Hacks to Take Any Recipe from Calorie-Bomb to Flavor-Town
By learning to make changes in these 4 areas, you can create significant calorie-savings over time while still enjoying the flavors you love.
Are you looking to reduce calories in your favorite recipes without sacrificing taste? With a few tweaks, you can keep your meals delicious AND still be working towards your weight loss goals.
Here are four key areas to focus on when lightening up your recipes:
Hack 1: Refine Those Oils and Butters
Take a closer look at the amount of oil or butter used in your recipes (especially the oils used for sweating veggies, browning meats that are already flavorful, or adding on top of the finished serving). For example, if a noodle dish calls for 3 tbsp of chili oil drizzled over each serving, reducing it to 1 tbsp can save you a significant 220 calories!
Hack 2: Create a Full-Fat Dairy Makeover
Recipe writers love to amp up the cheese and cream in their dishes. They know it’s one easy way to make homemade recipes taste luxurious. But many times they over-rely on these flavor-sources. Casseroles and ultra-creamy sauces are the most common culprits.
If your 6-serving casserole recipe uses 2 cups of shredded cheese on top, reducing it to 1/2 cup still packs a cheesy punch, and saves 110 calories in each serving!
Hack 3: Declutter Nuts and Nut Butters
Let’s say you have a Walnut-chocolate-chip cookie recipe that makes 12 cookies. Reducing the quantity of walnuts from 1 cup to ½ a cup can trim down each cookie's calorie count from 230 to a lighter 167 calories. You’ve still got the crunch and the decadent walnut flavor, but you’ve created a cookie that can fit more easily into your weight-loss plan.
Hack 4: Play Calorie-Dense Defense
Foods like avocado, coconut, fatty meats/fish, mayo, and salad dressings can also be excellent places to create a lighter recipe. This is because when you look at the macronutrient breakdown of these foods, their fat percentage is much higher than their carbohydrate and protein percentages. And since fat contains 9 calories per gram (while carbs and proteins contain 4 calories per gram), reducing sources of fat is a quick and efficient way to reduce calories overall.
(Now remember, fat is an important part of a balanced diet! It helps our bodies absorb and use other nutrients, and we can’t live without it. My very favorite food, peanut butter, is a high-fat and delicious part of my daily life, and it’s not something I would ever part with. When you have a weight-loss goal, making some small reductions in fat-source portions is helpful! Drastically slashing your intake of fat overall is not.)
So the next time you’re searching for a burger idea for dinner, you don’t have to say no to that tempting Avocado and Chipotle-Mayo Cheeseburger! You can take this recipe down 160 calories by using a quarter of an avocado instead of a half, and using 1 tbsp of chipotle mayonnaise instead of 2.
Small changes, made consistently every day, add up to big results. So, why not start lightening up your recipes today and embark on a tasty journey towards your weight loss goals?
Do you need help with this?
If you need a partner to guide you through the ups and downs of your weight-loss journey, my 1-on-1 coaching program is for you.
Can’t wait to connect!