The great thing about the 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge is that it’s designed to give you the tools to eat well, increase your exercise and encourage you to follow a healthy lifestyle in a way that suits you. You don’t have to follow everything suggested to you strictly as outlined (unless you want to of course).
You can mix up the days you exercise, the types of exercise you do, the meals you eat etc and when it comes to the food, you can always make swaps for ingredients you may not be able to eat or don’t like, with something you do.
Obviously ensure you’re still making a healthy choice if swapping ingredients but don’t be scared to make a swap. In most cases, unless you’re baking a cake or something like that, swapping ingredients won’t ruin the recipe.
Here are some food swap suggestions:
- If you don’t like or can’t eat eggs then choose another source of protein e.g. for breakfast have avocado on toast with some tomato and feta or include baby spinach and some roasted veggies (maybe leftover from the night before’s dinner) to make a breaky wrap instead of eggs.
- If you can’t eat dairy then there are many other choices for cow’s milk in the supermarket – rice milk, almond milk, soy milk, coconut milk etc. And there are a great selection of non-dairy options for yoghurt and cheeses too – coconut yoghurt is a great option for example.
- If you don’t like seafood then skinless chicken breast (100g is approx 110cal) is usually a good swap and often works with the same flavours as those in seafood recipes. Instead of prawns use fish fillets or chicken breast.
- If you don’t like certain meats or the cuts suggested in recipes are expensive then choose a different variety or cut e.g. use chicken breast fillets or thighs, use lean beef steak of choice or lean lamb steak instead of lamb loin. Pork fillet is often well priced and is a healthy option for stir fries and salads.
- There can be a number of ingredient options in the recipes in order to make things interesting for you but you don’t have to purchase them all. Eg if a recipe calls for sour cream, you can easily use natural yoghurt instead. You could use cottage cheese instead of ricotta cheese or again try natural yoghurt (it is a very versatile ingredient!).
- Fruits and vegetables can easily be swapped for whatever is in season where you live or what’s on special. As long as you use similar quantities to what’s in the original recipes then your calories shouldn’t be changed too much.
- For snacks throughout the week, choose one or two recipes that you like and either make a larger batch e.g. protein balls or similar or have a selection of your favourite nuts, seeds and crackers on hand to use for snacks if you don’t like the suggestions made.
- If your family likes more meat in their meal and something is vegetarian then add a meat of choice for them or for you, on the side or if a meal is meat based and you’d prefer it to be vegetarian, then just remove the meat and add in another protein like tofu, egg or cheese.
- Oils, vinegars, sauces etc can usually always be swapped for something you already have or something you prefer e.g. use vegetable oil instead of extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil. Use balsamic vinegar instead of red wine vinegar or you could easily use lemon juice if the vinegar is being used for a salad dressing or similar.
Most of the recipes in the 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge can simply have the ingredients you don’t like or can’t budget for, substituted for something you’d prefer.
