Many of my clients have been lamenting the changes in their diets since the start of the stay at home order. The most familiar complaint I have heard is client’s eating an abundance of high carb foods like chips, cookies, crackers and bread. (We’ve all seen the pictures on Instagram of the beautiful loaves of sour dough bread everyone is baking!) While carbs are a necessary part of a balanced diet, making smart choices about how many and which carbs to consume is important for weight management. Below are some swaps to give you the sensation of eating carbs without all the calories.
- Cucumbers and other veggies for crackers. If you think about crackers, they are just a food delivery system. We rarely eat crackers by themselves. They are usually slathered in dip, cheese or some other food substance. Cucumbers, carrots, celery or other veggies can serve the same purpose as crackers with much fewer calories.
- Spaghetti squash or zoodles instead of pasta. Veggies “noodles” are all the rage and are often hard to distinguish from regular noodles once they are dressed with a red sauce or a fresh pesto.
- Leafy greens for bread. Use a big, juicy, green leaf of butter lettuce or red leafed lettuce to wrap all the ingredients for your sandwich.
- Mashed cauliflower for mashed potatoes. Mashed cauliflower has a similar look and feel to mashed potatoes. You can even dress it up like you would regular mash potatoes with garlic, butter and/or cheese.
- Riced cauliflower for rice. Process fresh cauliflower in a food processor until it is roughly the size of regular rice. Like regular rice, it has a mild flavor that will take on the taste of anything you put over it.
- Low sugar fruits for desserts. Eating berries, especially blue berries and black berries are a great alternative to traditional desserts. Apricots, guava and cantaloupe are other low carb options.
These are just a few tasty and satisfying low carb options you can use to replace the high carb items in your diet. What is your favorite low carb swap?
Photo from flickr.
