It Starts With Coffee

Carbs, Potatoes, Cookies. Guys I want all the foods. Sadly all the foods have all the calories and all the fats. So then I eat all the veggies and I do not feel satisfied. I started really taking note of what I eat and paying attention to labels in 2010. Since then I have come up with some tricks to sub in healthy foods for foods that aren’t as healthy and trick yourself into loving these foods. Healthy eating can be tough to get into and even tougher to stay on track with. With my healthy eating tricks you will be rocking the clean eating life in no time!

Trick 1: Fake potatoes. Good lord mashed potatoes may be one of the greatest things on the planet. Seriously just typing this is making me crave some. A few years ago I found an awesome recipe online for what I now refer to as “fake potatoes.” Essentially you sub in cauliflower for potatoes. I know you are thinking “Neely just no.” I promise it’s good and guilt free. I am not saying it’s the same as eating those glorious mashed potatoes but your butt will thank you. This is my go to recipe and I can’t recommend it enough.

Trick 2: Missing queso. I am a Texan and as such I love Tex Mex in all of its glorious forms. My biggest weakness is queso. Good god what is in that stuff? CRACK! No just cheese but still it’s amazing. So since eating queso 5 times a week is frowned upon if you are trying to lose those happy pounds my husband has come up with a queso like alternative. He mixes hummus and salsa and you have a creamy spicy amazing concoction. He swears by it. I swear by black bean hummus. I get mine at Central Market(HEB) and I am pretty obsessed with it. I could most likely eat an entire container in one sitting if I really wanted to. But the great thing is you get creamy and spicy for a fraction of the calories and almost NO bad for you ingredients.

Trick 3: Cookie Monster. Who doesn’t love a good chocolate chip cookie? Crazy people that’s who. If I could have one food wish it would be that chocolate chip cookies had the same effect as broccoli and spinach. Alas they do not. So what do I do when I want a chocolate chip cookie and want to eat somewhat healthy. I eat bunny grahams. Annies bunny grahams are the greatest thing to happen. The chocolate chip kind legit to me taste like crispy chocolate chips cookies. 32 bunnies are 120 calories. Winning. Allegedly I am also missing out on life because I have not tried the Annies Cheddar Bunnies.

Trick 4: Nachos. I touched above on my love of Tex Mex and nachos are a huge part of that. So a long time ago I came up with a nacho recipe. I use the simply balanced chips from Target in the flax blue corn variety. I use the black bean hummus mentioned above, some horizon cheese and salsa. It’s really healthy and really tasty!!!

Trick 5: Pasta time. This boils down to spaghetti squash. Nothing crazy. We have all heard of spaghetti squash. Cut spaghetti squash in half, bake for 45 minutes on 400 and fork out the “noodles.” The calorie count is insanely low and the taste is great in my opinion. You really can’t go wrong here. Add some pasta sauce on top and a little bit of cheese and you are golden.

Having a few healthy eating tricks can be extremely helpful those days where everything is telling you to grab tacos on the way home or drive through in and out. I find having a few of these tricks up my sleeve makes me a better planner and I feel better about what I am putting in my stomach.

What are your healthy eating tricks?