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Top 10 Healthy Snack Time Alternatives

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I know that for some of you eating healthy all the time can seem like a drag at first. Sometimes you feel fed up with eating only what you’re “supposed to” and what you really want to do is sit back and relax with one of your favorite treats like a bag of potato chips, pretzels, cookies, candy and more. But that can lead to a slippery slope and make it hard for you to get back on track to the path of health (and keep that weight off).

So instead of moping about what tasty treats you can’t snack on, why not be open to trying some new ones? And best of all these are all natural, easy to get and low in calories so even munching on a few to curb your cravings isn’t going to cause you any harm.

Let’s check out some delicious alternatives for those who crave crunchy or sweet snacks after dinner or any time of day.

 

1. Sugar Snap Peas are a great choice because they are naturally sweet and often come pre washed in a bag. Simply open the bag and snack. A handful of these will only run you about 20 calories! (I also like to add sugar snap peas to salads and stir fries for an extra crunch!)

2. Carrot Sticks aren’t just for kids you know! You can enjoy freshly sliced carrots as is because they’re naturally sweet and crunchy. Of course there’s also baby carrots, but I’m not really a fan of how they are processed and created (ugly carrots whittled down into small pieces and bathed in chlorine). The choice is yours and it’s even better if you can enjoy them without any dip at all. A handful of carrot sticks will run you only 26 calories.

3. Celery Sticks are often popular in veggie trays but are usually served with high fat dips such as ranch dressing, Caesar dressing, peanut butter or Cheeze Whiz.  Try to wean yourself off of those calorie laden dips and enjoy the crunch and natural flavor of celery sticks just as they are. If you’re craving potato chips they are a nice substitute for that crunch you desire and are just 10 calories a handful.

4. Fat Free Potato Chips So what do you do when you feel like you will actually go crazy if you don’t have a potato chip? Well I suggest you make your own in that case. Fat free potato chips are not quite as addicting (because they contain no oil) and at only 30 calories a handful they are truly a guilt free alternative to the store bought kind.

5. Cucumber Slices are a refreshing snack or addition to a salad especially in the warmer months when you’re looking for something light and juicy. Half an English cucumber or a few mini seedless cucumbers sliced up are a great choice over high calorie packaged snacks at just 8 calories a handful.

6. Cherry Tomatoes are naturally a little sweeter and more flavorful than large tomatoes and can make the perfect finger food for both children and adults. You can eat them as is or sprinkle a little pepper on them for flavor. At just 13 calories a handful you might be glad you switched!

7. Bell pepper slices are not just for stir fries and fajitas! They are naturally sweet and zesty and don’t need any seasoning or dip to be enjoyed. Bell pepper slices come in at just 19 calories a handful.

8. Strawberries and berries are nature’s candy and good all on their own. Once you start removing excess sugar from your diet you will find they can taste just as sweet or even better than candy with their fresh juicy flavor. A favorite after dinner treat of mine is just a bowl full of berries. At just 24 calories a handful (raspberries 32 a handful) it’s probably the best dessert choice you could make!

9. Fresh sliced apples are often easier to eat and more enjoyable once you cut up. A favorite for children and a great snack before or after a meal, apple slices are only 29 calories a handful.

10. Grapes are a great choice for a sweet snack when you’re cravings kick in because they’re filled with not only vitamins and water, but fibre that will leave you more satisfied than candies will. In summer I like to wash, dry and de stem grapes and freeze them for a natural frozen dessert. The sugars in the grapes will naturally crystallize and are great as a frozen treat or as ice cubes for filtered water. A handful of grapes is just 52 calories.

So how can you best utilize these healthier snacks to ensure you stick to your new found healthy eating plan?

  • Plan ahead and purchase some of these each week
  • Wash, dry, peel or chop and place in sealed containers in the fridge
  • Take your favorites along with you to work or while doing errands (so you’re less likely to buy something on the run)
  • Next time you go to the fridge for a snack, choose one of these instead
  • Mix it up, try different fruits and veggies each week!
I know it sounds so simple, but many people can benefit from having healthier foods within arms reach when hunger strikes. We all know too well how easy it is to give into weakness when we are hungry and cranky, so do yourself a favor and plan ahead!

 

Some of you may be wondering what about other snacks such as nuts, trail mix, dried fruit etc. The answer is, if you’re trying to lose weight, these foods are too rich in calories and too small in volume (compared to fruits and vegetables) to really satisfy your hunger when compared to the above suggestions. The idea behind successful weight loss is to eat less calories than you burn and using high water content, high fibre foods instead of calorically dense foods will help you get there. I prefer to use nuts and dried fruit in small quantities as part of a meal such as a garnish for salads or oatmeal so I am less likely to over eat on them. So choose low calorie high fibre, high water content snacks instead.

 

What’s your favorite healthy whole food snack? Do you plan ahead and stock your fridge with fresh sliced vegetables and pre washed fruits?

 

How To Stop Sabotaging Your Weight Loss Goals

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“We all can’t help everyone, but we can all help someone” is a phrase that I came across recently that really rings true for me.

I know that I can’t change the world or get everyone eating I talk to eating healthy, but I feel it’s really important to share knowledge and help others. I’ve always been an extremely inquisitive and curious person, and whenever I learn something new I just feel the need to share it.

So if I can make a difference for just one of you today with this post, I’m going to do it.

First, I’m going to start off with a basic assumption: I know you want to be fit and healthy. Who doesn’t? But it’s not very easy to be once you’ve learned some bad habits is it?

We really want to change and have more energy, lose the weight and feel great. But something happens along the way…

You may or may not know what it is, but I think I know.

We tend to get in our own way and kind of sabotage ourselves, whether it’s subconsciously or not.

Let’s take a look at the some the top reasons we prevent ourselves from reaching our goals when it comes to achieving health and weight loss.

-Bad Attitude & Negative Perspective
-How You Talk To Yourself
-Wanting to Look Good To Impress Others
-Lack of Preparation and Planning
-Lack of Motivation

Bad Attitude & Negative Perspective

Your attitude about diet and lifestyle can stop you from succeeding before you even get started.

What not to do:

As dieters, we can have this attitude that eating healthy isn’t attractive. That the food doesn’t taste “good enough” as what we’re used to, that we’re deprived from our favorite treats, and somehow we’re being punished for our sins until we can drop the weight or gain our health back.

Then once we’ve achieved our goal we hope we can have a few treats again and relax a little.

You might even be telling yourself or others “Oh I can’t have that any more, I’m on a diet!!!”

Let me tell you from personal experience, this approach does NOT work.When we look at our new food as “the enemy” or not as good as what we used to have, we start to feel upset and stressed and resent it. And this can leave you seeking solace in your old favorites, trying to comfort yourself to feel better or feeling depressed and frustrated day after day.

What to do instead:

Change that attitude into a positive one.

Say to yourself something like, “I want to turn over a new leaf and start choosing foods that are not only delicious but are good for me and make me feel good.”

You know some of your past food choices haven’t been ideal. That’s ok. Today is a new day and try to have a positive attitude just to try it out. If you have to, fake it til you make it.

Try to look at your situation as wanting to be kind to yourself in a different way, a better way that not only keeps you healthy but brings more to your life like energy, happiness and longevity.

Try saying to yourself “I can eat whatever I want, but I want to choose foods that are healthful instead”.

Turn the negative into a positive. You make the decisions for you. You decide what you eat, and you choose different foods that are healthy, they are not forced upon you. Keep it positive and avoid any negative talk or attitude about your plant based meals.

By the time you get used to eating new healthier foods, your tastebuds will have caught up with you and you’ll realize these foods do actually taste pretty good, better than you thought they would.

Wanting to Look Good To Impress Others

Let’s face it, sometimes we can be a little insecure and vain.

We look at pretty and attractive people on tv and in the magazines and we can start to envy them.

Surely we would be happier if only we looked like them right?

What not to do:

You try to convince yourself to eat better and start exercising so you can dress to impress and look good for your spouse or flaunt it in front of friends and acquaintances.You think having people envy you will make you feel better about yourself and that should be motivation enough to stick to a new plan.

The truth is you’re actually sending a really bad message to your subconscious.

That somehow because you’re not currently getting praised for your looks or health that you aren’t worth it and if you were that would mean you were a success and make you feel better about yourself.

This is a bad situation.

The person who should care the most about your health is yourself. No one can force you or motivate you better to get healthy than yourself. Trying to diet or lose weight for someone else will not work for very long and soon you’ll be back to square one and still feel pretty crappy about yourself.

What to do instead:

Realize that you are the best motivator for getting healthy. Tell yourself that you want to get fit and feel great because of what a positive effect it will have on your life.

Get excited about all the benefits you will have by getting in shape and eatingbetter.

Things like:

-more energy
-better mood
-clothes fitting better
-being more outgoing
-feeling confident about your body
-wanting to dress up and go out
-not feeling guilty about food

All of these things will be a much better at motivating you to get healthy than just to look good for someone else or impress acquaintances and strangers.

Feed your soul and not your ego and you’ll naturally feel this positive shift in your perspective and behavior.

How You Talk To Yourself

This will predominantly concern women as we tend to be very critical of ourselves and expect perfection.

What not to do:

You look at yourself in the mirror and feel hopeless and depressed. “How did I let it get this far?” you might ask yourself. You don’t feel worthy, you feel ashamed and suddenly you just want to sit around and open up a tub of ice-cream to console yourself.

If you ever feel like this please do not lose hope. The problem is not what you see in the mirror. The problem is what you are saying to yourself and how you are treating yourself. The mirror is only a reflection of your previous behavior. You’ve made yourself feel unworthy of health and success somehow turned to food to help fill the emptiness or sadness you feel.

What to do instead:

Realize that you are not the sum of what you see in the mirror. There is far more to you than what can be seen on the surface. But you need to look at that reflection of yourself as your friend, actually your best friend.

If you’re not your own best friend, don’t expect anyone else to be able to treat you better than yourself. Look at yourself and say “I accept myself unconditionally as I am right now.”

It helps if you can say this at least 5 times a day.

Even if you feel silly, even if you think it’s a lie, please just try it.

It helps to train your subconscious to associate your image with love and acceptance, instead of shame and guilt.

Visualization is highly beneficial for success. If you have any other conditions such as heart disease, diabetes or cancer you can use positive affirmations to help
your body heal as well. Envision yourself at your ideal body weight and in perfect health. Try to think about yourself like this throughout the day.

It will send signals to your body that will help you achieve your goals.

Lack of Preparation and Planning

What not to do:

You buy a bunch of recipe books or you spend hours online looking at recipes you want to make only to let them sit there in the back of your mind “to try one day”.

You don’t make a shopping list of items to buy, and you don’t really think about when you’ll go grocery shopping or when you’ll have time to make lunches or dinner.

So you come home from work, stressed out and feeling guilty and you order take out or pull out something unhealthy from the freezer to reheat.

You tell yourself “maybe next week I’ll do better… but I don’t know if I can do it.”

What to do instead:

This is something I really had to work on myself.

When I have been most successful in eating healthy I’ve prepared all of my meals at home, and brought food with me wherever I went.

1. Find some recipes that you want to make for the week. Plan out some simple meals like smoothies or oatmeal for breakfast, soup, stews, wraps or sandwiches for lunch and some casseroles or entrees for dinner.

2. Write down all the ingredients you need to buy and plan 1 or 2 times that you can shop for groceries. If you plan on making a lot of green smoothies or salad it helps to go twice a week as sometimes you can run out of fridge space for those bulky items.

3. The last step is to schedule some cooking/prep time for meals. If you don’t make time for this you really won’t be able to succeed and you risk having your produce go to waste.

Even if you have a busy work schedule or family life, try to find 1-2 hours at least 2-3 times a week that you can dedicate to creating healthy meals. Just take it slow, start out with a few recipes until you get the hang out if it.

If you make sure you have healthy meals already prepared in the fridge you are more likely to eat them whenever you get busy and stressed. Don’t let yourself get to the point where you’re starving, cranky and there’s nothing ready to eat in the fridge so you go out and get some fast food instead.

Anticipate those situations that make it easy for you to feel tempted to grab take out or fast food and be prepared.

Every time you have one of your healthy meals instead of something else, smile and praise yourself a little. You’re on your way to success!

Lack of Motivation

You may feel a lack of motivation towards many things, exercising, grocery shopping, preparing meals, eating healthy
etc.

Try to determine the root cause of your lack of motivation.

If you’re just too tired, try to go to bed a little earlier and get a little more sleep. If you feel uninspired or afraid of trying something new, ask your spouse or a friend to do it with you for moral support. (This could be exercising together, shopping together, cooking together etc).

You can also meet like minded people on websites such as www.meetup.com if you’re looking for some activity partners or veggie enthusiasts to talk to.

If you feel like you don’t have any time to work out, look at your schedule and plan all your other activities out and then see where you have some time. Even if you just
make time 30 minutes 3 times a week before work or after dinner to go for a walk or a light jog it will make a difference.

The key is to make realistic goals and start out with what you can manage and stick to it.

Studies have shown that once you have created a new habit and stuck to it for at least 21 days, it becomes almost second nature and is very easy to keep up.

The hardest part is going to be getting to that 21 days. But just take it one day at a time and praise yourself for the little victories along the way.

So now that we’ve covered some of the mental blocks that might be preventing you from being successful at a health new life style, I want to encourage you to remember the important things I’ve covered in this post.

-Start having a positive attitude with healthy food

-Don’t change for anyone else, change for yourself

-Accept yourself for who you are today

-Plan ahead for success

-Make time and get motivated with friends
or loved ones

While I can’t personally coach everyone on living a successful lifestyle (I’m still working on myself too!) I can help you when it comes to making meals with my mouth watering plant based dishes.

My Low Fat Vegan Starter Kit is the perfect way to get started in this journey.

100% real food, with no oil, and no processed ingredients.

All with tantalizing photos to inspire you every day. Best of all they are omnivore and picky eater tested and come with a 100% 60 day money back guarantee so it’s risk free to try.

Get the Low Fat Vegan Starter Kit here:

http://www.plantbasedu.com/LowFatVeganStarterKit

And I want to say thank you for all that you do by reading my emails and blog posts because without you I wouldn’t be able to reach out and help the world.

So in turn we are helping each other. 🙂

P.S. If you’ve already bought one of my ebooks in the package you can definitely upgrade to the whole package at a discount. Just contact me and I’ll give you the
details!

How To Make Vegan Food Taste Good Without Cheese!

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Cheese might be the #1 food that prevents many vegetarians and omnivores from believing they could eat vegan, let alone be happy eating that way.

So if you feel upset or frustrated at the thought of not eating cheese regularly, don’t worry you’re not alone.



Cheese is naturally highly addictive to humans because it’s both fatty and very salty and contains casein (a dairy protein that has been shown in studies to be as addictive as opiates believe it or not).

The combination of these factors makes it extremely hard for anyone to willingly give it up cold-turkey.

But let’s say you already know that cheese and dairy products aren’t good for you because you’ve read books like The China Study or seen the film Forks Over Knives.

How do you make meals taste good without cheese?

Option #1: Substitute Vegan Cheese

Depending where you are on your vegan journey you could switch to a vegan cheese for starters such as Daiya Vegan Cheese. I don’t often use it, only very occasionally as it still contains oil and is high in fat, but it may be helpful to make a plant based transition for you or family members who need a little sprinkling of something for certain recipes. Please go easy on adding vegan cheese, it tastes quite rich and you don’t need as much as you normally would with regular cheese. All cheese and cheese-like foods are made with oil and are high in fat, it is not health food.



Option #2: Make Faux Cheese At Home

Another option is to use a mixture of crumbled tofu with miso paste and nutritional yeast to create a sort of tofu ricotta mixture that is tangy and feels
creamy like regular ricotta. (I show you how to do this for Plant Based Lasagna in my Comfort Soups From Around The World recipe ebook.

If you are looking for a creamier cheese to drizzle you can try using cashews and blend it with some water, garlic, lemon, miso paste, nutritional yeast and liquid sweetener to create a nut cheese. There’s even a whole book about making faux cheese called The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook!

For low fat cheese sauces check out my Comfort Foods ebook again for cheezy sauce for vegetables or mac & cheese recipes.

http://www.plantbasedu.com/comfortfoods

Use lots of sauce and veggies on pizza and you don’t need cheese!

Option #3: Go Without and Use Other Seasonings

Eventually you want to be able to enjoy healthful foods without resorting to cheese like toppings (because they are often high in salt and fat).



I recommend using more veggies and adding fresh herbs and more seasonings to make recipes taste delicious without added cheese.

For example, for pizza roast or sauté veggies in different seasonings and load up a healthy pizza crust with lots of pizza sauce and a variety of veggies. I often like to add sautéed mushrooms, sautéed zucchini, sautéed onions, wilted spinach, fresh basic, fresh garlic, red onions, pineapple, artichokes (packed in water), peppers etc. If you want something creamy on top you can take thin slices of avocado and put it on top of the pizza after it’s cooked for that creamy texture.

For pasta sauces I like to use fresh garlic, basil and onions to kick up the flavor to canned tomatoes or bottled sauce and cook it and blend it together so it has more flavor. If your sauce is tasty you won’t need cheese for that tangy salty flavor.

While your cheese cravings won’t likely disappear overnight, please know that they will greatly diminish as you start eating less and less of it and trying new
foods.

Also you should know that your tastebuds regenerate every 10-14 days! So you can train your tastebuds to want other foods instead of cheese by eating them instead.

Just like any other addiction, the more you have it the more you want it. So try to gradually reduce your cheese and dairy consumption until you no longer think about it.



Once you are accustomed to eating a low fat, oil free diet even vegan cheese can lose its appeal and seem like nothing more than salty oily goo. I quite enjoy eating
homemade vegan pizza as more of a flatbread topped with lots of veggies and find it doesn’t need anything else.

For tasty plant based meals that don’t require any fake meat or fake cheese check out my ebook

Comfort Foods From Around The World

And learn how to make a healthy version of your old favourites using things like nutritional yeast, miso paste, squash and tofu instead for that creamy cheese like flavor.



I hope I’ve given you some helpful tips on how to banish those cheese cravings. Just take it one day at a time and soon cheese will be in your rearview mirror and you won’t even be missing it at all.


Don’t Be So Sure Sugar Is Making You Fat

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I was watching this series on Netflix this week called “Freaky Eaters”.

It’s a little bit of a buzz word title for a show I know.

No they don’t eat weird things like spiders or insects or anything scary.

They just have severe eating disorders where they compulsively eat junk foods all day everyday.

One middle aged women was so unhappy in her life that she found happiness only eating candy, chocolate, cake and cookies every day and nothing else.

Another middle aged man only ate plain cheeseburgers 3 meals a day. He was afraid of all vegetables and couldn’t even let a tiny strand of shredded lettuce touch his bun without being paranoid it would alter the taste of his burger. (It also looks like he ate fries and a cola with his meals as well.)

A young 20 something year old ate nothing but pizza (of any kind, restaurant, fast food microwavable) for 3 meals a day. He actually made himself so sick that he was throwing up every morning and could no longer play volleyball, but he didn’t think it was in anyway related to his diet.

The last woman I watched was another 20-something who lived at home, and was completely addicted to Coca Cola. It was so bad that she was drinking upwards of
30 colas a day or more and she denied that she had any kind of problem. (She also ate twinkies, ho ho’s, oreos and chips for her meals)

Now these are all extreme cases. My gut tells me that this is not that wide spread. These are severe food addictions and since it is “reality TV” it’s probably embellished a lot to make it look more dramatic.

One thing that I noticed was though that the two women eating and drinking nothing but sugar and white flour were not really overweight.

The one soda girl was told she was pre diabetic but miraculously she didn’t have it yet with all the cola she drank. She was also a normalweight.

The man who ate the cheeseburgers and fries every day was actually diabetic and veryvery overweight.

This is not a scientific analysis by any means, it is just my observation.

But the body actually has an easier time burning off excess sugar (even if it’s white refined sugar) than it does excess calories from deep fried foods(and oil and cheese).

These two women who were not overweight, ate in excess of 6000 calories a day, almost all coming from simple sugars like white flour and white sugar.

Even the young man eating pizza all day every day was not overweight, he was normal weight. (He ate a lot of white flour in the form of pizza crust 3 times a day so it was still a substantial amount of simple sugar.)

So this is why I find it is SO IMPORTANT to teach people to cook without oil and  get them off of eating fried foods day in and day out.

If there is one type of cooking that is REALLY holding you back from weight-loss it is that super high calorie fried food.

That means any of your favorites such as:

-fried chicken
-french fries
– “fish and chips” 
-potato chips
-tortilla chips or “Doritos”
-donuts and fritters
-hush puppies or fried corn cakes
-onion rings
-fried calamari
-fried mozzarella sticks
-anything battered and fried

HAVE GOT TO GO! Right now.

I’m dead serious!

If you are still eating any of these foods they are seriously sabotaging your health and your efforts to weight loss. I suggest not letting them even be an option
for you when making food at home or going out to restaurants because deep fried food is highly addictive.

If you eat these foods regularly, you are likely to not stop at just one piece, or one bite. You might even feel compelled to eat the whole plate. (Often very quickly and it disappears right before your eyes…)

And when you eat these foods regularly your body will actually CRAVE them.

We are still designed to seek out the highest calorie dense foods, as if we were living in the wild trying to stave off starvation.

So super salty, fatty and rich foods make our brains and bodies go crazy, that once they get some they want more and more and MORE.

The most important thing to do when trying to give up a food addiction is to make it very difficult to get. This is SO important.

That means get any and ALL of these foods out of your house right now!

(Even if you have a spouse or children who want to eat these foods. It’s just too tempting for you to eat them if it’s around). Don’t allow these foods in the house. If someone wants to eat them they should be eaten outside the house only occasionally, thus making it harder for them to get instead of always being in the cupboard or freezer.

That also means not going to you “favorite” restaurant where you typically get that fried chicken, fried fish etc. Try an alternate route if you often drive near places that cause you to feel tempted.

Don’t walk down the junk food aisles at the grocery store, stay away from the convenience store and don’t go down the frozen meat and frozen french fries aisle.

The best way to succeed is to replace these bad habits with good habits.

 

-Find a new favorite meal to eat (and of course make sure it’s healthy.)

-Find a new place to eat out at, (that is of course healthier too.)

-Only shop at the healthy parts of the grocery store such as the produce aisles.

You cannot expect to change and lose weight and get on track if you are in the same situation every day and doing the same things.

You need a fresh start.

And the first thing I want you to do kick is fried foods to the curb.

ALL of them.

They are the most addicting because they combine crunchy and salty flavors that make you eat more and are filled with white flour and oil (the two highest calorie nutrient devoid foods.)

We can work on the rest later.

But if you’re concerned about high blood pressure, cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes etc., and want to lose weight, you’ve got to ditch that fried food.

The best way to do succeed is to find and learn some new healthy recipes that you and your family will enjoy.

So that’s why I’ve put together my Low Fat Vegan Starter Kit.

It’s full of recipes you can use for breakfast, lunch and dinner to get back on track and to start losing that weight NOW.

It just takes a little bit of trying and a desire to make changes in your life for the better.

I’ve already done all the hard parts of figuring things out and creating delicious healthy meals.

All you have to do is buy the ingredients and follow the instructions.

Just go to:

www.lowfatveganchef.com/LowFatVeganStarterKit

If you want to do something good for your health, start by taking out the #1 unhealthy type of food.

No more fried foods. Especially battered and fried meats and cheeses. Those are the worst.

It actually could make a big difference for you.

I bet more than a few of you have a hard time resisting eating these foods compulsively when you see them.

It’s ok. We’re wired to want more of these foods when we have them regularly. So you just have to start removing them from your diet and the cravings will
go away.

Just like any other addiction like alcohol, drugs or cigarettes. You have to stop ingesting them to get rid of the cravings!

How can you possibly stop this addiction if you keep purchasing these foods instead of learning how to make healthier new foods?

I can help with that.

Just go to:

www.lowfatveganchef.com/LowFatVeganStarterKit

And take charge of your health today…

I know you can do it!

Sincerely,

Veronica Grace

P.S. If you’ve already purchased one of my ebooks in the Starter Kit you CAN upgrade. Just contact me for details and I’ll get you set up no problem!