Recipe for Diet Success

As you put your eating guidelines and strategies into practice, I’m sure you are finding that some of your old standby meals and recipes just don’t fit. Do you give them up or can they be salvaged?

The Rules

Remember these simple rules: for a main dish to fit well into your eating plan, it should contain 10 grams of fat or less per serving. For side dishes, desserts and snacks, they should contain 5 grams of fat or less. When you follow this simple set of rules, as you choose foods throughout the day, it should add up to a lower fat eating style. But remember, how many calories you actually take in depends upon the total quantity of these foods, so amounts are very important to those of you who are on a weight loss plan.

These rules apply whether you are preparing food from “scratch”, whether you use canned, frozen, or package mixes to make meals, or whether you are dining out. So what do you do with a high fat recipe or meal that you really want to have? To make such foods fit into your plan; there are several options:

  1. Dilute the fat. By adding more non-fat or low-fat ingredients, you can spread out the fat over more servings, making each portion lower in fat:
  2. To soups, stews, and chili, add more vegetables, beans, potatoes and broth. Keep meat portions the same.

To casseroles, add more noodles, rice, potatoes, and vegetables, and keep meat portions the same.

  1. Reduce or replace the fat. Depending upon the recipe, you can make a lot of substitutions and still have great results.
  2. For margarine, oil, and other fats in baking, cut the amount down by ½ or more. In some baked goods,
  3. For recipes that contain sour cream, replace it with nonfat sour cream, low fat or non-fat yogurt, or blenderized cottage cheese. This works very well in most cases, without a noticeable change in taste.
  4. Instead of cream or whole milk, try using evaporated skim milk, which has a good thickness without the dairy fat.
  5. For recipes that call for cheese, use a lot less of it, or replace it with low-fat cheese. The end result should be that each serving should contain 1 ounce or cheese or less, so if you start with a cup of shredded cheese, it should feed 8 people, a recipe calling for ½ cup of cheese should feed at least 4 people, etc.
  6. For ground beef, use only the leanest available, and in some cases, use low fat ground turkey or chicken instead. You can also try TVP, which is texturized vegetable protein, which substitutes pretty well for ground meat in casseroles. You might try ½ TVP or ground turkey and ½ lean ground beef.
  7. Reduce the serving size. Some recipes just don’t turn out the same when you take away too much of the fat. In these cases, the only way to reduce the calories and fat in the dish is to simply cut down on the portion size: instead of a typical serving of a high fat dessert, have a much smaller piece. The other option is to simply reserve your favorite high fat dessert, main dish, side dish, or snack and have it a lot less often than you do now. These kinds of foods really can fit into your healthier eating plan, you can still lose weight, but they cannot make an appearance in your diet every day, or even every week. Really save these foods for once a month or less, enjoy them as a special treat, and they won’t impede your personal goals.
  8. Change the type of fat. This step is very important to your long-term health, not necessarily your weight loss goals. Margarine and butter both have about the same amount of calories and fat, but there is a big difference in the quality of fat and what it does to your arteries. In all cases, you should reduce your intake of animal fats (including butter, grease, high fat meats, and dairy fat), and use small amounts of vegetable oils instead. This is much harder to do when you eat foods that are prepared in restaurants, or you buy meals that are pre-prepared. You have very little control over the ingredients in these cases. Whenever you do have a choice, use more monounsaturated fats like olive oil and canola oil, and use liquid fats over harder fats (oils instead of margarine or butter).

It All Adds Up

Are these changes really worth the effort? The evidence is that people who maintain lower fat eating habits are the ones who maintain their fat loss. If you do this now, while you are trying to lose weight, you will have the right habits in place to maintain a healthy body weight. Simple changes to your recipes and to the pre-made foods you buy really do add up:

  1. Replacing a cup of sour cream with a cup or non-fat yogurt saves 48 grams of fat and 340 Calories
  2. Replacing a cup of cheddar cheese with a cup of low fat cheddar saves 26 grams of fat and 241 Calories
  3. Using 10% ground beef instead of 30% (regular) ground beef saves 6 grams of fat and 51 Calories for each ounce. If you start with a pound of ground beef, that’s a difference of 96 grams of fat and 1516 Calories!
  4. Reducing the amount of margarine, butter, or mayonnaise in a recipe from 1 cup to ½ cup saves 44 grams of fat and 400 Calories.

Making these kinds of changes a routine habit will add up both in the short and long run. I know there are some of you who eat most of your meals out and you don’t cook much at all. Because of this, it is more important for you to control the types and amounts of fats you ADD to your foods, because you can’t control the fat and calorie IN your foods as much. And, there is always a “best” choice, even in the worst of situations.

An important note: don’t take all of the fat out of baked goods, or you will end up with a rubbery, unsatisfactory result. Try cutting back on the fat by half, then half again the next time, and slowly replace the fat. When you bake a low fat recipe, under bake it slightly rather than over baking, again to avoid a spongy texture. When you stir-fry or sauté with less fat, turn the food more often to avoid scorching.

Try New Recipes

Lastly, look at the recipes, the foods you buy, the restaurant choices you make, and look for ways to modify and improve the fat intake in ways you can live with. The recipes provided on our site are already lower in fat and higher in vegetables, whole grains, and beans than typical recipes. Try these and others from low fat cookbooks. You are given about 3 new recipes a week to try. If you look at the nutritional information, you will see that these recipes are broken down into the number of grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy, low fat meat, and fat servings for you so you don’t have to figure out how they fit into your eating plan and calorie guidelines. You just have to figure out how the recipe fits into your daily plan. For example, if you have a meal containing 4 or more ounces of meat at lunch, it would be a good idea to try a meatless, low fat recipe for dinner that night! With a little practice you can figure out the eating guidelines in any recipe. At first, just look at the sources of fat: margarine, oil, butter, meats, dairy products, nuts, and compare the total amount of fat in a portion of the recipe to what equals one fat serving in your eating guidelines. It’s a lot easier when you start with a low fat recipe to begin with!

 

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