You’re ravenously hungry at a restaurant. The aroma of fresh rolls fills the air and the waiter gracefully sets a basket onto your table full of warm rolls straight from the oven. Before you know it, you’ve eaten three rolls before your meal has even come out, leaving you full and less eager to eat the meal before you.
Bread is a food that many people love to eat and can eat a lot of throughout the course of a day. We have toast with our breakfast. Bread for our sandwiches. Rolls with our dinner. However, consistently eating bread won’t help you in losing weight.
Here are eight simple ways to eat less bread.
-
Lettuce Wraps for Sandwich Bread
Try using spinach leaves, swiss chard, or your favorite type of lettuce as a replacement for bread on your sandwiches. Lettuce leaves can easily be used as a wrap for your favorite sandwich fixings. Using lettuce leaves in place of bread will save you unnecessary calories and carbs. Instead they fill you with nutrients from the greens.
Are tortillas your go-to? In place of flour tortillas use green lettuce as the wrap for your favorite Mexican tacos or burriots!
-
Stock Up On the Good Stuff
Are you missing having toast for breakfast? Or the bread for your sandwiches? Stock up with more nutritious foods! Adding more fruit, vegetable, and protein such as meat into your diet will help keep you full.
Choose to load up your plate with an extra amount of veggies or meat to replace the fill of bread. By the time you’ve finished cleared your plate you won’t even have room to have that dinner roll. You’ll walk away from dinner feeling less bloated and knowing that you consumed more nutritious calories.
-
Choose Oatmeal for a Fiber Filling Breakfast
Get your grains and fiber in by having a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. It’ll keep you full until lunch and you won’t be having those cravings for bread. Add fresh fruit such as bananas and berries into your oatmeal with a spoonful of nut butter or Greek yogurt to add a sweet, yet satisfying taste.
-
Eat a Colorful Dessert
Many times bread can be the sweet treat you go to during the day such as a slice of banana bread or a blueberry muffin. Instead of choosing a bread product satisfy your sweet craving with fruit! Strawberries, grapes, pineapples, and oranges are sugary tasting fruits that’ll kick your craving away and won’t leave your stomach growling.
-
Limit Your Bread Consumption to One Meal a Day
If you’re just starting out with cutting back on your bread consumption, one way is to have bread for only one meal a day starting out. Choose either breakfast, lunch, or dinner to be your time to indulge in some bread. Before long you’ll notice you’ll go for a few days without having to have a piece of bread!
-
Buy Whole Grain Bread
If you are a white over wheat person, consider at least making the switch to wheat bread. White bread is more refined than wheat and is filled with more sugar. Simply switching to whole grain is a healthier option that’ll give you more fiber rather than sugar.
-
Replace Bagels with English Muffins
Bagels we all know are full of carbs and fill our stomachs up with bread rather than nutrients. Try purchasing English Muffins to replace your morning bagels. The nooks and crannies of a whole grain English Muffin will keep you full until lunch times rolls around.
-
Skip The Chips & Crackers
Chips and crackers are sneaky snacks that are also full of carbs just like bread. Instead of using chips for your dip try using raw veggies as a replacement! Portion control is also key to not going overboard on your chip consumption.
Can’t imagine going without chips or crackers? Choose whole grain crackers and baked chips instead!
The key to cutting back on your bread consumption is to start slowly. If you start out by immediately eliminating all bread will set you up for disaster and may lead to restrictive eating behaviors. Make a few smart changes to your diet at a time to gradually reduce your bread intake.
Skylar Starbuck is a 22 year old college student who has a passion for leading an overall healthy lifestyle. Before going off to college Skylar had always been involved in year round athletics in school, so her personal fitness journey began her freshman year of college. She then realized that it was now up to her to take care of her physical... Read More
Comments are closed.