Choosing the right cooking method
The principle of cooking plays an important role in nutrition. If you are used to frying everything in lard and oil, know that the calorie content of the food will be off the charts! Calorie level in vegetable oil: 900 kcal per 100 g. If you are losing weight, this approach is contraindicated for you. It is better to use a non-stick frying pan.
Boil or bake foods more. Properly prepared dishes will be juicy and flavorful, while their calorie content will be much lower than fried ones. Do you like meat? Then fry it over coals so that all the fat drips down during the cooking process.
Reduce the fat content of the dish already on your plate
There are situations when there is no way to influence what ends up on the plate. For example, visiting a grandmother, a friend, a mother, a friend, and you never know what else can happen. Then it’s worth “sifting” the dish through the sieve of your principles: cut off fatty pieces of meat, do not touch sauces and mayonnaise salads.
“Wrong” sauces always contain hidden calories! Just stop seasoning your prepared dishes with them to experience the real taste of the food without adding chemicals. Total calories will decrease, but portion size will remain the same.
If you feel full before you finish the dish, do not try to force it into yourself. Better put down the fork and eat the leftovers at your next meal, or throw them in the trash.
Healthy baked goods
Do you like baking? Some nuances will allow you to reduce the calorie content of baked goods:
- the dough must contain bran;
- You can use dried fruits instead of sugar;
- replace white flour with whole grain flour;
- Only the whites are laid from the eggs;
- Butter can be replaced with vegetable oil.
Want to keep your calories under control? Make your own baked goods instead of buying them in stores! To make baked goods, manufacturers use harmful margarine, which is very high in calories, sweeteners, and other fats.
Give preference to less fatty alternatives
The easiest way to quietly reduce your caloric intake is to replace foods with lower calorie versions.
Do you often eat fatty pork or lamb? Replace them with diet beef, chicken, turkey or rabbit. If you learn how to cook them correctly, the taste is in no way inferior to fatty meat. Brown rice is much lower in calories than white polished rice.
If you often buy milk, pay attention to the low-calorie version at the store. Regular mayonnaise (600 kcal) can be replaced with diet or lean mayonnaise (250-300 kcal), regular yogurt - with low-calorie yogurt (80 kcal). Eliminate any bread from your diet. It is an excellent substitute for bread (40 kcal in 1 piece).
Light sauces
Sauce is often one of the highest calorie components of a dish. Stop pouring oil into the salad - just spray it with a spray bottle. A drizzled salad will be healthier and contain less fat. Instead of mayonnaise and sour cream, it is better to buy yogurt and kefir.
You can prepare a healthy and tasty sauce yourself from mustard, lemon juice and pepper with chopped herbs. Ketchup lovers can switch to tomato paste with spices and garlic. It has few calories, but a lot of lycopene, which is beneficial for the body. Very tasty plum sauce. It is prepared with the addition of salt, garlic and pepper. The sweetish taste of the sauce allows it to be combined with many dishes, incl. with meat.
Use a sweetener
It will be more difficult to give up sugar. In baking, sugar is often needed not only for sweetness, but also to secure shape and consistency. In addition, the lack of sugar will have to be compensated with flour, and from the point of view of energy value this is the same thing.
But in everything else, drinks, cereals, where sugar does not play a key role, but is added only as a sweetener, give preference to a sweetener.
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Modern sweeteners do not have such a strong unpleasant taste as their early representatives and, if added in small quantities, are practically indistinguishable from sugar.
NB You shouldn't indulge in fructose. Unless the “natural” origin of all ingredients is extremely important to you and you are radically against any chemicals in your diet. The fact is that fructose is the same fast carbohydrate, has the same calorie content, and it is no better than sugar (slightly sweeter, which means you will need to add it in less quantity). Moreover, fructose, when there is excess energy in the diet, is more likely to be converted into fat than glucose and sugar (which consists of fructose and glucose in equal proportions).
Lots of vegetables in the diet
Natural fiber contained in vegetables has a minimal calorie content. That is why dishes should contain as many vegetables as possible - the main suppliers of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. They are easily digestible and cleanse the body. If the vegetable does not have a distinct taste, it is worth adding aromatic spices to it.
How to reduce calories:
- mayonnaise - everyone knows about the dangers of mayonnaise, so it should be replaced with sour cream with a low fat content. Do you like to cook yourself? Make your own mayonnaise, then you can change the calorie level. Alternatively, you can combine sour cream and one spoon of mayonnaise to preserve its taste;
- sandwiches - butter is replaced with vegetable spread or olive oil. Cheese is replaced with low-fat cottage cheese, and smoked sausage with boiled varieties. From a white loaf they gradually switch to black bread, then to diet bread;
- meat - you cannot refuse a healthy product. It just needs to be cooked correctly: steamed, on a grill, in the oven. Boiled meat is a dietary dish, especially if it is rabbit, veal, chicken, turkey;
- alcohol – if you can’t avoid alcohol altogether (you’re going to an event), choose dry red or semi-sweet wine. Read the label first, comparing the caloric content of a particular product;
- tea and coffee - if it is difficult to completely give up sugar, replace it with saccharin and stevia. It is not hazardous to health because it is natural in origin. Compared to sugar, it is twice as sweet, so you need to add less of it;
- sweets – do you love candy? Instead of chocolates, buy jelly candies. Marmalade, marshmallows, marshmallows and lollipops are low in calories. Dark chocolate is healthier and also has less calories. You should avoid sweet baked goods altogether, since it is impossible to reduce their calorie content.
Do you know any ways to reduce the calorie content of dishes?
How to easily reduce your calorie intake and lose weight
A little about the sad
Almost always, losing weight and maintaining weight at an optimal level turns into an ordeal.
Diets, miracle pills, gym memberships, a swimming section, sugar-free foods and a refrigerator that alerts the entire apartment about an insidious burglar are not a complete list of tricks that from 60 to 80% of the adult population resort to from time to time. Not everyone achieves success: either there is not enough enthusiasm, or time, or other obstacles arise on the way to the dream of becoming a ballerina.
If you take statistics for Americans, you can see that in 2004 they consumed 2,750 kcal daily, which is as much as 500 kcal (can you imagine, 500!) more than in 1970. In our country the scale is not the same - fast food has not yet managed to take over everything and everyone, but it is quite comparable.
Not a diet, but a trick
Fact: 97% of people who have ever dieted return to their previous lifestyle. And most of them eat even more kilograms than they lost during their experiments. There is only one way to solve this problem - change your diet for life.
To do this, it is enough to enter one single thing - your word of honor! - a change that will allow you to reach your ideal weight and maintain it forever.
So, all you need to do is consume as many calories daily as you would at your optimal weight. All.
This is a method whose effectiveness has been repeatedly proven. By the way, this plan is also suitable for very thin people who want to gain weight. It doesn't matter how much you weigh now. If you eat as much as you should, sooner or later you will reach your natural, healthy weight.
Determining the optimal caloric intake of the diet
How many calories you need depends on several factors: your body type, height, and activity level. You can forget the number indicating the number of your extra pounds like a bad dream - you won’t need it.
And don’t be afraid that you will have to write down what you eat for a while. There are many convenient applications for Android and iOS, which already contain standard calorie portions. Additionally, you can point your camera at the barcode and the app will read it and automatically download your calorie data. You may first need a digital scale to weigh out your portions. But after a month (or even less), you will be able to determine the serving size by eye and know how many calories are contained in what product.
What is your body type?
Measure the circumference of your wrist (use a tape measure or a piece of string, which can then be easily measured with a ruler).
What is your ideal weight?
These data differ between men and women. Find your height and body shape in the table: at the intersection of these columns is the coveted number. This is what you will strive for.
How active are you?
One of the most popular classifications today suggests dividing people into three groups according to their level of activity. Choose the one that best describes your daily lifestyle. If you cannot choose one thing and you are overweight, it is better to choose a less active option.
- Sedentary lifestyle: lack of regular physical activity, occasional walking - physical activity, mainly characteristic of everyday life.
- Moderately active lifestyle: a combination of various daily activities (work, leisure, etc.) or a regular exercise program equivalent to walking or running 2.5–5 km daily, combined with physical activity typical of everyday life.
- Very active lifestyle: a combination of different daily activities (work, leisure, etc.) or a regular exercise program equivalent to walking or running more than 5 km daily, combined with physical activity typical of everyday life.
Determining the optimal caloric intake of the diet
In the first column of the table, find your ideal weight (what you wrote down in the second paragraph), and then look for a number that corresponds to your activity level - sedentary, moderately active, very active. Voila! Now you know how many calories you need every day. Don't forget that you can't cut calories too much: men should consume at least 1,200 kcal per day, women - at least 1,000 kcal. And these are very low values - do not strive for quick results so as not to harm your body.
Reducing calories is the key to achieving optimal weight and maintaining it. Eat healthy and varied. Be healthy!
Based on materials from the book
“ Transcend. Nine Steps to Eternal Life "
Replace frying pans
If you don't like dry meat from the oven, you want a crispy crust and meat juices running down your fingers - choose a frying pan with a good non-stick coating and change it regularly if it spoils. When food does not stick to the surface during frying, the amount of oil can be reduced to a minimum.
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A grill pan and wok will allow you to reduce the oil even further. In the first case, the area of contact with the products that needs to be lubricated will be reduced. In the second, the cooking technique and the area of the frying surface will change radically, which will also allow you to add less fat.
Less fat
When shopping, always look at food labels and choose foods that contain less fat. It is especially important to pay attention to the fat content of dairy products. Milk, sour cream and cheese with different fat contents practically do not differ in taste, but they differ significantly in calorie content.
You should not buy low-fat products; although they are dietary, they are not at all healthy. To maintain your figure and health, buy products with minimal fat content.
Always choose lean meats. Pork and chicken wings are not food for those losing weight. But chicken breast, turkey, rabbit and lean beef can be included in.
If you cook borscht, let it be a light vegetable version. Soups are considered dietary food, but it can also be spoiled by fatty meat broth and a spoonful of 40% sour cream.
Calorie content of dishes - why is it important?
The calorie content of the dishes we eat and their composition determine how long the energy obtained from food will last us , how it will be spent, and also whether eating this or that food threatens us with the appearance of excess weight or not.
When monitoring our weight, we count the calories contained in foods, since we cannot go beyond our daily calorie intake. But this is easy to do when we eat at home, and if we dine in a cafe or restaurant, there may be problems with counting calories. Fortunately, many catering establishments place information on the menu about the calorie content of the finished dish and drinks, but not all do this, so we often have to guess on our own how many calories we have to eat. Knowing the energy content of the food we eat is really important to eating well and managing your weight - it will help you eat within your calorie intake. Information about the calorie content of ready-made dishes, as well as recipes for dishes indicating calories, can be easily found on the Internet .
