UCLA Center for Human Nutrition

Get Control of Your Eating Habits
by Knocking Out the Trigger Foods

While you are on a meal replacement plan, you can prepare to change your eating habits for life. First, eliminate your trigger foods and the hidden fat foods that may be sabotaging your efforts to lose weight and keep it off. Pick the ones that apply to you, and try to make these changes in your diet for the rest of your life. For everything we suggest you cut out, there is a suggestion for something to eat instead.

Nuts (including peanuts, macadamia nuts, sunflower seeds, and peanut butter): While nuts and seeds are sources of protein, fiber, and several vitamins and minerals, they are loaded with fat and calories. Just 14 peanuts have 90 calories! Have air popped popcorn made in an air popper instead.

Cheese and Pizza: Cheese is also loaded with fat; and some pizzas are made with olive oil in the crust, along with the cheese on top. So, the calories add up fast! Try a high fiber whole wheat pasta with tomato sauce instead.

Salad Dressing: Both creamy and oil-based salad dressings provide, on average, 150 calories and 10-20 grams of fat per ounce. So, avoid all dressings, including so-called low fat varieties. Try balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar, or wine vinegar instead. Make your salad tasty with dark green lettuce, tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts, green and red pepper, and other vegetables so that you don’t depend on the dressing to carry the taste.

Mayonnaise, Margarine and Butter: Cut out these extras and you will cut down on both fat and calories. Even the fat free varieties (like Ultra Fat-Free Margarine) are 100% fat. According to the law, these can be labeled as fat-free because they have less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving. This is the only place in mathematics you can round down from 0.5 to 0. Try having your bread dry or with a thin layer of fruit jam. If you are having a sandwich, use mustard with no mayonnaise.

Red Meat and Fatty Fish: One of the easiest places to reduce a lot of calories is red meat and fatty fish.

Red meat (veal, beef, pork, and lamb) can add lots of fat and calories to your diet. One 14 ounce cut of prime rib has about 1200 calories and 50 grams of fat! That’s all the fat and calories a short woman needs all day long. A fast food burger, milkshake, and fries has about 1300 calories and is about 50% fat calories. Many Americans are cutting down on red meat intake. If you are trying to lose weight, you ought to be leading the pack! Substitute skinless white meat of chicken or white meat of turkey instead. Dark meat is higher in fat and can have as much fat as some types of red meat.
Salmon, trout, and catfish that are farm-fed are high in total fat, even though some of this fat is
so-called "good fat." Substitute halibut, swordfish, canned white tuna packed in water, sea bass, orange roughy, red snapper, or whitefish, and you will save lots of fat. Shrimp, scallops, lobster, and crab are also low in fat. So, go ahead and enjoy these shellfish in pasta or cooked (just not breaded, sautéed, or deep fried). While some people worry about the cholesterol in shrimp, it is low in total and saturated fat, and therefore, will not raise your blood cholesterol levels.

Frozen Yogurt and Ice Cream: These desserts add lots of extra calories as fat and sugar. Even the fat-free versions pack in many extra calories as sugar with too little protein. You can try freezing a meal replacement and eating it just like ice cream. You can add different flavors to make these a real treat.

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