Tips For Cutting Fat And Calories From Recipes

Remove the skin on your meats when cleaning and preparing for cooking. Removing the skin from turkey or chicken saves about 50 calories and 6 grams of fat.

Use non-fat cooking spray such as Pam to coat the pan when baking foods instead of greasing with Crisco or butter. A three second spray of PAM 20 calories and less than 3 grams of fat versus 100 calories and 12 grams of fat for a tablespoon of butter.

Use fresh herbs to help add flavor to anything you are cooking. Garlic powder, basil, parsley, and oregano are some good basics to try.

The way you cook can be a good start: barbeque, stir-fry, microwave, steam, bake, poach, grill or broil your foods rather than frying.

Instead of using whole eggs choose egg whites or an egg substitute. A whole egg contains 75 calories, 5 g of fat, and 1 g of carbs. Egg substitutes are a better choice with 30 calories, no fat and 1 g of carbs per serving. Egg whites are the best bet with only 16 calories, no fat and no carbohydrates.

Instead of butter or stick margarine, choose transfat-free tub margarine. Brummel and Brown has 50 calories and 5 grams of fat versus regular stick butter, which has 100 calories and 12 grams of fat.

Instead of whole milk and the regular versions of American cheese, cottage cheese, and sour cream, choose skim milk, reduced fat or low fat American cheese, low fat cottage cheese, and low fat sour cream. One serving of regular sour cream packs 75 calories and 5 grams of fat, whereas the light version has just 40 calories and 3 grams of fat.

Instead of using regular sugar, choose Splenda instead. For one cup of sugar you can substitute with one cup Splenda. A one teaspoon serving of Splenda has zero calories and less than one gram of carbs while regular sugar packs 15 calories per teaspoon and 5 grams of carbs.