10 Easy Food Swaps to Lose Pounds Without Trying

No it's not weird, it happens to me to

I'm with you on the black cofffee thing, although i still do like my ocational cappo or mocha. :D My major no no in food is fried.

Or water... it's calorie free...

Yeah, Tina, we are about the same age and I think the pre-menopausal hormones are very devious and hard to combat. However, I have heard losing weight once you get to menopause is much harder so I'm determined not to get to that part of my life with extra pounds. It does help motivate me to stay on track.

In my family, on my mom's side, it seems like the women are generally thin, then all gain weight right about menopause, and then drop it all right after. However I'm bucking that trend because being a fit and sexy 60 year old doesn't interest me as much as being fit and sexy at 45. Not to imply 60 year olds can't be sexy - I'd like to be at a good weight throughout.

To warm you up on Gary Taubes, you can read his two New York Times articles: What If It's All Been A Big Fat Lie? and What’s Cholesterol Got to Do With It? (Google the titles - they're easily found).

GIven what you've said about yourself, I don't think you'll find your own situation affected by what he argues, but maybe not! In any case, his articles are well worth reading and thinking about.

Not a Dr. Phil fan, so I'm embarrassed to be repeating something he once said, but it is true -"to break a habit you need to replace it with a new habit". I think suggestions like these are good ones because they do offer an alternative to a bad habit. Like Fitness Fanatic, I think you can get used to anything if you repeat it frequently. I once thought I could NEVER be a breakfast eater and bit by bit I replaced my am coffee habit with a breakfast habit and won't go back. Thought I'd NEVER eat cereal especially the hot mushy stuff and now I start every morning with a bowl of an oatmeal/whole grain blend. No yogurt does not taste like ice cream. But after a couple of weeks of yogurt you do begin to like it for what it is, and kind of forget about the ice cream. I started throwing frozen berries in a blender and it comes out with a frozen sorbet texture, close enough for me to the sherbet I used to like.

If it is about the texture - and for some people it really is, I think it is important to try for similar textures in the replacement food. If it's about the flavor, same thing.

I wasn't trying to reply to you, Fitness_Fanatic, I was trying to reply to Brewer's blackbird. I know water doesn't taste like soda and I wasn't complaining. I like water--unflavored, though I do like plain carbonated water--as well as unsweetened, iced peppermint tea.

The attitude he/she expressed is what got to me, that because the result might not be identical to the result that is already liked, the old habit must be imitated with pale substitutes. That's just asking for trouble.

That's the interesting thing about healthy eating, once you're doing it, it's as natural as breathing. It doesn't take a big struggle to do it. It just continues to happen like that next swig of mountain spring water. The nice thing about healthy eating is that it gives you more vitality so you can start to be more active in other areas of life instead of constantly obsessing about diet/exercise.*

*I'm a bit guilty of that.

I found that to be true with many, many things. Most junk does not taste as good. What I had to do is take a long period with NOTHING junk food at all-- not little bits, but cold turkey.
I found when I was done that I didn't like half of the junk I used to eat. Have you realized how nasty Oreos really, really are?

But it wasn't with everything. I still LOVE icecream, and pizza... and I allow myself that in moderation.

It might not be the approach for everyone, but personally, I couldn't go from old habits to moderation, straight. Craved too much, etc. Had to cut it off, and reintroduce later.

For me it's a bit easier since I wasn't eating junk food before. However I was overdoing the peanuts, macadamia nuts and pistachios. For some reason now I can control those nut cravings. Cookies, bah.

Yes, I think that's very true. If you've decided you can have a 100 calorie snack and that's what the ice cream sandwich has, you know when you're done. With a bowl of ice cream, you can play all sorts of games with yourself and easily consume twice as much or more than you intended. I picked up some little hummus and flatbread combo packages tonight for that very reason even though I know it's cheaper for me to buy larger quantities separately and combine them - when I eat one I'll know exactly where I'm at. I'm lazy when it comes to tracking and counting, if something makes it easier and I'm not making a health sacrifice I'll go for it. (although I just noticed these flatbreads aren't whole grain, so I guess I will have to do it the hard way next time!)

Good swap! I agree serving size is often people's downfall...

Also, for the toast I was cutting out the butter AND the jam. I did do a fair bit of calculating when working out the swaps, and can provide figures if you want.

I'm really not trying to be contrarian, but let's say a slice of toast (heck white toast), 1-tsp butter, 1-tsp jam....that's (by fitday numbers) 119 calories, 5g fat, 17g carbohydrate (1g fiber) and 2g protein.

Skip the butter and jam and use 1-tsp honey - now it's 88-calories (31-calories less), 1g fat, 18g carbohydrate and 2g of protein.

How much butter and jam were you using as the calculation....it would have to be a tablespoon of butter?

I agree not all the swaps are the best nutritious choices, but as I'm sure you can see from the above comments, people want swaps which are as close as possible to the originals. I was trying to be realistic in terms of what your average new-to-dieting guy or gal might eat!

I do understand that, but would offer that it's (IMHO) better to provide options that are healthful and not just swaping one thing for another in the name of calories...especially when the swap is actually increasing the physiological response in the metabolism to increase insulin and fat storage and lowering nutrient intake.

Call me crazy, but I'd rather offer a person a swap that provides them with greater satiety, odds for better insulin sensitivity and less fat storage, and higher nutrient-density, than simple calorie reductions that are increasing (in some of the options above) the glucose burden they're probably already under with their dietary choices.

For a good number of people who need to lose weight, they're being undermined with advice which leads to a greater degree and greater degrees of insulin resistance and every swap that increased carbohydrate does that by way of increasing the insulin needed in response to more glucose.

Yeah, I am firmly in the controlled-carb camp, but ya know what?

If someone is going to have toast, it's better to be honest and say skip the jam and have the butter with it, than completely eliminate the gut satiety hormones PYY and CCK triggered with the fat but not with the carbohydrate.....your swap added 1g of carbohydrate to be metabolized (potentially 5mg/dl more of blood sugar to clear) up from 17g (butter & jam) to 18g with the honey instead...but the swap also eliminates the triggering of CCK and PYY because the fat is gone now....instead, I'd offer the advice to my bread-eating-buddies to just drop the jam and now you've reduced the carbohydrate to 13g (down from 17g), less now converted to glucose, reducing the required insulin to keep blood sugar stable and saved yourself about 20-calories, while preserving the fat soluble vitamins you'll get from the butter, have some CCK and PYY released to signal you ate, and need less insulin to keep your blood sugar stable since you're not eating as much carbohydrate with the toast and butter compared to the toast with butter & jam.

You looked for swaps that had a calorie advantage - I look at swaps from a different perspective...and try to find those that offer greater bang-for-the-calorie from a micronutrient perspective, because at the end of the day, you gotta eat and are better off IMO eating things that can shave calories while boosting micronutrient intake and offer greater satiety in the process.....it sucks to feel hungry because you're eating foods that don't give one a sense of satiety.....but hey, I guess some don't mind the feeling of hunger if they save some calories?