Posted on: March 9, 2007
4 Simple Steps to Cutting 300 (or More!) Calories a Day
Nobody wants to diet, but everybody wants to drop a few pounds. Try these calorie-cutting tactics to slim your waistline without major sacrifice.
By Timothy R. Schulte
CTW Features
Whether you call it cutting calories or you call it dieting, it’s often referred to as one thing: deprivation.
When phrased in a more doable, less-depriving way – making smart food choices – reducing the amount of calories in your diet (call it what you want!) seems a lot more realistic. And it really isn’t that hard. Here are some tips for some tasty, easy-to-make changes to your diet and how they add (well, subtract) up.
1. Skim and slim your breakfast
• Cut out 40 calories by pouring skim milk over your cereal rather than 2 percent.
• Save another 40 calories by cooking up two egg whites rather than one whole egg.
• Eat an orange rather than drinking a cup of orange juice and you’ll cut out 25 calories, in addition to eliminating the hunger you might still have felt after only having a drink.
• You’ll cut your calories in half – 20 per ounce – by using skim milk rather than cream in your morning coffee.
2. Blow the toppings off lunch
• Change up your condiments. You’ll save around 95 calories per tablespoon if you use Dijon or brown mustard for your sandwich rather than mayonnaise.
Quick tip: Mix a tablespoon of one of the above mustards with a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and you’ll have a healthier and much tastier dressing option for tuna salad than mayonnaise. The new mixture saves you about 80 calories.
• Topping a salad with chicken breast? Go with the grilled option rather than the crispy option and you’ll eliminate about 80 calories
• Burger? Cut out the cheese and you’ll cut out about 100 calories
• Here’s a foodless suggestion: Go for a little walk while you eat your lunch. You’ll burn close to 50 calories in 15 minutes. Double your time and you double the burn.
3. Smarten-up about snacks
• Bag the vending-machine chips and instead opt for a fat-free yogurt or a sugar-free Jell-o or pudding. You’ll cut anywhere from 90 to 140 calories.
• A granola bar instead of a candy bar can cut out around 100 calories
• Eliminate nearly all the guilt of an afternoon latte run, which can range from a bit more than 100 calories to more 300, by opting for an herbal tea instead.
4. Go pure for a healthy dinner
• Take your chicken breast grilled or roasted rather than fried and you’ll save around 130 calories.
• Use a whole wheat pasta rather than a plain pasta and you’ll cut out around 50 calories a serving.
• For burgers, chili or meatloaf – heck, even Hamburger Helper – subbing 95-percent lean ground sirloin instead of 80-percent chuck will cut out about 130 calories per serving.
• Make a homemade pizza with a whole-wheat flatbread, low-fat mozzarella and lean meat (turkey pepperoni or turkey sausage), and, well, you’ll probably consume fewer calories than what you’re cutting out by not picking up the phone and ordering.
Now that you see how easy cutting calories can be, there’s only one question that remains: How many will you cut out tomorrow?
