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If you’re like a lot of people, you have an interest in eating healthy. Unfortunately, eating healthy and eating your favorite foods are not always in harmony. This is particularly true when talking about Chinese food, which is notoriously high in fat and calories when you order it in your favorite restaurant. This doesn’t need to be the case, though. If you know a few basic tricks, you can learn how to transform high-calorie Chinese dishes into low calorie masterpieces.

By changing your techniques and making intelligent compromises, you can slash the amount of calories in your dish dramatically. For the purposes of this example, let’s consider the popular dish called Sweet and Sour Chicken. If you order Sweet and Sour Chicken in a Chinese restaurant, you will get a plate full of deep fried chicken topped with a sweet, thick sauce. A typical serving of this dish can contain more than a thousand calories, or half a day’s worth of food for one person. Most of the calories in this dish come from deep frying the chicken and from the sugar used in the sauce. To offset these extra calories, we can do a few things.

First of all, we need to eliminate the deep fried chicken element of the dish. Reducing the amount of oil in your food is very important because oil is very high in calories. One tablespoon of oil contains approximately 120 calories and when you deep fry things, they soak up oil in large amounts. If the cook is unskilled and fries at low temperatures, the food can absorb even more fat. One way to get rid of the extra oil is to turn to baking rather than deep frying. To do this, you will need to modify your recipe slightly. Most Sweet and Sour Chicken recipes call for dipping the chicken pieces into a batter and then deep frying. Instead of doing that, eliminate the batter and bread the chicken pieces with some Japanese panko bread crumbs. Once you have done that, put the pieces onto a baking sheet and give them a light spray with vegetable cooking spray, which contains less than 10 calories per spray. From there, place the chicken into the oven till it is golden brown. The final result will be chicken that has a crunchy exterior like the deep fried version but with a whole lot less fat and calories.

Next, you can lower the amount of calories in the dish by making wise decisions on what cut of meat that you use. In this example, you should opt for skinless chicken breasts rather than dark meat, which is higher in saturated fat and calories. If you’re cooking other dishes, switch to leaner cuts of meat. In general, cuts of meat that are named “loin” (tenderloin, sirloin, etc) are lower in fat and thus in calories.

It seems that in recent years, everyone is more concerned about their health. As people are becoming more educated about caloric intake, cholesterol, saturated fat, and sugar, they’re beginning to shy away from eating some of their favorite foods like Chinese takeout from their local restaurant. Indeed, eating at an Asian restaurant or getting takeout is like navigating a culinary minefield, where every misstep is like stepping on a calorie and fat laden bomb. There is hope, however, for those of you that enjoy Asian cuisine and still want to include it in your diet. A lot of the unhealthy elements of Asian cuisine come from bad cooking methods. By learning to use low calorie Chinese cooking methods, you can recreate your favorite dishes at home that are healthier and tastier than anything you can get at a restaurant.

The first thing that you can do to make healthy Chinese food at home is to avoid deep frying. How many times have you eaten at your favorite establishment only to find that your meat and even vegetables are swimming in pools of fat? Unfortunately, this is the norm rather than the exception when eating out these days. Oil is bad for you because it is high in calories and is in some cases high in cholesterol and saturated fats, both of which contribute to heart disease. One tablespoon of oil contains approximately 120 calories. Whatever you do, avoid deep frying as a cooking method. When food is deep fried or cooked in copious amounts of fat, the grease can soak up into the food, creating high calorie dishes that are high in cholesterol and fat. You can prevent this by cooking at home. There, you can control how much and what kind of oil you use. You can even get rid almost all of the oil all together if you invest in a non-stick skillet and use vegetable cooking spray.

Instead of deep frying, try other cooking methods to control the fat. For example, say you’re using a Chinese recipe for sweet and sour chicken. The chicken in sweet and sour chicken is traditionally battered and deep fried where it can soak up a lot of grease. Instead, try breading it in bread crumbs, giving it a light spray with cooking spray, and then baking it in the oven. You’ll still get the textural element of crunch that is similar to a deep fried item, but you’ll get none of the extra oil and grease.

Another low calorie cooking method that you can use in your Chinese kitchen is steaming. Steaming relies on the heat of water vapor instead of oil to cook your food. By using this technique, you don’t have to use any oil at all. On top of that, steaming is also a gentle cooking method that enables you to retain a lot more nutrients and vitamins in your foods than with other techniques.

Diet is very important to do if you have excessive weight. Many diet programs require you to manage food consumption and exercise. Between managing food consumption and exercise, many women consider managing food as the hardest part. Millions of women are restraining hunger while they are dieting. But in the end, these women are still unable to lower their weight, because they often eat large portion of food after their diet program ends. One of the ways to reduce hungry feeling but still reducing your weight is by eating snacks.

Many people think that eating snacks is one of the main causes of weight gain. This is not entirely true, because as long as you pick up the appropriate snack, it does not give you additional weight. Snacks can give you full feeling all day long. These are several tips on choosing healthy snacks.

1. Ask yourself whether you are actually hungry or just feeling other emotions. People often say that they are hungry but actually they are just bored and thirsty. To make sure, you can start by drinking a glass of water. If you lose your appetite, it means you do not have to eat anything.

2. Control yourself to only eat small portion of snacks. You may have snacks several times a day but in a small portion.

3. I am sure your diet program gives you explanation about types of foods that you can eat. Choose snacks that follow the explanations of your diet programs. Almost all diet programs recommend vegetables and fruits as snacks. Fruits and vegetables are low in calories and do not contain fat at all.

4. You should reduce your habit of eating foods while you are driving or watching TV. Spend a little time to slowly eat your foods or snacks and enjoy it.

5. You should prioritize snacks that have high protein. Protein does not give additional weight but it builds and keeps healthy muscles and bones.

6. Peanut can be a good snack option. If you do not like ordinary peanut, you can substitute it with soy nut. Soy nuts are really crunchy and healthy.

7. Choose snacks that hive high fiber. High-fiber foods take longer to chew and digest, so you can feel full for longer time. Yoghurt, oatmeal, high-fiber cereal, smoothies and pasta are examples of high-fiber foods that you can consume.

8. You should drink enough portion of water to balance your snacks. Besides to help you stomach to digest foods, water is essential to reduce your weight.

9. Substitute your milk with skim milk or low-fat milk.