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The key to losing weight and keeping it off is by eating a balanced diet and incorporating exercise into your daily routine. But, we all know how hard it is to say no to sweet, soda and baked goods, so we asked a nutritionist Amelia Phillips what healthy food swaps we can make to stay on track.
1. Swap ice cream for homemade desserts
Ice cream, which is around 300 to 400 calories depending on the type, can be swapped for homemade banana choc-chip cinnamon ice cream, which only has a total of 210 calories.
“Simply take a frozen banana, 1/4 cup of full cream milk, one tablespoon of dark chocolate chips, a generous pinch of cinnamon and blend. Another alternative is sorbet, just blend with ice instead of milk. While sorbet has 60% less calories, it’s still high in sugar, so not quite as healthy as the homemade version,” says Amelia.
2. Swap soda for Sodastream
Amelia says that carbonated water made in your SodaStream at home has no calories, as long as you don’t add any flavoured syrups, but it’ll give you that ‘fizzy’ hit.
3. Swap chips for beans
You can get the same salty crunch of potato chips from chickpeas or fava beans, which only have 183 calories total versus 258 calories per 50g in chips, says Amelia. “You can make these at home or buy ready to eat from all major supermarkets.”
4. Swap sweets for fruit
Get the same sweet hit but for a fraction of the calories by swapping sweets for dried fruit. A Snickers bar contains 241calories, while five dried apricots contains just 63.
“You might be tempted to eat a dried fruit and nut trail mix -which is much healthier than the Snickers bar – but with nuts added to the fruit trail mix contains very similar calories as the Snickers bar.”
5. Swap cocktails for calorie-conscious drinks
Cocktails can be an alcohol, sugar and calorie trap, says Amelia.
“An average cocktail contains around 250 to 300 calories, 4 to 6 teaspoons of sugar and 10g alcohol. Mix spirits in soda water instead, making your own soda water in a SodaStream. One nip of vodka or gin with soda water contains 67 calories, a gin and tonic contains 110.
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