Simple Food Substitutions for Fitness

Forget the lemon and maple syrup cleanses and fad fasting for now. You can fight the flab simply by making a few substitutions in your diet.

If you have been eating a lot of lettuce switch up with kale, spinach or chard. These greener and leaner salad ingredients have more than triple the iron and vitamins of iceberg lettuce which means that you are enhancing the health of your circulatory and reproductive systems with every bite.

If you love butter and have to have it to cook with or spread on a roll then your best course of action is to buy unsalted butter. This cuts down on sodium in the long run thus ensuring the health of your heart and cutting down on body bloat.  If you are baking try substituting quinoa for the flower and prune paste for the butter to make slimming treats.

If you must snack on carbohydrate laden crackers then make sure that they are made of whole grain.  In fact whole grain crackers with a  bit of low fat yogurt or cream cheese is exactly the type of snack that can give you a bit of a lift in the afternoon when you are really feeling that four o’clock slump.

Instead of serving cakes, cookies and ice cream for dessert then simply serve fruit. Fruit with whipped cream or drizzled with mint and lemon is much better for you than a fattening cake with icing and flour.

Speaking of lemon simply try forgetting the oil and vinegar and squirt lemon with salt and pepper on your salad greens. You will drop the pounds and the result will be very tasty.

You can also drop the sodium in your diet by avoiding seasonings with too much salt in them. Try to buy organic spices whenever you can. It also helps to avoid canned vegetables as they can contain a lot of sodium and harmful preservatives that cause cancer.

If you drink juice make sure it is 100% juice and not just sugar and water. Avoid juices with sweeteners. You can also reduce the hard hit the natural sugars in juice have on your system by drinking it served over ice.

Going to have a latte? Save yourself about 100 calories by switching from half-and-half to skim milk or even better yet, drink soy lattes (if you are not allergic to soy like so many people are!)