Easy calorie cuts to beat holiday heft

I thought I would share a few quick and easy ideas that helped me shed almost 20 pounds a few months back with those looking to avoid putting on too many extra pounds over the holidays.

My main focus here is on cutting sugar intake by cooking with, and purchasing products containing a sugar substitute without sacrificing enjoyment.

I have personally found Splenda to be a great option that is now widely used in many reasonably priced products, and I prefer the taste to aspartame (Nutrasweet) or saccharin. It also appears to be quite safe after many years of use and is derived from sugar itself (at least it’s close to being natural!).

There are a few newer, completely natural sugar substitutes that are likely to become more popular in the near future, but I am not really familiar with them so I will save that discussion for another time.

Some of the products I particularly enjoy that use Splenda instead of sugar are sweets and baked andes deserts. For example, you know those delicious little rectangular chocolate mints called Andes Candies?

They remind me of my grandparents house where they always had a jar filled with them. Russell Stover makes a sugar free version that tastes almost identical to the original!

They are readily available at stores like Publix and Walgreens. York too makes great sugar free peppermint patties and even Reese’s makes a pretty good little sugar free peanutbutter cup.

You can also find good sugar-free cookies, ice cream, and hot fudge sauce! Just look for murray the Splenda label on the containers (Murray makes excellent cookies in many popular varieties).

If you like to bake yourself, you can always substitute pure Splenda for sugar, or go half and half to cut at least a good chunk of the calories while maintaining great taste. So there are many great choices to satisfy a sweet tooth instead of pounding the pumpkin pie or chocoloate cake.

Now for a “diet” beverage pick: While water is always a great choice, every now and then it’s nice Ocean to have something tasty, like a glass of juice. The problem is, even 100% juice beverages with no added sugar contain tons of natural sugars that rack up the calorie content.

I’ve taken a liking to Ocean Spray Diet Cranberry and Cran-Grape flavors (that’s DIET not “lite”). I’ll admit that they do still have a little bit of that diet taste, but the tartness helps to offset it a bit and it’s pretty good!

And since we’re all adults here… toss some into a glass of vodka on the rocks and you’ve got a pretty good zero carb “Cape Cod” cocktail to help get you through a long day with the in-laws! Try it out!

That’s all for now. I hope you’ll consider trying some of these ideas and please let me know if you make any of your own great discoveries!

Happy Holidays!

Dan Melmed
Owner, Body Well