When intermittent fasting, you grow hungry throughout the day, you are conditioned to reach for that cookie during your eating window. But hold on, there are healthier food alternatives you’ll love within your reach.

When you are fasting, your eating window becomes a precious focus, and every morsel matters. Packing in high-quality nutrient-dense food is essential to long-lasting health. Still, often everyone likes to experience a favorite treat. Whether it’s a scoop or two of chocolate ice cream or a delicious cream puff, it not only tastes excellent, but we think it feeds the soul.

And maybe occasionally it does satisfy and adds value to our life, but more often than not, you must consider making a better choice for your health. Thankfully, there are many healthier food alternatives that you’ll love, all of which are incredibly accessible and delicious.

Knowing Your Nutrients

Understanding food nutrition is essential to make better snack choices. Nutrition is how food affects the health of the body—it’s necessary for survival and critical if you wish to function and stay healthy.

Foods comprised of macronutrients—carbohydrates, proteins, and fats—offer caloric fuel to the body and give people energy. Micronutrients consist of vitamins and minerals, which aren’t caloric but serve many critical functions to ensure proper bodily optimization.

Cooking Substitutes

When it comes to finding healthier food alternatives that you’ll love, cooking can affect your meal’s benefits. You can swap out different ingredients to make your snacks and your meal’s more nutritious, such as:

• Using applesauce versus oil while baking
• Using a whole egg instead of egg whites.
• Using sweet potato wedges instead of french fries
• Swapping Greek yogurt for sour cream.
• Using a smoothie bowl instead of an ice cream dessert
• Incorporating avocado versus mayo or butter

By choosing more nutrient-dense substitutes, you crowd out heavily processed food with low nutritional value. At the same time, you don’t lose flavor or sacrificing quality meals.

Craving Alternatives

As for tackling cravings, there are so many options to choose from for alternatives. While it’s tempting, donuts are incredibly unhealthy, even though they’re so light and airy. Cereal brands also pack on sugar and unnecessary additives and are high in calories, so know what you can swap out.

You can switch out pasta for zucchini noodles, pizza for a tortilla crust, white rice for quinoa—there are so many choices! All taste wonderful; just pick based on your food preferences and restrictions.

Intermittent Fasting adds value to your health and eating your favorite foods shouldn’t hinder your health. Eating provides the nutrition your body needs to thrive, and you can still have your guilty snacks without making them “guilty.”