Substituting in your diet

turkey pepperoni chips instead of potato chips...like 70 calories per serving. Just stick them in the microwave for a little over a minute or until they get crispy. Just had some today!!

When I first started to try and lose weight, I reduced my bagel with cream cheese (my traditional breakfast of many years) to a HALF Bagel with cream cheese. I recently got smart and switched that to 1/2 cup oatmeal with cinnamon and a fried egg. I used to leave the breakfast table hungry. Now it's all I can do to get that oatmeal down, and I'm often not hungry for a long time. It also eliminated a sugar and replaced it with a more complex carb (which is part of why I'm not hungry for a long time) and added some protein.

Shortly after tracking calories here, I reduced my bag lunch by box of raisins and substituted in a turkey-and-cheese wrap in the whole wheat tortilla I was already bringing in. I was already over on sugars with the banana and apple I eat every day, but was struggling with my protein. The few extra calories are totally worth it.

Eating whatever I want, but not how much of it I want.

This!

Oh, but I definitely concur on the Avacado for Mayo...YUM!

Weis cramel icecream (full fat, full sugar) instead of Skinny Cow or other fake icecream.
I've been down the "low-fat, fake-sugar" route and I just don't see the point... why eat 110 cals of something that tastes flat and has a nasty after taste when I can have a full serve (60g) of real tasty, creamy icecream for 140 cals?

Other things that work for me
- mixing up veggie snacks (cherry tomatoes, snow peas, celery, carrot) with fruit.
- boiled eggs, almonds, cheese slice (reduced fat but still "real" cheese) for snacks
- adding rolled oats and grated veggies or fruit to muffins or slices to reduce cals per serve and add in a bit of extra nutrition.
- adding lots of veggies to regular recipes like chilli, bolognaise, fried rice etc.

In general, I try to eat a moderate portion of regular food and add veggies to just about everything rather than look for artificially low calorie products. My objective at this stage is to establish good eating habits that will keep me healthy for a lifetime, I'm not interested in being able to eat a HUGE bowl of noodles or icecream for practically 0 calories, I don't think that's a healthy habit.