Maintaining Your Weight Using Your Favorite Recipes

Now that you've lost the weight you certainly don't want to gain it back. And if you're the Chef and Chief Bottle Washer at your humble home, you know that the time you spend cooking in the kitchen allows time for Diet Temptation. It's so easy to sample all the delicious foods - a bite here and a bite there, and before we know what's happened, we've regained all the lost weight and find ourselves on a diet yet again.

Eons ago, it was good to have all that fat pumping through the old bod. Why? A man could burn up to 6,000 calories per day when physically plowing his fields, especially when there wasn't an ox in sight. Women used to sweat buckets, making the breads from fresh grains, whipping up lye soap, pouring up candles, and dragging buckets of water to the house for those weekly family baths. All this, and no Secret, no Right Guard, no Tabu, no Brut.

And they didn't have television, movies, computers or video games to lull away the evening hours. Their entertainment consisted of watching a pretty sunset, or the children play on the dirt-bed of the front yard. When the sun sank, it time to hit the hay or back then, the feather-bed. On that note, eight hours of restful sleep will make an "unmeasureable" positive contribution to your overall level of health.

Although our lifestyles have gotten less physical (in most cases), we appear to have more stress, more things to do before turning in for the day. As we can't control a lot of things, we CAN control some. Eating is definitely something that we can control. We make choices; the choices are either good, or bad.

On that note, the following low calorie cooking and dining tips can assist in weight maintenance, preventing weight gain from returning. These tips are all very easy and will save calories and fat grams. Now put on your lacy apron and let's get started, shall we?

Natural Fat Substitutes: When replacing fat for cooking purposes, the following ingredients work well. You'll need to experiment but generally 1 cup should do: prunes, raisins - either golden or dark, currants, dried cranberries, dried apricots, applesauce, bananas and apple butter. Be sure to chop the fruits up finely; smash the bananas. Fresh fruit of all varieties substitutes excellently in most recipes, taking the place of the fat - adding moisture without adding fat calories.

Replace the butter and margarine in your recipes with: refrigerated no calorie butter spray, the light margarines, Butter Buds, and for cooking purposes use non stick cooking spray to save a legion of demon calories. Use a bit of vinegar OR wine to saute foods rather than oils rich in fat. And when you do use oil your best healthy choices are extra virgin olive oil and canola oil.

Sugar Substitutes: Replace the sugar in your recipes with: any no calorie sweetener (heat does tend to cancel out most sweeteners), fruits, low sugar jams, and honey (you'll need far less than sugar as honey is mined with sweetness). You can also decrease sugar content up to 1/3 and substitute spices such as cinnamon, cloves & ginger.

Dairy products - replace the cream, ice cream, sour cream, buttermilk and milk in your recipes with: 1 cup skim milk + 1 teaspoon of vinegar, skim milk, evaporated skim milk, powdered Cremora type creamer for your coffee/teas, light sour cream OR use non-fat cottage cheese with a dash of fresh lemon OR non-fat yogurt, and yogurt for ice cream.

Mayo & Dressings - Replace Mayo and salad dressings with: Lite Mayo or mustard, if possible; low calorie, low fat salad dressings. Replace condiments as follows: salty pickles and olives can be replaced with healthy water chestnuts OR reduced sodium varieties of pickles; pickles make a healthier choice than olives as they contain virtually zero fat.

Nuts - Replace nuts with: Grape Nuts cereal works wonderfully as a 'mock nut' or use 1/4 the amount called for in your recipe as you'll find a little goes a long way when dealing with ANY nut, including humans. Other crushed cereal, especially when used as a topping works well too. And old-fashioned oats will add a nutty flavor.

Eggs - Replace eggs with: egg substitutes such as Egg Beaters, or ditch the yolks and keep the whites.

- Enjoy 1 egg per day, but that includes all the eggs used as ingredients in making the prepared foods you eat throughout the day.

- The cholesterol concern is within the yolk. Use 2 egg whites to 1 yolk for a super omelet that will contain the same cholesterol numbers as only one egg.

Cheeses - Replace cheeses with: fat reduced cheese, and light cream cheese (fat-free is a bit ugly to the taste buds).

Proteins - Replace fatty meats with: the leanest cuts available OR trim away all noticeable fats. Replace ground beef with ground turkey OR ground chicken. Replace regular sausage and luncheon meats with reduced fat or light. Replace tuna canned in oil for tuna packed in water. Substitute regular bacon with reduced sodium bacon. Replace fatty franks with lean or light franks.

Snacks - Replace salty, fatty chips with: the healthier varieties that have less sodium, or that have been baked, popcorn, pretzels and the healthier snacking crackers.

Sauces & Gravy - Replace sauces & gravies as follows: cream-based with red-based, bullion based additives. Use cornstarch rather than flour for thickening purposes.

Bread - Replace breads & bread items such as tortillas as follows: healthy whole grain breads, pita pocket bread, filo rather than pie crust dough, healthy crepes made with egg substitutes for tortillas, breads containing more iron, breads containing higher calcium, healthy Hunza, rye, pumpernickel, wheat or raw grain breads.

Soda, Juice, Beverages - Replace high calorie beverages (in no particular order) with: skim milk, low sugar juices, unsweetened juices, Crystal Light, bullion (watch the sodium content if you have special health issues - such as heart disease as excess sodium may raise blood pressure readings in some individuals); liquid gelatin tastes YUM and has no fat and will strengthen your nails and diet drinks.

By creating your own Heart Warming recipes, you'll be avoiding the unhealthier packaged commercial items that generally, pay more attention to what tastes good than being health-minded. And if an individual is accustomed to consuming fat and foods high in salt, then that's going to taste better to them, as well as mask the taste of the bland ingredients.

On the other hand, a healthier diet incorporates TASTE and TEXTURE. Why mask the sweet, delicious, crisp snap of a bite of an apple with sugar, cinnamon, and nuts? Eve didn't, so why should we? Go apple! Go health! And the fact is, our bodies weren't created to process man-manufactured foods. They were made to process the natural gifts from God such as fruits, berries, nuts, vegetables, eggs and milk.

Listed below is an arsenal of suggestions for healthier ingredient replacements in your recipes.

- Always take advantage of pressing out extra grease with paper towels. The towels can make a piece of microwaved bacon one very lean strip of ham.

- For soups, allow the soup to cool and then skim off all fat that collects at the top of the pot or bowl.

- Go for baked, broiled, roasted over pan-fried any day of the week! Fried foods are bad business and should be enjoyed in moderation.

- Liver and other organ meats contain 'TILT' levels of cholesterol, so avoid when possible. However, do get that dose of liver every now and then as it provides nutrients that can't be obtained from other food sources (at least once every 90 days according to Mom).

- Incorporate an assortment of vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes (beans), reduced fat dairy products, and leaner cuts of meat into your diet.

Maintaining Your Weight Using Your Favorite Recipes

The Basics of Healthier Cooking for Weight Maintenance OR Weight Loss