Lighten Up Your Meals for Your Weight Loss Plan

When you’re following a weight loss plan it can feel as though all your favourite, family friendly foods are suddenly a no go.

At Lose Baby Weight we want to show you how you can still enjoy delicious food and maintain your pregnancy weight loss and lose tummy fat.

You can use the ingredient substitutions we’ve listed below and give your favourite, traditionally fattening meal, a makeover to make it healthier, more nutritious and better suited to your healthy eating plan.

Have a go, you’ve nothing to lose but your baby weight.

Substitution Table

Recipe Ingredient	Substitution	Comment
Mince	Use premium beef mince, or chicken mince instead.	Once mince is browned, drain fat from meat.Try reducing the quantity of meat and add grated veggies like carrot or courgette.
Butter or margarine for baking	Use baby food apple puree which has no sugar added, or prune puree.	May require some experimenting.
Butter or margarine for spreads	Avocado or hummus.	See our easy recipe for healthy homemade hummus here.  Avocado contains fat but is a good heart healthy fat.  For more information on getting the right kind of fat in your diet, click here.
Butter or margarine for cooking	A small amount of lite cooking spray in a non-stick pan.	Try cooking onions in water until translucent and tender rather than oil.
Eggs in baking	Egg white or egg substitutes.	Egg substitutes are 99% egg white.  Alternatively you can use two egg whites to replace one egg in baking.
Mayonnaise	Low fat mayonnaise or the Lose Baby Weight sour cream alternative, hummus, avocado.
Sour cream	Sour cream alternative made from lite cottage cheese and lemon juice.	See the recipe for our sour cream alternative here.
Milk, cheese, cottage cheese	No fat milk, low fat/lite cheese and lite cottage cheese.	As well as changing to low fat cheese, reduce the overall quantity of cheese in cooking so you reduce fat even further.
White bread	Wholegrain bread and sourdough.	For information on what bread is appropriate for a healthy eating plan, click here.
White variety carbs like pasta, rice and potato	Wholegrain or wholemeal pasta, brown or wild rice, kumara, and couscous.	For more information on what carbs are great for your weight loss plan, click here.
Olive oil, butter, sugar, and salt to flavour meals	Grated lemon, lime or orange zest on vegetables, fish or chicken to flavour.	Also use non-salt herbs, onion, garlic and chilli in your dishes.  Try celery seed or onion flakes as a delicious alternative.
Lasagna sheets	Wholegrain tortillas.
Pizza base	Wholegrain tortillas or mountain bread.	Crisp slightly in the oven before adding ingredients.
Sugar in baking	Sugar replacement like Splenda to reduce calorie content, or honey. Did you know that in most baked goods you can safely reduce the sugar content by half and intensify the sweetness using nutmeg, vanilla and cinnamon.	While honey is high in sugar its naturally occurring sugar that the body metabolises differently to refined sugar.
Ice cream	Our homemade healthy banana and berry sorbet – blend a frozen banana and berries to make a delicious fibre rich dessert.	For more great Lose Baby Weight dessert idea’s click here.
Breadcrumbs	Rolled oats or oatbran.
Marinade	Fruit juice or balsamic vinegar.
Tinned fruit in syrup	Tinned fruit in its own juice.

If you’d like to know more about the Lose Baby Weight Plans, click here.

Lose Baby Weight takes the good old fashioned lasagna, traditionally a meal high in fat, we’ve used our substitutions above and made a healthy alternative, that is just as delicious but without the fat and calories.  In the video we double the quantities to make a batch to freeze.  Enjoy!

Lose Baby Weight Healthy Lasagna

Ingredients

• 500gm premium beef mince
• 1 can of chopped tomato’s
• 2 tbsp of tomato paste
• 1 courgette, grated
• 2 grated carrots
• 1 red capsicum, chopped
• 250gm lite cottage cheese
• 1 white onion, chopped
• 3 gloves of garlic, chopped
• Half a cup of low fat cheese to top
• 1 tbsp of lemon juice
• 1 tsp of mixed herbs
• Cracked pepper and a pinch of sea salt
• Lite Cooking Oil Spray

Instructions

Pre heat oven to 180.

Heat a non stick pan over a medium heat and sauté the onion and garlic in about 1 tablespoon of water.  Cook until softened and translucent and the water evaporated.

Increase the heat, add the mince and brown.

Once mince is cooked through tip into a colander and drain fat.  Turn the heat down, return the mince to the pan and add the tomato’s, the tomato paste, the grated carrot and courgette, the red capsicum and mix ingredients well.  Add cracked pepper and mixed herbs to season.  Simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes.  Do a taste test and add a pinch of sea salt if required.  Simmer for another couple of minutes.

Add lite cottage cheese to a bowl and combine with lemon juice to make a sour cream alternative.

Spray your baking dish with the lite cooking oil to prevent lasagna from sticking.  Lay a wholegrain tortilla on the base, and layer mince, sour cream alternative, tortilla, mince and sour cream alternative.

Sprinkle on low fat cheese to top and pop in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes. Bake until golden on top.

Serve with salad on the side.

Healthy Lasagna Video

Technorati Tags: healthy eating plan, lose tummy fat, pregnancy weight loss, weight loss plans

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