Saturday, June 26, 2010

Ten Easy Ways to Cut Your Calories

Here I’ll share with you ten easy ways to cut your calories. They are very practical and easy to apply, hope you find them helpful.

1. Get the facts. Foods that seem healthy can be loaded with calories and fat, so check the nutrition facts. In terms of weight management strategies, calories rule. For example, although nuts are unbelievably healthy for you, most of its calories come from fat. A cup of nuts can be as much as 600 calories.

2. Limit sodas and alcohol. Although it is fat free, alcohol contains about 70 calories per ounce. That goes also for sweet drinks. One glass of sweet tea and one glass of soda a day contain 320 additional calories that don’t do anything for you. You can eat about 4 medium apples and you’ll get the same amount of calories. You can gain 30 pounds in a year because of those extra calories. As a rule of thumb, don’t drink your calories.

3. Switch to smaller plates. Do you have a regular-size dinner plate? What does that mean? Put your food on a smaller salad-size plate. In that way you reduce your portion sizes and save a lot of calories.

4. When you go out to eat, don’t be embarrassed to order child-size portions. We tend to eat what is front of us. If you order a big portion, that’s what you’ll eat. You won’t die if you eat a smaller one.

5. Serve in the kitchen, eat in the dinner room. If you eat in the kitchen you’ll be tempted to pick from the serving bowls in front of you. You can easily pick yourself into an entire meal.

6. Eat slowly. This is unbelievably hard for a lot of folks, including myself. Put your fork down and calm down while you chew your food.

7. Use plates. Snacking from packages is absolutely deadly. Your brain only remembers what it sees. If you decide you’re going to have a cookie, put it on a plate, sit down and enjoy it. Don’t grab the cookie out of the package.

8. Fill up with plant foods. Fruits, vegetables and whole grains take up stomach space. They take time to chew and time to eat. As a plus, they are incredibly healthy for you.

9. For every member in your family over the age of 2, switch to lower-fat dairy products. Reduced fat, low-fat or fat-free dairy products contain significantly fewer calories. That reduced fat in your milk can represent a significant change in weight over time.

10. Dull is good. I don’t mean dull as in boring, but dull as “not shiny”. When you see a salad that is shiny, it usually means that a lot of vegetable oil was added to the vegetables. You can save a lot of calories by avoiding these fats.

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