06 Jun Guilt Free Cheat Foods
Eating healthy 80 to 90% of the time is essential to looking and feeling great. As we always tell clients, you don’t have be perfect, and a cheat meal once a week actually could help you out. But what if your craving something super yummy in between those meals that a healthy meal just doesn’t satisfy? Then it’s time for some guilt free cheat foods 🙂
These are foods that are super tasty and low in calories, so adding them as a desert or acutely to satisfy a craving will have essentially no consequence.
Here’s a list of some of our favorites here at Faster Fitness:
PB2 and PB2 Chocolate
PB2 is what inspired this post. I’ve been obsessed with peanut butter as long as I can remember and discovering this stuff was a total game changer. PB2 is a powdered peanut butter product where they take away the oil, which contains all of the fat, so you just mix the powdered peanut butter with water and have an amazing, tasty treat.
Lets compare the two:
PB2/Peanut Butter
Serving: 2 Tbsp
Calories: 45/190
Fat (G): 1.5/16
Net Carbs (G): 3/6
Fiber (G): 2/2
Protein (G): 5/7
That’s 76% less calories. The chocolate predictably has more carbs but big picture is pretty good still.
You can eat this straight up, blended in a protein shake, or countless other ways.
Quest Bars (Heated up)
If you haven’t had a Quest bar before you’re missing out! They have flavors like Cookie Dough, S’mores, White Chocolate Raspberry and taste incredible when microwaved for about 15-20 seconds. There’s a growing number of other healthy and tasty protein bars out there, but the stat line of the Cookie Dough speaks for itself. Most bars are around 20 g of protein, 13-17 g of fiber, 5 or less net carbs and 8 g of total fat. Strong!!
Veggies
Here’s the nice thing about low glycemic veggies like broccoli and spinach: you can eat them until you’re full and all it’s going to do is raise your metabolism! Let’s try a poll real quick:
How many times a day do you eat veggies:
A) 1-2 Servings at every meal
B) 1-2 Servings a day total
C) What are veggies again?
If you answered A then good job!
There are countless ways to make and season veggies, just be aware of the portions of oils that you cook them with, or better yet, cook them other ways such as steaming them.
Shakes and Protein Powders
Protein powders have come a long way over the last decade with flavors from classic’s like chocolate to ones mimicking Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Fruit Loops, Peanut Butter (clearly my fav) and salted Caramel ice cream.
But you can take it a step further and put it in a blender with ice, unsweetened vanilla almond milk and add things like PB2, cinnamon and stevia or other ingredients with little caloric impact.
To learn an awesome guide for making epic shakes check out Precision Nutrition’s Super Shake guide.
Frozen Berries/stevia
For a quick meal with minimal carbs, I like munching on frozen berries. If you’re trying to overcome an ice cream craving or something super sweet, a little stevia can really pack some sweet punch and make it super yummy. This isn’t as cheat free as some of the other examples so be aware of your portions when snacking 🙂
Cauliflower Dishes
I know this is mostly about desert type foods, but have you seen all of the cool ways you can make Cauliflower? Rice, mashed potatoes, lasagna, fritters, and pizza bites…and that’s just a preview! There’s tons of ways to make cauliflower and it can be an excellent substitute for some of your favorite comfort foods while being super healthy.
Flavored Drinks
When you’re craving something sweet, often times flavored drinks can curb the craving. Mios, Sobe Life Water and Bai 5 are amongst my personal favorites. As long as it’s sweetened with Stevia, Xylitol or Sucralose (Splenda) you’re in good shape.
Or if you have a milk addiction, try unsweetened vanilla almond milk. You can even add a little stevia to sweeten it up occasionally.
So there’s 7 guilt free cheat foods and drinksthat allow you some flexibility to curb cravings without it effecting your health or fitness.
Enjoy!
