8 Food Swaps That Helped Me Lose 70 Pounds
You can lose weight while still eating some of your favorite foods. Nikki Madoch (@NikkiGetsFit) is a social media influencer and YouTuber who regularly shares content about how she lost a whopping 70 pounds on the Weight Watchers program. In one of her many viral YouTube videos, she reveals some of the healthy food swaps that helped her lose weight and keep it off.
Greek Yogurt Instead of Sour Cream or Mayo
The first great swap she incorporated into her diet is Chobani Greek non-fat plain yogurt. "I have just found that this works so well for mayonnaise and sour cream as a replacement," she says. She uses it for chicken salad or tuna salad. "I'll use a tablespoon of light mayonnaise and then a tablespoon of Chobani 'cause you still kind of get that yogurt taste, but it works to make it creamy and not add a bunch of calories," she says. She also mixes it with a ranch packet to make dressing or mixes it with "a little bit of cumin and lime juice" to make a sour cream sauce.
Quest Protein Shake for Coffee Creamer
Instead of using a coffee creamer she subs a Quest salted caramel protein shake. "I don't need to add any sort of sweetener, any sort of syrup or anything that is sweet enough. It gets me 30 grams of protein," she says. She also adds collagen to her coffee.
Chickpea Pasta for Pasta
While she still eats regular pasta she often subs it for Banza chickpea pasta. "It's made from chickpeas and they just have a lot more protein," she says, noting that one serving has 23 grams of protein, "whereas average pasta has 13 grams" and "eight grams of fiber versus three grams of fiber and then 48 net carbs versus 71 net carbs" making it a "better option."
Laughing Cow for Cream Cheese
"I love Laughing Cow. I have tried every flavor. The main one I like is just the light one. Such a good substitute for cream cheese. It works well if you're making a dish that uses cream cheese like I make buffalo chicken dip for him sometimes, and I used to use a full block of cream cheese, and now I just use like two laughing cows and some chicken and buffalo sauce and Bolthouse Ranch, and it's a really healthy alternative," she says.
Ole Extreme Wellness Wraps for Flour Tortillas
Her next sub? Ole Extreme Wellness Wrap tortilla for flour tortillas. "I've tried a bunch of different wheat ones and have not been a fan. I found these and these are well known in the WW community as well," she says. She uses them for wraps and quesadillas.
Bolthouse Dressing for Condiments
Bolthouse dressings are another one of her favorite food items. They are basically "just yogurt dressings, so they're lower calorie than a regular ranch dressing," she says. "I just love these as dips for my chicken. I like to have chicken tenders a lot, so I will just dip them into the ranches that I buy, or the blue cheese ranch is so good with buffalo on buffalo flatbreads that I make.
The balsamic is really good. I like to put it like when I saute onions, sometimes I add some of that, or I just use the balsamic on wraps sometimes," she says.
PB2 Powder for Peanut Butter
"The next thing I wanna talk about is PB2, which is powdered peanut butter," she says. She uses it to make pancakes and as a sub for peanut butter, mixing it with a little water. It's also great for protein shakes, she says.
Turkey and Chicken for Meat
Her last go-to sub? Turkey and chicken products for meat. "We still do eat red meat. We just don't prefer it," she says. "We do chicken and turkey sausages, and we buy turkey pepperoni, and that is so good if you throw it in the air fryer, and it gets nice and crispy. It's a good snack, or it's just really good to put those on flatbreads with tomato sauce. We also use ground Turkey. I make turkey burgers and ground chicken now. I make chicken burgers. Those are much lower points and still have a lot of protein in them. They're easy to make and really flavorful. So I really like using that Turkey bacon. Even some of the lunch meat we've always just bought is turkey, chicken, ham, and that."
She Also Stopped Eating Out
In another video, she revealed that she also stopped eating out. Due to her busy lifestyle, she and her husband, Adam, "relied on fast food and just really unhealthy, quick and easy options that were loaded with calories and just really didn't even make us feel good," she says. "And it really just came down to the convenience of it and just not caring about ourselves and not caring about what we were putting into our bodies. We were making it harder on ourselves by not fueling our bodies the way that we should have. And then that was just making all this hard work that we were doing even harder."
And, She Started Tracking Her Food
When she "started tracking," it was a major game changer. "One of the first things I did with tracking was go through the app and just look at all of the different meals that we used to eat from restaurants. And it was one of the most eye-opening things that I have ever seen," she said. She was "shocked" to learn how unhealthy her diet actually was.
She Stopped Drinking Her Calories
She also realized that she was drinking a lot of calories, like shakes from Sonic and coffee with cream and sugar. "We were drinking so many calories that we didn't know about," she says.
She Took a Month Off Fast Food
She also realized how unhealthy fast food meals were and that it "had gotten kind of out of control" of how fast food was impacting her diet. While she didn't want to cut them out forever, she "did cut back for the first month" and didn't eat out at all.
She Started Making Copycat Meals
During that time, she "really found ways to kind of make similar meals at home," she says. "That's when I started buying the Taco Bell shells that taste just like Taco Bell tacos, and you can just make 'em at home with the mild sauce but using ground Turkey instead. Different things like that. We'd start to do different copycat meals at home," she says. This way, she satisfies her taste buds while sticking to her point goals.
RELATED: I Lost 70 Pounds on the Flexitarian Diet and Here's How
She Started Tracking
She started tracking. "I knew that I could control it if I just entered everything I ate into my phone; I'm in charge of that. I have to do it if I want to see the results. So I did it every day for 30 days in a row for the first month on Weight Watchers, and it was crazy to see how much it actually changed my life how much better I started to feel, and how much more aware of the things I was eating and just everything like that," she says. You can benchmark your progress with this useful Lean Body Mass Calculator.
And, Gave Herself Rewards
At the end of a month, she rewarded herself when she stayed consistent. "I did one month, three months, six months, and then a year," she says. "It felt good to reward myself because it was something that I knew I had earned and done, and I had put in the hard work for it."
💪🔥Body Booster: Replace mayonnaise and sour cream with non-fat plain Greek yogurt to reduce calories while maintaining creaminess and flavor in dishes like chicken salad, tuna salad, and dressings.
