Cutting Calories-Taco Salad

Cutting Calories is the most important thing I  focus on when losing or maintaining my weight.

Taco salad. Using taco shells, wraps or tortilla/nacho chips will add SO MANY calories to your meal. So when I make a plate, I try not to add that at all. 

I know, I KNOW that the corn flavour and crispiness the shells/chips add to your dish, is important.

But this is about choices, right? Do you want to lose weight, or not? Sometimes I take half a taco shell, crush it into small pieces, and sprinkle them over the taco salad. That is better than eating 5 whole shell`s right? :)

Cheese...oh dare I say that I have stopped adding that to my taco-meal as well?  ummm...I have...and I do not miss it THAT much.

Ok..I do..

BUT, I rather have it without cheese, and have a dessert instead.

Choices remember?

Sacrifices, yeah? :)

If you insist on having a wrap...use lettuce instead! Find a nice crisp leaf, and wrap all the goodies in there :) Works like a charm, I promise!

This was my taco salad today. I was out of lettuce, so I just added what I had in the fridge. No cheese, no taco-shells or chips. Salsa and some low fat sour cream is a must, though.

I love adding avocado, but the ones I had was overripe, so I had to throw them out. Still turned out to be tasty and filling.

Want to cut down even more on the calories? Use lean mince. That`s what I do, if I can find it at a reasonable price.

Low-calorie Chocolate ice cream pops

I love ice cream..what`s not to love?!
Weird thing is...the more weight I lost, the more I loved ice cream.

Reason?

It takes time to eat. Duh!!

As a former obese woman, I know how to enjoy food. I loved eating..cause it tasted good, it made me feel good. But one of the things I realised after I changed my diet, is that all of a sudden...a lot of the joy of eating is gone.

Poof! gone!

Not cool!

Aaaand..I believe this is the number one reason people give up on losing weight. We miss the feelings involved in eating. When that one apple you are eating, is gone in a couple of minutes...not even tasting that great...you feel down. Depressed. You have lost your best friend..."the good food".

So what do you do? Well, I can think of a couple of solutions..
1. Give up the diet, and go back to how it was before.  (that is a really, really bad solution, so don`t do that)
2. Get creative...and find replacements you can live with.

I vote number 2 !!

So I sat down and thought about what I like to eat. I like chocolate. But when I started to lose weight...if I was going to have some chocolate, it was 3 small pieces of a chocolate bar. That was my ration ! Are you kidding me?? That is like teasing my taste buds.. And I end up even more depressed after I ate them, because it was over in a blink of a second..I didn`t get to the part where I really enjoy it, even. Hmmm.

Ice cream, I thought...that takes time to eat. You take one little bite or lick at a time..let it melt a bit in your mouth, before you have another taste. I can work with that, yeah?

I started to look online. And there is not a lot of ice creams out there...that is low in calories. Not if it involves chocolate, at least! I found some yogurt ice cream..I bought a few of them, they are ok. But I really wanted to find something even better. I read an article suggesting using puddings in the popsicle moulds. That would give you a creamier texture, than with a simple fruit juice popsicle. So I sacrificed one of my beloved Jello Chocolate pudding-no fat-no sugar-boxes. Whipped it up with skimmed milk, and poured it into the  moulds.

I used these moulds..brilliant..cause you can use wooded lolly sticks.

One box of this pudding mix including skimmed milk, gave me 6 lollies at little over 50 calories a piece!
Yay!

I had to taste one same evening. They are tasty and chocolate`y. Creamier than the regular frozen juice ones. One thing though..although they are a pretty good imitation of the real thing.. it can never be as velvety as ice cream made with real cream and sugar. This is a quick way of making chocolate pop`s, without a machine or lots of ingredients. I will make them again!

If you want to lose weight, something`s gotta give, right? Accept that if  you can not limit yourself to eat just a little bit of the "real thing", you have to accept that the skinny version might not be 100 % the same as the original.

It has worked for me. This way I have the motivation to stay on track everyday..because I know I can treat myself with something nice with my afternoon tea or coffee

I actually took out all of them, and wrapped them individually in small plastic bags, so that I could clean the mould, ready for another batch..what flavour? No idea...yet :)

I have plenty more ideas to share...stay with me :)