. Here are five tasty, nutritional swaps that will cut hundreds of calories from your diet per meal.

Tips

1. Use avocado on your whole grain toast instead of butter. Butter has a hundred and two calories while a tablespoon of mashed avocado has just 24 calories and as an added bonus avocado has 20 vitamin, minerals, fibre and healthy fats that help control belly fat.
2. Swap your burger bun for a lettuce leaf. Four large romaine leaves are just 20 calories compared with the hundred and sixty calorie burger bun so this simple swap will save you a hundred and forty calories. This also leaves room in your diet for healthier starches like sweet potato fries or grilled corn.
   You can also use this trick for tortillas – making a burrito with a lettuce wrapper instead of a tortilla takes 82 calories off your meal.
3. Trade spaghetti for spaghetti squash and this simple swap could save a hundred and seventy nine calories. One cup of cooked spaghetti squash is just 42 calories while the pasta version is two hundred and twenty-one calories.
4. Replace ground meat with mushrooms. Three ounces of 85% lean ground beef is 218 calories while a cup of chopped white button mushrooms is just 21 calories. A recent study found that replacing ground beef with mushrooms significantly reduces calories and fat without affecting feelings of fullness.
5. If you don’t eat rice this can take two hundred and twenty-one calories off your meal. If you want to eat rice, stick with whole grain, brown, red, black or wild rice and add chopped or shredded veggies to make a smaller amount of rice stretch further. Options include zucchini, bell pepper, tomatoes, onion, mushrooms and spinach.