Reinventing Comfort Food

When I first started this blog it was while we were cruising on our 42-foot sailboat and the idea was to find ways to make the experience of living on a boat as comfortable as our home had been. This included all the comfort foods that I was fond of making.

The only problem with this is that I succeeded a bit too well and ended up putting on a huge amount of weight. So, the focus of the blog became how to prepare healthy foods in a boat galley (or at home if you were land-bound.) I've lost all the weight and I'm in a maintenance mode now but I'm still learning a lot about how to deal with the emotional traps that spawned the need for comfort foods in the first place. So after a recent bout of super stressful emotions (read: Hurricane Dorian pointed directly at my boat and my kids' boat) I was immediately drawn to the old habits of ingesting comfort food to stave off the stress.

What I noticed, though, was that through the training of the last few months on Noom I was able to find healthier, lower calorie options that still satisfied the need I was feeling. So when I normally would have reached for a huge dish of high-calorie ice cream (like salted caramel) paired with a half dozen chocolate chip cookies and a bowl of trail mix (499+900+ 680=2079 calories) I instead reached for a cup of homemade whipped cream (the real stuff) sweetened with a little Swerve and 2 of the Aldi chocolate pizelles (26 calories each) which I broke into 6 pieces each and scooped the whipped cream with and 2 of Aldi's Choceur chocolate covered almonds with coconut (262 calories total.) I'm still dealing with the stress eating today, and what I really craved was chocolate pudding. I made a batch with skim milk, corn starch, cocoa, and Swerve and it was delightful and totally took care of the cravings. 285 calories for two full cups of it. For the most part I'm able to deal with stress by going for a walk or bike ride, and my goal is to eliminate stress eating altogether in favor of those solutions, but in the meantime I was pretty happy to have curbed it within my daily calorie budget.

You can retrain your tastes

Over the last few months I've also found that you can retrain your tastes. Things that I craved before I can now either pass over or eat much less and be satisfied. Last night I had a couple cups of watermelon cubes instead of ice cream as a dessert. It was delightful. I'm eating much less meat and many more vegetables. Nonfat yogurt tastes great as a sour cream or mayo substitute for me in chicken or egg salad or on tacos. I have a bag of Dove dark chocolate in the fridge that will take me two months to eat because one or two pieces are all I need to be satisfied. All of these things would not have been the case a few months ago.

Greek nonfat yogurt for sour cream on chili

So identify the comfort food that you simply don't want to do without and start the process of reinventing it.

It is possible to reinvent the comfort food.

My comfort foods are usually sweet in nature. My mom always made me tapioca pudding when I'd had a bad day or was sick. We ate ice cream as a family every night while watching TV (the reason I was an obese child.) And I am a chocoholic. As a result, most of my comfort food conversions are on the sweet end.

I've found I can make a wonderful granola topping for my yogurt by lightly toasting a quarter cup of old fashioned oats in a teaspoon of butter then melting one Dove Dark chocolate Promises piece in it and letting it cool. Then I chop up a couple frozen cherries, stir them into a half cup of non-fat greek yogurt with a little vanilla, and top with the granola. 256 calories.

I can make a bakery-quality pastry by stacking 2 sheets of phyllo dough and brushing them with a teaspoon of melted butter then fold the sheets in half. I very thinly slice a half of an apple and pile that in the middle. I sprinkle the apple with a teaspoon of cinnamon sugar then fold it up like a burrito and lay it fold side down on some parchment paper on a baking sheet. I brush another teaspoon of butter on top and bake it at 350 till it's golden brown and the apples are tender. After it cools, I make a glaze drizzle out of powdered sugar and almond milk and vanilla. 270 Calories for a big delicious flaky pastry. You can also get the calories lower by using Swerve in place of the sugar.

My microwave popcorn popper

I've found that by buying regular popcorn kernels (on the yellow Noom list), spraying the pan with coconut baking spray and adding 1 teaspoon of maple syrup before popping it, it makes a wonderful kettle corn. 140 calories for almost 4 cups.

I have a real soft spot for mocha frapuccinos. I've come up with a very good substitute. I freeze very strong coffee in ice cube trays. I take 10 cubes, a cup of almond milk, a 1/4 cup of cacao powder and a little Swerve brown sugar and vanilla. I beat this in my Magic Bullet blender until its slushy. 88 calories for a really big milkshake sized glass.

The one comfort food I've had to stay away from for the moment is bread. Homemade bread is my nemesis. Having that whole loaf there warm from the oven is just more than I have the strength to limit. I do allow myself a baguette when we go to Panera Bread, because it's a single serving and limited in calories. I'm not a huge one for casserole comfort foods, but these too can be modified. Use whole wheat macaroni, almond milk and lite cheese for your mac and cheese. I've also posted recipes for stuffed peppers, multiple soups, pancakes, and many desserts in the sidebar here.

If you have more ideas or want help trying to convert your favorite comfort food, please post them in the comments. Then enjoy!