Smart Food Substitutions

The basic rule when it comes to a healthy diet is learning to make proper choices. In order to achieve optimal health, learning to make smart food substitutions is a basic step to ensure success. Finding tasty alternatives to conventional unhealthy foods is not only possible but also fairly easy.

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The success of a diet mainly depends on how well the person manages to adapt to it. Many people fail to gather enough motivation to adapt a healthy diet due to the fact that completely changing their dietary habits in a short period of time is far beyond their comfort zone. As a result they unconsciously create negative associations to their diet and they sabotage their own success. Therefore, it's not surprising that after the diet is completed they go back to their old dietary habits and create a never ending vicious circle that proves to be extremely hard to break. The truth is that simply getting rid of bad habits is impossible. A bad habit must be replaced with a good one for the change to be successful.

Learning to find tasty alternatives to the conventional unhealthy products is almost never a quick an easy process but it is by far the most effective way to change our dietary choices, as it is the path of the least resistance. It's important not to think of food substitutions as a sacrifice. The fact that you are learning to make healthier substitutions does not mean that you won't be able to enjoy your favorite foods that are less healthy.

It simply means that the proportions are going to be a little different. As you become accustomed to the food substitutions a good rule that you should follow is 80/20 rule. That means that you should make healthy choices about 80% of the time without being afraid to indulge 20% of the time.

In the beginning however you should try to make healthy choices almost all the time to be able to instill the habit easier. For starters try experimenting with a few of these substitutions:

Desserts: While an ice cream is a fabulous and tempting dessert we all love to enjoy once in a while, the high amount of sugar as well as the high amount of calories make ice scream an unsuitable choice for those who want to lose weight. A healthier and more optimal choice that you can try without having to feel deprived is yogurt with frozen fruits. This dessert will also have a refreshing effect but compared to a regular ice cream it will have a lot more fiber as well as essential vitamins. This dessert will also be easier to digest due to the probiotics contain in plain yogurt.

Snacks: Conventional processed snacks are very convenient and easily accessible but they are far from being healthy having a lot of calories and artificial preservatives and virtually no nutritional value. Potato chips should be replaced with healthier but just as tasty alternatives.

Compared to an ounce of potato chips which as about 140 calories per ounce an ounce of unbuttered pop corn only contains about 80 calories and they can both be equally satisfying in terms of taste. If this does not seem very impressive, a similar comparison between a sweet snack like a regular candy bar which has about 150 calories and a banana with only has about 26 calories, might make you think twice when choosing a snack.

Simple tweaks you make when it comes to the things you normally include in your diet can make a world of difference when it comes to your overall health. An easy example of how a seemingly guilty culinary pleasure can be transformed in something just as delicious is pizza.

By adding more vegetables and decreasing the amount of cheese you use as a topping or replacing it with a type of cheese that has less calories you can enjoy it almost guilt-free. A similar example can be applied to salads. Easy ways to make a salad more healthy and decrease calories is by using Romaine lettuce instead of iceberg lettuce, or using yogurt as as a dressing instead of mayonnaise. If you regularly use croutons to add crunch to various dishes try using walnuts instead.

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