Pumpkin Spice Lattes

Who loves Starbuck's Pumpkin Spice Lattes as much as me? They are a major weakness for me when fall rolls around. Besides the fact that I don't want to spend $5 everyday on a latte, I decided to try to make something similar to save calories (and money!). I bought some Torani Sugar Free Pumpkin Pie Syrup from World Market a couple weeks ago. What I did was I put a few teaspoons of the SF syrup and a tablespoon of fat free powder creamer into my coffee. It is not exactly the same, but it's close enough that I'll take it to save 170 calories, a bunch of carbs and almost $5. I'm thinking I'll try the latte version tomorrow... I'll let ya know how it goes.

The Skinny on Oils

Even though we're all avoiding the fried foods and cutting out many of our "treats" we still want our food to taste good, right? Well, that can be accomplished through seasoning AND through oils. Don't just use olive oil (or Pam) to saute your veggies. Venture out and give yourself a real treat with some richer, more decadent oils. My favorites are white truffle oil and dark sesame oil. When used in modersation they can bring an amazing flavor to your food while only adding a couple of extra calories - definitely a worthwhile tradeoff in my opinion!

Here's the skinny on 1 tbsp of oil:
Olive Oil: 119 calories/13.5 g fat, 1.7 g saturated fat
Truffle Oil: 120 calories/ 14 g fat, 2 g saturated fat
Sesame Oil: 123 calories/ 13.7 g fat, 1.9 g saturated fat

Peanut Oil and Canola Oil are in the same ballpark, too.

So, steam your veggies and drizzle a teensy bit of truffle oil or sesame oil on them for a new, amazing, decadent flavor.

Drizzle on grilled, roasted and baked meats or fish and veggies.

The only real difference in these is cost. Truffle oil is quite pricey and sesame oil is more than olive oil, but if it gets you to eat those boring UNFRIED veggies with no ranch to dip them in then it's probably worth it ... for a while anyway. And by the time we're all broke we should be skinny so we'll be happy anyway, right?! :)

Salts and bloat

Did you know that 1 teaspoon, yes TEASPOON, of soy sauce can cause you to gain 2 pounds of water bloat? Salt is generally bad, bad, bad for weight loss because it causes your body to grab onto every h2O molecule that floats by. So, while it may just be a short-term weight gain that's easily lost, it does a lot for our motivation ... or lack thereof. And it makes you puffy. Gross.

My advice on salt is to minimize your intake while in weight loss mode - use seasonings and spices liberally. Pepper is totally fine. Also the Mrs. Dash seasonings are good - they make you think you're getting salt, but not giving you the bloat. And do all the other obvious things - buy low sodium foods when possible, low sodium soy, limit the diet soda intake, etc.