The challenge:  To eat popcorn for a snack

This might sound like a challenge that doesn’t quite fit into the 52 weeks to simplify your life, but in essence it does.  How many times a week do you grab those chips, cookies, or other snacky foods to fulfill your cravings? What I want you to do this week is swap out your favorite snacks in exchange for air popped popcorn.

Why make the change:

For most of us, we eat badly.  We eat processed foods because they taste great.  We are over weight.  We are bound to snack companies for their foods that make us fat, clog our arteries, and are turning our children into diabetic adults.  We need to stop this madness.  It all begins with a bowl of air popped popcorn.  Sounds simple right??

Did you know that popcorn seeds are very inexpensive?  They cost a fraction of the price of a bag of chips or bag of candy.

Did you know that you can get the benefits of eating whole grains with popcorn?  Popcorn contains fiber—a necessary dietary need, which for most of us –we do not receive enough in our daily diet.

Did you know that popcorn is a dieters dream come true???  Popcorn is a great “filler” food that when properly made, can contain only a trace amount of calories per serving.  Which in turn means that you can eat a huge abundance of it and not gain very many calories from it.

How to make the change

In our family it begins with a 25 lb bag of popcorn seeds.  We keep this in a 5 gallon bucket in our basement.  We fill up our 2 –air popcorn poppers and start popping.  It fills our largest bowl.  After the bowl is filled with spray it lightly with spray butter.  Then we sprinkle it the sea salt.

For those that would like more of a flavoring but still stay healthier than a bag of chips?  I would recommend getting popcorn flavorings.  We enjoy the white cheddar and ranch flavors.  They are a much better alternative than oil laden potato chips but still give your popcorn a nice flavor.

We have popcorn on a regular basis around our home.  The little ones look forward to it, and I enjoy it as it is a great filler food when I feel the need to snack on foods.  Anyone for a movie??

Try this for a week, see how much better you feel by substituting this for snack foods.  Continue doing it for the next few weeks and see the difference in weight loss.