Changing your eating doesn’t have to be painful. In fact it can be painfully simple! Just by making some simple substitutions to foods you already eat can drop several hundred calories from your diet without even trying.

Here’s 5 foods you can swap out straight away to go from Freaky Friday to Fat-Burn Furnace!

Bread for small pita

Assuming you don’t have a wheat intolerance, bread being the devil when it comes to weight loss is a little bit exaggerated. The real problem with bread is that it tends to come in pairs.

A slice of bread is anything from 80-120 calories depending on the size. Multiply that by two for a sandwich and you now have around 200+ calories before you’ve even started on the filling.

Instead switch out the bread for a small wholemeal pita bread. As well as cutting the calories, the pocket of the pita acts as bonus portion control!

Mayonnaise for Greek Yoghurt

While we’re on the subject of sandwiches, you can also drop an easy hundred calories by switching out the mayo. Personally I hate the stuff, but the very fact that it’s in basically every store bought sandwich suggests it’s popular!

Instead use Greek yoghurt. You’ll get a very similar texture without the added fat and nasties.

Salad dressing for Balsamic Vinegar or Lime Juice

If you remember a few years back, in a bid to appear more healthy, McDonalds introduced a line of salads. It didn’t take long for the backlash though with media reporting that they had more calories than a big mac!

What they didn’t tell you was that the problem wasn’t the salads though, it was the dressing. Salads are often ruined by the stuff we put on them. Try switching out your high calorie dressing for balsamic vinegar, or if you’re feeling a bit fruity, for a slightly different twist, try some lime juice!

Flour for ground almond

This one’s very popular among the paleo crew. Almonds are packed with good fats and proteins so make a great alternative to regular flour if you bake. Just replacing half of the flour you’d use in a recipe will drop the processed carbs and replace them with better nutrition.

Rice and couscous for cauliflower

If you haven’t heard about this by now, you must have been living under a rock the past couple of years! Cauliflower rice is all the rage right now. It’s really easy to do as well. Just grate cauliflower, then fry it up in a bit of coconut oil. Job done!

But the reason I’ve included this now is because recently, supermarkets have noticed the trend and started making pre-packaged cauliflower rice/couscous. If you’ve never tried this before it’s a great way to pop your cauliflower cherry!