No Binge Eating on Cinco de Mayo
Happy Cinco de Mayo!!
I used to use this day as an excuse to binge on all my favorite Mexican goodies. Do you find that you do the same with any holiday: Cinco de Mayo, Christmas, your birthday, etc?
Here’s a trick that helped me stop overloading on the binge food, while not making me feel deprived either…
Instead of going out to eat at a Mexican restaurant and allowing myself to eat tons of chips, queso, guacamole, rice, beans, and an entree, I cook a “healthier” version at home.
1. I buy baked chips instead of the really greasy ones.
2. I make queso, but not a large quantity. This is because no matter how good it is, I don’t want to overindulge. When it is gone, it is gone.
3. I make fat free vegetarian refried beans. At least I know what ingredients go into my beans… and I can’t say the same for a restaurant.
4. Since guacamole goes brown easily, I make a small amount of this just like the queso. Avocados provide the healthy fat, but that’s not a reason to binge on it.
5. Ah, the entree. Tonight I’m making a taco pie. I found the recipe online and for 1 serving of this tiny pie (4 servings all together), there is over 600 calories and a ton of fat. I am making the same thing with a couple of moderations:
I will be using soy meat (fake meat) instead of real ground beef. (This knocks off so many calories and fat grams.)
I will be using reduced fat or fat free sour cream and cheese.
Just by using those 2 changes, I will be shaving off at least half of the calories and fat grams! Yay.
Making healthier versions of my favorite binge foods really helped me. If you have tried doing this, please let me know if you found it as helpful as I did. As always, I’m not promoting you count calories or fat grams… I just wanted to share another tip to prevent a possible binge from happening.