Food Substitutions

Rice
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Instead of rice (brown, white) one can switch to wild rice (I get them at Trader Joe's) and Quinoa. Adding wild rice or Quinoa to soup or yoghurt tastes really great. Also one can make veggies Upma (usually made with semolina) with Quinoa

Bread
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In Trader Joes they have a wide variety of high fiber dense brown breads. Go easy on too many nuts in the bread. Increases calories and one would put on weight. Oroweat has a dark rye (70 calorie per slice) bread (Shwarzwalder) . Good to treat oneself with a slice of this bread with soup for lunch.

Milk
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Switch to fat free milk. Horizon Organic 0% milk brand tastes good.

Cheese
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One can treat onself to a couple of fat free cheese slices. Or fat free feta cheese mixed with chopped tomatoes and dash of salt+pepper

Rotis(tortilla) + Wheat Bran
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If one must have a roti(tortilla) at a meal, then mix the flour with wheat bran (like a 50-50 by volume). Bobs Red Mill wheat bran (available at Lucky) is good and has lot of fiber


Sweets/Desserts
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If one must have a small piece of dessert, try a small square of dark chocolate. Brands I have tried are Ghiradelli (86% cocoa) and Lindt (90% cocoa). At least these have very less sugar.

Oil
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Two ways you can reduce oil intake. When one makes omlettes, take a kitchen paper towel and wipe the pan leaving only a thin film of oil which is sufficient to cook good tasting omlettes. Or one could use Pan Oil Spray.

Sweetening Breakfasts
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If oatmeal at breakfast needs to taste sweet, one could add chopped dates(California Medjool are super sweet) or Splenda.

Fruit Juices
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Eat the fruit instead of the juice. Juices are too sugary whether organic, or freshly squeezed Jamba Juice variety. Think about it. Around 10 or more Navel oranges are squeezed to give you a large helping of freshly squeezed juice. Ever tried eating Navel oranges in one shot ? Thats a lot of oranges. But eating the fuit gives you all the fiber along with the sugars. Thats way better.

Coffee or Tea
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Now that ones food intake is reduced, its likely coffee might give one a stomach upset. It gives me a stomach upset specially if I have coffee on a not-so-full stomach. So I switched to drinking tea. I add ginger, mint to my tea to make it more interesting. Tea also possibly has less caffeine than coffee does.