When Buying Bread, Go for Fiber

We recently started adding sandwiches to our lunch routine, which previously had consisted mainly of things like Subway and Lean Cuisines that were around 300 calories or slightly more or slightly less. Of course, the Lean Cuisines I always bought were the Italian versions, things like the Lasagna Florentine and the Chicken Parmesan, since they felt like you were being naughty without actually breaking your diet,and while eating pasta to boot. I like the Lean Cuisines and Smart Ones because they offer an alternative to a nice hot lunch that isn’t so high in calories and teaches you how to control your portions and hopefully get filled up on less food.

I know there is a lot of criticism out there on them because they aren’t very nutritious and can tend to be small portions that don’t really fill you up, but I personally think they are a great way to re-teach how to control portions while still enjoying your food. For their lack of “nutrition” all I can tell you is that I always add a piece of fruit or some veggies to them anyways, and I get my fiber and vitamins that way, or I add some grated parmesan cheese and a little salad to make it more complete.

Speaking of parmesan cheese, many people don’t know this, but it’s a great low calorie addition to your Italian meals, ringing in at only 20 calories for a whole tablespoon, which goes quite a long way with parmesan cheese. If you happen to like grated romano cheese better, like me, it brings the same amount of calories to the table, so you can add that robust cheesy flavor for minimal calorie count.

Back to the sandwiches and the bread you should choose though. I could tell you to choose a nice, light wheat bread that rings up at about 40 to 50 calories a slice, but I’ve had those before and quite frankly they are like eating air. For double the calories, you can also get double the fiber by buying one of the bigger, more robust loaves of bread, like the kind by Sara Lee and Pepperidge farm which feature nutty, fiber filled selections with things like ground flax seed and whole wheat for maximum fiber count.

You should try for anything 4 grams and above per slice. I even found one at 6 grams per slice because it added inulin fiber to it, and let me tell you, when you eat that bread every day it really does help to keep you regular, which helps contribute to weight loss and healthy weight maintenance. Now, as far as choosing good meats to go on it, I try to stick to only low fat, lower salt meats, but if nothing else I go with low fat. This can be a nice light shaved turkey breast, a light ham, or even a light turkey pastrami, but you won’t get a low sodium count on that one of course.

Once in a while you can splurge on red meats like roast beef or even a london broil, but it’s probably best to stick with lighter meats like ham, chicken and turkey. I don’t add cheese to my sandwich either, just a little horseradish sauce, which is low cal to begin with, and a little bit of light mayo.