Skinny Summer Eating Tips - 5 Ways to Put the Skinny in Your Summer
Depending on where you live, it may have seemed that Summer took its sweet time in getting here, but now that it is, get ready to make it a healthy one with these five skinny Summer eating tips:
1. Trade in Your Hot Dog Bun
You can save about 120 or more calories every time you have hot dogs painlessly by swapping it out for a whole wheat sandwich thin. Simply pull apart the sandwich thin and use each half to hold one hot dog. Even the best 100% whole wheat bun typically will have about 110 calories per bun. So by using the 100 calorie sandwich thin's two halves as your two "buns'' you have saved over 100 calories!
Plus, no longer will you have a hot dog roll that's way bigger than the hot dog itself, nor the frustration of having the number of hot dogs in a package not match the number of buns.
2. Watch What You Put on the Grill
There's a huge difference among various hamburgers and hot dogs.
A four-ounce lean ground beef burger alone before the bun, cheese or any fixings, will have around 225 calories and 11 grams of fat. You can make that burger even better by choosing to make it from lean ground turkey--like 93% lean Butterball, where the same four ounce burger will be a skinnier 180 calories and just 8 grams of fat!
And while you're at it, consider swapping out traditional fat-laden hot dogs (typical is 13 grams of fat and 150 calories) for the leanest turkey hot dogs you can find. Oscar Mayer has a tasty turkey hot dog at just 90 calories and 7 grams of fat--nearly half the calories and fat. It's like getting a BOGO!
And don't forget to consider grilling fish, white meat chicken, veggie burgers and veggies as smart food choices as well.
3. Eliminate High Calorie and Fat Side Dish Bombs
Think that side of coleslaw is healthy because of the veggies it contains? Think again. A one cup serving of traditional coleslaw is 291 calories and 19 grams of fat! Have a nice salad with low fat or fat free dressing instead.
Traditional potato salad is another problem side dish as it is usually a 350 calorie, 20 grams of fat addition as a one cup serving. You can slash the calories and fat by switching to German Style potato salad at a much. much. lighter 150 calories and 2 grams of fat per one cup serving.
4. Take Full Advantage of Summer Produce
Summer means a wide variety of fruits and vegetables are in season, so they're plentiful and reasonably-priced. Take advantage of this by having plenty of real fruit and making delicious salads using every color of the rainbow. It's pleasing to the eye and will give you a wide range of nutrients.
As long as you watch what you add in to your salads (no full fat dressings, fattening fried croutons, bacon bits, full fat cheeses or fried items), you get to eat a lot of volume for few calories and minimal fat. And it's a super easy Summer dinner that doesn't require turning on the stove or oven!
5. Do Ice Cream Better
Does the warm weather and the music of the local ice cream truck going by make you crave ice cream? No worries! You can satisfy that need to scream for ice cream by just making better choices. Substitute nonfat or low fat frozen yogurt (Greek where possible for extra protein), fruit sorbet or italian ices. At home, keep lighter concoctions in your freezer such as Yasso Frozen Greek Yogurt bars, Skinny Cow and frozen fruit pops made of real fruit on hand.
Do you have to have some crazy ice cream flavor you stumbled upon at a local ice cream place in your Summer travels? Have a scoop of the real thing (one not three), and make sure you're active to balance it out.
These five skinny Summer eating tips just scratched the surface of the possibilities available to you, but just go to show you that a healthy lifestyle doesn't have to mean depriving yourself of your favorite foods. As I always tell my weight loss coaching clients--you can have all your favorite foods, you just need to give them a healthy food makeover and choose their healthiest versions, have an equally acceptable substitute or have a small portion of the real thing as a rare treat and pump up the physical activity that day.
Need help making over your Summer fave crave? Email Coach Melanie at Melanie@YourHealthyLifeCoach.com and she’ll share the healthy makeover in a future blog post.
About Coach Melanie, NBC-HWC
Melanie Jordan is a Nationally Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC) with 12+ years of coaching and corporate wellness program experience for digital health start-ups, top health insurers, and her own private practice Your Healthy Life Made Easy LLC. Melanie specializes in working holistically with business professionals to become as successful at healthfully losing weight for good and transforming their overall health as they are in their careers.
Get a free copy of Melanie’s short book Weight Loss Secrets Revealed for the Healthiest and Happiest You 2nd Edition (a former #2 Kindle bestseller in weight loss and weight maintenance) as a thank you for reading the Membrasin® Blog.
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