Healthy swaps you can make over the festive season

The festive season is synonymous with good food and yummy desserts. You can enjoy the treats and fun and still eat healthily! At this Christmas lunch, if you fall face-first into the creamy sherry-laden trifle, pick yourself up, lick off some of the creams and start all over again by resolving to be your healthier self by supper time.

If you have a plan, you can beat the insurmountable amounts of food that usually appear everywhere at this time of year.

Think heart health

According to Flora, you should put your heart first! Oily foods can cause havoc in this vital and sensitive cardiovascular system that keeps you alive.

Besides giving up smoking and cutting back on binge drinking, you should resolve to be active to bust stress and boost mental health.

To get heart healthy, you need to:

In moderation, cut the saturated fat and eat cholesterol-lowering foods such as seeds, nuts, and avocados.
Increase your fibre intake to about 30 grams a day with whole grains, legumes, pulses, beans, and chia and flax seeds. For example, instead of meat for a bolognaise sauce over zucchini noodles, use lentils flavoured with Italian herbs, tomato paste, sundried tomato, mushrooms, olives and a dash of garlic-infused olive oil.
Aim to eat about five portions of vegetables and three fruits a day high in fibre, vitamins and minerals. Green vegetables and sweet potato pack a high nutritional punch
You don’t need the sugar. To satisfying your sweet tooth, opt for soft fruits such as frozen grape or kiwi slices, banana and mangoes in plant milk smoothies, dates and cinnamon. You certainly don’t need sugary energy drinks, energy bars and sweets, milky chocolates and cakes.
Lose the salt. You only need a spoon a day, but everyone eats much more because the usual go-to foods such as processed foods and snacks are over-salted. Too much salt increases blood pressure levels. Food can be seasoned with compatible pairings of herbs, spices, nutritional yeast, balsamic vinegar, ginger root and flavour-intense dried vegetable.
Omega 3 fats are good for heart function. And these can be found in walnuts, flaxseeds and chia seeds that you can sprinkle over your morning cinnamon and ginger oats and berries. Dietitians place oily fish such as salmon, fresh tuna, sardines and mackerel top of their lists.

Food combining

A clever way to burn fat, feel full longer, and get the right amount of calories is to combine food. If you’re going to eat carbohydrates in beans, grains and legumes, then eat it with vegetables and a minimum amount of oil, salt and sugar.

Animal proteins and non-starchy vegetables go together, say dietitians who advocate low-carb diets, for instance. And never pair meat and potatoes or meat curry and rice. On a low-carb diet, you should rather eat a meat curry, roast or pasta sauce with rice made of cauliflower or noodles made from zucchini.

According to WebMD, the following food combinations are satiating fat-burners:

Power greens: eat low in calories but rich in nutrient spinach and kale salad with a dressing of mashed avocado, which is a high monounsaturated good fat
Chicken breasts at 27 grams of protein and less than 150 calories keep you full for longer because protein takes about 12 hours to digest. Rubbing the chicken with cayenne pepper or topping it with a sauce made with cayenne pepper turns the meal into a potent fat-burner
Eat your steak with broccoli. Beef, which is rich in protein and iron, is needed to build red blood cells. With vitamin C rich broccoli, the iron is absorbed faster, giving you a sustainable energy boost.
Sweet potato and salmon: Omega-3 fats burn fat, which salmon does, together with its 17 grams of protein per serving. This is a light but filling combination paired with fibre-rich baked sweet potato.
Mince and mushrooms: by swapping 50 per cent of the beef or ostrich mince with chopped mushrooms, it is possible to make a flavourful mince meal that stops cravings and keeps blood sugar levels steady

Fibre

According to the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, for breakfast, a protein-packed egg meal at the start of the day keeps you full for longer. A pairing with black beans and peppers increases satiation with a double dose of protein and fibre.
Fibre-rich oats and walnuts are slow to digest and are another fat-burning breakfast.
The ideal fat-burning drink is antioxidant-rich green tea and lemon, leading to decreased weight and blood pressure with just 4 cups of the brew every day.
The best dessert pairings are fibre and protein-rich pistachios with apple. And then there is super-rich 70 per cent dark chocolate, which has minimal amounts of sugar, which should satisfy any holiday cravings for a little something sweet when paired with high-protein almonds.

When eating out, your meat and veg options should be sorted, but to be safe, instead take along your sugar-free dessert.

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