4 Healthy-ish Ways to Satisfy Your Cheese Craving

For most people, cheese is one of the first things to go when they consider moving to a fat loss diet plan. After all, cheese is relatively high in calories and contains a decent amount of calories. Both things that you are probably cutting back on now that you’re trying to maintain or lose your weight.

But, what if that craving just won’t let up? How can you deal? The fact is, there are some ways that you can include cheese in your diet without breaking your "calorie bank." You just need some clever meal preparation techniques. Remember that while cheese does provide fat and calories, it also provides calcium and protein — two things you do want to consume.

Let’s look at some of the healthy ways that you can incorporate this food into your menu.

Try Protein Packed Cream Cheese Cheesecakes

Cream cheese is an excellent cheese variation to get into your diet because you can find fat-free varieties of this cheese. If you do opt for the fat-free variety, you’ll get only 20 calories per tablespoon along with a couple grams of protein. It can easily be a part of a healthy diet plan.

Consider preparing your own protein-packed cheesecake by mixing together whey protein powder, cream cheese, eggs, and stevia. Look for a variety of recipes online — there are many high protein cheesecake versions that will keep your diet in check.

Sprinkle Parmesan Cheese Over Baked Sweet Potatoes

Another type of cheese to consider is Parmesan cheese. This cheese variety also comes in light versions and doesn’t contain all that many calories at just 45 per two tablespoon serving. It’s a stronger flavored cheese as well, so often all you need is about a tablespoon or so to really taste the flavor.

To make use of this cheese, try baking up some delicious sweet potatoes with a little salt, pepper, and rosemary and towards the end of the cooking process, sprinkle over with some Parmesan cheese. It’ll add a whole new twist to this complex carbohydrate source.

Prepare A Healthier Pizza

If pizza is what you are after, fret not, you can have this dish and still maintain your goal body weight. To lighten up this classic, simply opt to use a whole wheat soft tortilla as your crust rather than the traditional thick doughy pizza crust. Brush that with some tomato or pizza sauce, and then layer on the diced vegetables, shrimp, pre-grilled chicken, or whatever other lean protein source you want. Sprinkle over top some oregano and then add a light serving of reduced fat mozzarella cheese. As everything else in this recipe is relatively low in fat and calories, you can afford the few extra calories that the cheese provides.

Place it in the oven to bake and you’ll be eating a delicious pizza in minutes.

Snack On Cottage Cheese Before Bed

Finally, the last way to get that cheese craving met is to serve up some low fat cottage cheese before bed. Cottage cheese is another good source of protein and will only provide a couple grams of fat total, so is an optimal pre-bed snack. The protein found in cottage cheese is also slower digesting in nature, so will help fuel your body through the overnight fasting period.

Need to add a little flavor? No problem. Just stir in some natural peanut butter and you’ll be all set.

So there you have some fast and easy ways to satisfy your cheese craving. As you can see, it’s not nearly as hard as you may have thought.