Low Carb Swap-Outs to Keep Things Tasty While Keeping the Weight off This Summer

Going low carb or lower carb is a great way to ensure steady weight loss or keep the weight off that you lost prior to summer grilling and swimsuit season.

Who says hamburgers and hot dogs must be served with a bun? As a replacement for commonly served starchy sides, choose dark leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables such as lettuce, kale, cabbage, broccoli and other similar healthy vegetables.

If you’re not going extremely low carb, then you will have a few choices for carbohydrate sides to go with your grilled meat. A colorful plate is the way to go... but keep starchy vegetables to a moderate or small portion size.

An example of this would be a sweet potato. Try to buy the smaller sweet potatoes that fit in the palm of your hand and maybe eat half of one of those as a starchy carbohydrate serving along with your grilled meats. Or if you have a larger sweet potato, you can split it in three. For the remainder of your carbohydrates, choose high fiber green leafy vegetables to round out your summer meal.

You won’t wreck your diet with a healthy carb such as whole grain bun, or sweet potato. But again, the key is to really limit portions. And if there are a multitude of starchy vegetables being served at whatever barbecue you happen to be attending, then you will want to treat each of these as part of the carbohydrate serving. It should not be one serving of potato, one of corn and one of carrot. But rather a third of each to equal one serving of a carb. Examples: half a cup if you are a small person, and a cup of a starchy carb if you’re on the larger side and bigger boned. The more weight you need to lose, the less energy in the form of carbs and sugar you should be taking in.

And as with all dieting and healthy eating, foods that contain table sugar and other forms of it should be avoiding or severely limited.