You don't have to drastically change your eating habits if you want to lose weight and be healthier. Try opting for healthier substitutes to the same foods.
Although you cannot and should not avoid all kinds of fat, you do need to take in as little saturated fats as possible. Saturated fats increase the bad cholesterol in your body, making your more susceptible to heart ailments. And, of course, making you fat! Here's how you can make wiser food choices.
Butter
Butter is filled with saturated fats. Wherever possible, skip it or replace it with vegetable oils. Olive, safflower, sunflower, canola and corn oils are good choices as these oils are low in saturated fats. However, just because you cook your food in sunflower oil doesn't mean you can eat deep fried pakoras everyday. There is a limit to how much fat - saturated or unsaturated - you should consume, to keep calories in check.
Margarine
Margarine is often touted as an ideal low fat option to butter, but there is controversy with regard to its health benefits. Butter can make you fat and increases cholesterol, true, but margarine may cause greater harm to your health.
Eggs
Many of us relish eggs, and cannot imagine a breakfast without eggs on toast or an omelette. However, the bad news is that egg yolk is very high in cholesterol, and it is high in saturated fat as well. A good strategy would be to eat the egg white, and discard the yolk. You could purchase diet eggs, but many find regular egg white to be a tastier option.. You don't need to throw away the yolk. Remember that it makes an excellent mask for the face, and is great for the hair as well. Apply the yolk to your face daily, and before long it will glow with health and vitality. Once a week whip the yolk and apply it to your hair.
Milk
Do you still drink full cream milk because you enjoy the taste? That's a bad, bad choice! Opt for toned or double toned milk, so you get all the benefits of milk without the harmful cholesterol and saturated fat. Remember, the malai from milk gives you all that ghee which is so rich in fat. Sure, you could remove the fat from the top of the milk, but you have to wait for it to form before you can do that, and chances are, if you drink milk immediately after it has been boiled, you are consuming a whole lot of fat as well. Also, skimming off the malai after boiling milk doesn't really make as huge a difference as consuming milk with 1% or 2% fat, or double toned milk does. And if you consume a couple of glass or more of milk daily, substituting regular milk with skimmed or double toned milk will make a lot of difference to your fat intake. Babies should be given whole or full cream milk, and as they grow older you can switch to the lower fat versions. Parents should ideally make the shift when their child is between 2 to 5 years old, depending on factors like how much fat she gets from other sources, and so on.
