Four Tips for Making Healthier Versions of your Favorite Foods

Are you craving some of those favorite comfort foods or meals that aren’t so great for the waistline, but determined not to go off plan? Well, you’ve come to the right place because I have four tips for making healthier versions of almost any recipe. With just a few tweaks and ingredient swaps, you can still have some of those comfort foods and meals you love. Instead of completely giving up your favorite foods or meals due to the fat or carb content or high calories, make a healthier version at home. This is also a great way to cut down on the amount of processed foods you’re eating and bring in more fresh, whole, homemade meals. It might seem impossible or overwhelming, but you can make a lighter version of almost anything, without sacrificing flavor. So, I have some tips for having your cake, pasta, or burger, and eating it too.  The four tips are:

1. Get inspired and creative!
2. Swap out the higher calorie ingredients for lighter ones.
3. Change ratios or decrease the amount of higher calorie ingredients.
4. Incorporate more vegetables into the recipe.

If you have read some of my other posts, you know I did low-carb for like 4 years. This is actually how I got started cooking and figuring out how I could still eat the things I loved without going off plan. When I was doing low-carb, I was following Atkins most of the time, though I also did the South Beach diet as well. In either case, the amount of carbohydrates you could eat each day was very little, which meant a number of foods were completely out of the question due to the amount of carbs per serving. So as I got desperate for things like pizza, enchiladas, or spaghetti, I had to get really creative and inventive. I was able to come up with a low-carb version of almost any meal by the time I’d been doing it for 4 years. Eventually, I went off the low-carb diet. For the record, I do not and would not ever recommend a low-carb diet to anyone. I strongly advise against going down that path because of what it did to my body, but that’s a story for a different time.

Over the years, since I was almost always on some sort of “diet” I did the same thing with whatever plan I was on. The result is that I have numerous tried and true, healthy, light recipes I still make regularly, and my kids love most of them too, well two of my kids anyway. We all have the one picky kid right? This is another reason I love the two nutritional approaches I generally recommend and alternate between them myself, which I’ve discussed in prior episodes. One is eating “clean” or just being focused on limited processed foods and sticking with lean proteins, healthy fats, whole grains/high-fiber carbohydrates, fruits and veggies. The second is macros/macro tracking. You have lots of flexibility with either, you get good nutrition with either, and you can still eat things you love, you don’t feel deprived, and they are both effective for weight loss.

So, let’s jump in to the four tips for making a healthier version of almost any recipe.

1. Get inspired and get creative!
   
   So, you’re craving grandma’s lasagna, but not quite sure what all went into it or how you can make a lighter version of it. Look up different versions of lasagna recipes to get some inspiration and ideas. This way you get the basics of the dish but also a sense of variations, which will get your own creative juices flowing. Get online and start googling away to find recipes. There are countless recipes online and you can find so many for making lighter, healthier versions of almost anything. The beauty of cooking is that there is lots of flexibility. You don’t have to follow the recipe exactly and you can make almost any recipe work for your weight loss goals. You just need to do a little research online and get the basics for a certain dish or meal and go from there.
   
   
2. Swap out high calorie ingredients for lighter ones.
   
   So, let’s say you want a hamburger, but they can be really high in fat and the bun can be really high on carbohydrates with little to no fiber.  First, look at meat options and see what you can swap to make it lighter. For example, you could find a beef with the lowest percentage of fat (93%) to use for making your burgers. Better, you can mix 93% lean beef and ground turkey breast and mix the two; so you get the beefy flavor, but you’re also cutting down the fat even more with the lean turkey breast meat. An even better option is to use turkey breast and add in some other flavorings that will give it a beefier flavor without adding fat. It’s important to use turkey breast instead of ground turkey, which is about 8 grams of fat per serving vs. 1.5 grams per serving in turkey breast.
   
   For the all turkey breast burger option, this is what I do and they come out delicious. Get a small jar of beef baby food, one pouch of dry French onion soup mix, and about a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce (salt, pepper, and other seasoning as desired). Mix everything together and make your burgers. I also use either whole wheat buns to up the fiber or Sandwich thins, which are both high in fiber and about half the calories as a whole hamburger bun. Sometimes I skip the bun if I want some fries or use half one and knife and fork it on the burger.
   
   You can also make your own fries quite easily, which enables you to better control the fat content in them. To do this, peel a few large potatoes and cut them into fries. Soak them in water for about 30 minutes, then spread them out on some paper towels. Place more paper towels on top and let them dry. Next, place them in a gallon ziplock bag and drizzle about 1 tablespoon olive oil or coconut oil and add any seasoning you may wish to add. Shake it up to coat the fries and then lay them all out on a baking sheet in a single layer. Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, then flip them and bake another 20 minutes. You may need to bake a little longer, depending, so just keep checking them. Salt them when you first put them in and when you flip them.
   
   
3. Change ratios or decrease the amount of higher calorie ingredients.
   
   So, in some recipes it is hard to completely eliminate certain ingredients, but you can still lighten up the recipe with some tweaks. For example, recipes that call for cheese: you can go for a lower fat cheese option or simply cut the amount in half to reduce the overall amount of fat in the recipe. This way you still get the cheesy flavor, but you’re cutting down how much to reduce fat in the recipe as a whole. In some cases you can cut out the cheese altogether and won’t really miss it. I do this with enchiladas sometimes. You can also decrease the amount of higher calorie items while increasing something else in the recipe that is lower fat, or adding something lower calorie in to balance it out.
   
   Another idea is to spread the recipe over more servings, which is particularly helpful for sauces, like alfredo. It’s tough to make a good alfredo without sticking to the core ingredients (heavy cream, parmesan, butter). Yes, you can swap some out, but you might not get the same consistency. One of the things I like to do is thin it out with pasta water and use less overall or spread it across more pasta. You still get the great taste of alfredo, with less and if you include other things in the dish, like chicken and broccoli you add more flavor to the dish and spread the sauce even more, cutting down on the amount you end up eating per serving.  
   
   In other types of sauces that call for heavy cream or milk, you can add less, or you can swap for oat milk for a dairy free option or just to cut down the fat more. The oat milk works surprisingly well. Just make sure it is the plain unsweetened kind. Chicken or vegetable broth are other liquids you can swap for cream or milk, depending on the recipe.
   
   Some examples where I have used oat milk in place of cream or milk are pesto cream or tomato cream sauces, or for a roux. Pesto can also be high in fat and contains parmesan cheese. So, if you’re looking for dairy free, you must check labels carefully. You can also make a lighter version of pesto by blending fresh spinach, basil, garlic, and olive oil. If you still want to include the pine nuts, you can reduce the amount to lighten it up.
   
   
4. Incorporate more vegetables into the recipe.
   
   This is a great way to add more nutrition and get in more vegetables. I like to do this with rice and pasta dishes in particular. Almost any rice recipe could have lots of vegetables incorporated in to add more to the dish, while also increasing the nutritional value of the dish. This can also lower the amount of rice or pasta per serving,  so a cup of the recipe isn’t a full cup of rice, it’s rice with these other veggies you add. One of my favorite recipes I make is a chicken veggie pasta casserole. It is packed with vegetables and absolutely delicious. It includes broccoli, carrots, peppers, and squash. It’s really good and very satisfying because there are so many vegetables in it. So, these are just some examples, but the possibilities are endless and we all need to get more vegetables in our diet, so it’s fun to get creative with it and find where you can add them to recipes you may not normally include them in, or even make vegetarian versions of your dishes that traditionally use meat.
   
   

So, those are the 4 tips for making healthier versions of almost any recipe or food. I hope you find this helpful and have a newfound inspiration to get your groove on in the kitchen, cooking up some awesome, healthy recipes for your family! I’d love to hear what you found helpful or what you’ll be cooking up in lighter, healthier ways. Please share thoughts, inspirations, or what you’re cooking up in the comments.

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