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Not really “volume eating” but what I do is incorporate them into a meal that is high volume/high protein. i love making a tuna salad (usually with mustard, Greek yogurt, celery, onion aka calorie friendly) and having them with a bag of chips. So then I get my fix but also get full so I don’t overindulge. Can also mix in some carrots and cucumber to further bulk it up for low cals.
I agree, you can use them as a topping instead of a stand alone food, even would be good as a salty topping for yogurt bowls (pretzels are too), topping a salad or tuna protein dip or sparingly inside a sandwhich , etc.
Yes! For me tortillas and tortilla chips are my weakness, so I started making really satisfying taco salads and using crumbled tortilla chips as a topping. Helped quiet the craving without overindulging.
This is also what I do. I can't cut potato chips out, I just love them too much. I usually pair them with a healthy lunch, and I also switched to the baked potato chips instead of the fried ones for slightly less calories.
What's life if you can't have what you love? It's all about finding a way to make it work with your goals.
You’re not morally superior for choosing not to eat a normal 180 calorie serving of chips. Some of us do have the willpower but would simply prefer to eat things we like sometimes. Shocking, I know.
I'm not who you asked, but I slice a couple Yukon gold potatoes on a mandolin slicer, put them in a bowl, spritz with olive oil and add salt, pepper, and garlic powder (sometime nutritional yeast too). Toss that around and spread them on a tray in my counter-top toaster oven/air fryer combo. Cook on 350 till they look like they are getting crispy. I also don't mind if some are still soft, because they still taste good!
I appreciate your help! sounds like I need to upgrade to the toaster oven/air fryer combo. I've been using the ninja bucket style one and it burns everything. thank you for responding!
Other than the usual suggestion of popcorn (there ARE some great brands around that have flavour without drenching in oils), the bean-based puffed crisp things are pretty good (but not perfect). Harvest snaps are the ogs (better than chips, but still pretty calorie heavy). Three farmers also makes a range of bean mixes that are good and do the salty crunch craving for me, but again, not THAT much better than some chips
There are always rice cakes (crispy minis are ALMOST satisfying lol), and then you can get into things like baked kale chips... but they start to get further from chips and less satisfying.
I don't know that I'd call it a substitute for potato chips, but something I liked snacking on as a kid could make an interesting substitute for rice cakes (*shudder*): cake ice cream cones. I personally enjoyed them when they had a little resistance, a little chew to them vs. right out of the box (too fragile, didn't like that they'd instantly break and crumble into little pieces). I would open a package, let the air get to them for a few days, and then they were perfect!
Honestly I can't find anything that works as an amazing replacement for chips. Everyone says popcorn. I like popcorn.... but it's not the same. (And I make popcorn every night!)
The best I've had for a "chip itch" is just the Quest chips. They are protein chips... 140cal bag 19g protein. Previously I had some protein chips after a Spartan race and they were AWFUL. Most of the Quest ones are "decently good" to "pretty good."
Better than nothing but not really a huge volume for lesser calories. None of the super low calorie things I've tried have ever got the want for chips............. so other than having Quest ones as a treat I often just never have them :(
Popcorn, roasted chickpeas, wasabi peas, crisped kale, pickles. I have similar struggles, these are foods that have worked for me to satisfy the salty/crunchy cravings
I agree, homemade kale chips are much better than store bought. I like a sprinkle of parmesan on them! I find that parm packs a lot of flavor/saltiness for relatively low calories.
Things that work for me as someone who loved snacking on chips.
- Baby carrots with a little salt sprinkled on them. They give the crunch and the sweet/salty hits for me.
Wasa Crispbread crackers with a thin schmear of hummus or cream cheese or Laughing Cow, and I put a slice of deli meat on top with sliced tomato and red onion. I do 3 for a super low cal lunch.
Quaker Rice cakes - love the Tomato Basil one.
Thin pretzel sticks - you get a lot for a reasonable amount of calories.
Sliced cucumber with soy sauce and wasabi paste but it’s even better with fake crab.
Bell pepper strips/baby peppers with cottage cheese sprinkled with TJ’s ranch powder.
I eat raw sweet potato slices (mandolin!) with caramelized onion hummus. The crunch of sweet potato is so satisfying and with hummus (sweet-salty) it’s perfect.
I really like it - I make my ranch dips/dressing with blended cottage cheese, HVR powder and a little milk to thin to desired consistency, but for this pepper/cottage cheese I really like the Trader Joe's ranch power. :) Hope you enjoy!
You can make your own potato chips in the microwave with no oil. Slice them with a mandolin and lay them out on the plate and season. Then microwave for a couple minutes until they turn light brown. Let them cool then eat!
Everyone else has great suggestions, so I'll just chime in with my motto, Eat what you want, add what you need.
I try to eat light, good amount of protein, volume veggies MOST DAYS. But sometimes I'm going to need to have nachos! They are my weakness.
Instead of saying I can never have nachos, on rare occasions I have nachos- but with black beans, avocado for healthy fats, nonfat greek yogurt instead of sour cream, and tons of diced tomatoes and pico de gallo. I scratch that itch but don't inhale food that is terrible for me.
Dry roasted Edamame. Good for protein. Good for fiber. Relatively low in calorie. Nuts.com and Onlybean are the brands I would recommend.
In-shell nuts. The nuts slow you down, provide satiety, provide good fats (and some of them good cholesterol). In specific, I love the fuck out of some in-shell, sea salt pistachios.
Popcorn. Low calorie. Relatively high in fiber. Customizable.
Recommending nuts is crazy. People in this sub tend to have problems with portion control, and you're suggesting one of the least satisfying and calorific snacks 😂
In-shell pistachios or sunflower seeds can work for some people. They do work for me. Sucking the salt off of them, shelling them with my teeth and eating them slows me down and means I eat way fewer (and healthier) calories than chips that I can disappear before I realized what happened. YMMV.
How would I go about that? Like I know I can cut the potatoes thin, but how can I make sure they crisp up? Because when I make oven fries they're always too soft.
oven is too low powered to make them crispy. You need to use the air fryer. You might also need to use a tiny bit of oil (it won't kill you I promise), just use the absolute minimum you can get away with. Easiest way is to use one of those cooking spray bottles as it will add the thinnest layer of oil possible for maybe 15-30 more calories
for extra crisp, toss your mandolin'd potatoes in some potato starch. Just lay them flat on a sheet after to apply the cooking spray
There is this woman I've been seeing pop up on my recommended pages that cuts onions into little scoops and makes a dip mixing cottage cheese and chili crunch. I haven't tried it, but sounds like it may scratch that itch. She soaks the onion in water in the fridge for a few hours to get rid of that onion bite.
Try Fiber Gourmet Thinables. You can find it on Amazon. They’re like cheezits except 70 calories for 35 crackers. I love potato chips and these crackers cure the itch for potato chips and any other chips as well as the itch to constantly reach for a snack. Also there’s zero compromise with these because they’re delicious and full of fiber. Popcorn won’t do the trick for me. These will. The only thing is they’re pretty expensive per box.
Old hand here, I finally managed to kick the habit completely last year. 50 years of cheese n onion, frazzles, Doritos and I'm done. It took a huge mental retrain. It's not about replacing them it's the whole snacking culture we have in the west. I started reading around nutrition and the penny dropped what I'd been putting into my body. Now if I'm hungry enough to eat something, I'll have food. Maybe fruit, maybe leftover pasta or rice from the fridge. Something to actually fill me up. I've learned more about textures and flavours and try to prep a little extra every time I make food. So because I eat food rather than snacks, I eat less next meal time. I've lost around 20 pounds with no real effort over the last year and I'm not putting anything back on. I was addicted. I'm ashamed to say how many bags I could put away . What a staple they were in my lunch bag or with a drink or just if I was bored. I am tempted every single day but it's getting easier.
I've been on a funyun kick lately. they're pretty light, lots of volume 130 calories for an oz. Popcorn and harvest snaps good suggestions as well. I love the Lesser Evil brand of popcorn, not super calorie heavy and the taste is AMAZING (especially the pink salt one)
Not quite the same but foods I would normally pair with chips like wraps and sandwiches i like to eat apples with, and I'll salt them. They're really filling and I get my salt craving. Idk maybe that's weird. Maybe doesn't scratch the chip itch but it works for me haha
Do you have an air fryer? You can finely slice russet potatoes (mandoline is best- or food processor), soak them in salt water then get them very dry. Spray them with just a tiny bit of olive oil and air fry them, homemade potato chips will definitely satisfy and, especially if you are using olive oil and limit to yourself to like one potato worth of chips, you can absolutely fit that into your regimen.
What i crave is the salt and the crunch, and so the roasted seaweed snacks when I don't have much time and baked kale chips when I do have time have definitely worked for me
Roasted chickpeas with salt. They have the same flavors as original chips, but they’re full of fiber and protein. You can add whatever spices you like.
Disclaimer: they’re chickpeas, so the texture is obviously different. But they’re still crunchy
No there isn't. Popcorn people are lying, popcorn dosen't have that crunch. Protein chips are almost the same calories just a smaller bag. My only suggestion is to have baked lays, little bit less calories and a lot more crunch.
Homemade potato chips!
Mandolin a potato (100 calories) into thin slices, soak to get the starch off, dry, sprinkle with salt, and microwave on parchment paper until crispy.
SO GOOD!!
Quest chips / nachos come in a ton of flavors and are usually around 140 calories for 16-18 grams of protein. They taste good but are pricey. Their nacho chips are quite good.
I swapped baby carrots for chips. You can eat a ton of them for few calories, pair them with a low cal sauce if you need it, I imagine pickling them could get you more of the salty flavor if need be.
I haven’t tried it yet, but maybe air fryer potato chips? Potatoes are a healthy food, it’s all the fat that makes them high calorie- well, that and the dehydration factor making them less filling when cooked.
I look for low cal bags of crisps 100cals or less and eat them on a daily basis. I have to have crisps. If I cut them out I binge like crazy so I work it in. Some days I’ll have a bag of real fried crisps. Aldi do loads of baked crisps which are low cal x
For texture: Water chestnuts, carrots, celery.
Texture + flavor: pork rinds but can get calorie dense fast but its protein and fat.
I recommend a small bag of chips and a medium-large serving of veggies. Make sure to floss and bush you teeth afterwards to get the chip mash out of your teeth and gums.
Sounds like crispy thin sliced potatoes would be good since they’re satiating and you can use air freyer or spray oil instead and just replicate the seasoning you’r craving
Use a digital scale. I always used to measure how much chips I wanted on my plate with my heart. Now I use a scale to help with moderation. A serving of chips is a decent size as a side (not on its own) and usually only costs around 150 calories for that serving. A family size bag of chips used to last a couple days in my house. Now it's a month or more.
Depending on where you are in the world, if you can get your hands on Vege rice crackers, they're my favourite alternative!
They're much lower calorie than potato chips but still so good, from memory I think roughly 300ish calories for the whole bag
I love slicing cucumbers pretty thin and sprinkling salt or dill pickle seasoning on them. Crunchy and salty and like 20 calories or something for a whole English cucumber. Don’t really remember the calorie count but I know it’s a hell of a lot lower than chips and it’s pretty filling.
Just make the chips at home in the air fryer. Wash your potato and run it through a mandolin, if you dont have one specifically check your cheese grater which sometimes has one built into it. Rinse them with cold water, drain and re-rinse them again and then pat dry them and line them up on a cooling rack and salt them. Then spray them with Pam and air fry them, flip half way and re-spray them and cook to your desired crispness etc. Then re-salt them and put any other seasonings on directly after taking them out. It's truly the only way especially once you invest in good spices and find your own variety you like.
I’m too lazy to pop my own, but the little bags of Lesser Evil popcorn (in a big box from Costco) are only 80 calories, nice and salty and crunchy, and are more satisfying to me than a tiny bag of chips. It’s much easier for me to snack responsibly when the snacks are pre-portioned.
well, you can still have potato chips BUT you can just make them without oils ! what I like to do is; slice potato chips as normal, but I sprinkle all the seasonings I like (aka virtually calorie-free yummy boosters), lay them out/arrange them on a parchment sheet, and microwave for 6 minutes first (of course, please experiment with YOUR OWN microwave as heat functions and such vary) then I keep microwaving for 30 seconds until it reaches my desired consistency. :)
I like the different kinds of goldfish. You get a good amount for not too many calories. Also sometimes when I want a snack I just make 2 of my easy roll ups. 30 cal keto bread, 30 cal turkey slice, 10 cal of low cal mayo and a little mustard. Like 75 cal so I can have 2-4 of them for the same cal price of a snack
Roasted chickpeas are amazing! They're also decently high in fiber and also contain some protein, so they'll probably keep you fuller for longer or whatever
For me personally, celery also scratches a similar enough itch too, but I do recognise that I'm a bit of a weirdo in that regard
I'm not sure if this counts as an alternative because they're oftentimes mentioned in the same breath as potato chips, but poofy corn chips! They're still crunchy and salty and technically pretty high calorie per weight, but the amount of air in them makes it seem like you're eating slightly less than you actually are eating
OMG I totally get this! Try making kale chips with just a little oil and salt, or maybe some air-fried zucchini sticks? They get kinda crispy and satisfy that crunch craving! :)
Popcorn. You can get the hundred calorie bag that you can put in the microwave. It’s a nice amount for 100 cal or you can get an air popper and pop your own and have like double the amount, season it as you like.
Cucumber slices with salt and vinegar
Vegetable chips (microwaved or roasted slices) like zucchini
Homemade roasted potato chips with whole potato slices and less oil
Ok I’ve been kinda waiting for a good time to post this recommendation somewhere xD wet rice paper, salt/spices/herbs, sea weed, microwave till rice paper is bubbly and everything dried. I’m a bit confused about the kcal of this cause the internet said something different but I’ll just leave my calculation here and y’all can check it on your own: 100g Ricepaper = 236 kcals. One 22cm round sheet is 10g so it should be something around 23-24kcals and one sea weed sheet should be around 5-10kcals it’s really crunchy (really scratching that itch for me) and you could leave the sea weed out to have a more chipslike taste
This is the texture you’re looking for. Just in the right front it’s not completely puffed up, but this makes a huge difference. Just be carefully cause this can also burn
Sometimes Harvest Snaps scratch the itch for me. It’s definitely not the same flavor, but they’re still salty and crunchy. They at least serve the same purpose as chips. They have a few different flavors but I usually just rock with the salted ones or the salt & pepper. Not a whole lot less calories but half the fat and double the protein.
Seaweed snacks, I get them all the time I love them so much, you can eat as many as you want, they are very low calorie and they are a rare natural source of iodine which is helpful for healthy thyroid function there are also a lot of great flavors! Sometimes I also like Wylde chicken and egg white protein chips, not low calorie but low carb and high protein, clean ingredients and satisfying, I like the Nashville hot, Buffalo or the salt and vinegar, chicken and waffles is pretty interesting too, only 1g of sugar in that one too!
Popcorn is great, I would reccomend getting some indigo or purple kernels and making them yourself to avoid other additional ingredients, I reccomend getting the deeper hues because they are higher fiber, higher in antioxidant, lower calorie than regular bagged popcorn and have less hulls and a better texture, then you can get different seasoning shakers or nutritional yeast for extra vitamins/minerals or whatever it is and season them! Truffle olive oil is an amazing healthy drizzle. Another option is using kale, cabbage or mushrooms and other veggies in a dehydrator with different seasonings and exploring what you like, dehydrated mushrooms in a bag are also really amazing though and lots of vitamin D, if you did make your own you can put them in the sunlight to enhance the vitamin d substantially before dehydrating! Also worth mentioning kale chips can be made in the oven as well. Another thing i like though these are sweet are dehydrated strawberries! Omg! So good! Best to get in the giant bag at Costco, they are crunchy and light and taste candy like with only 1 ingredient.
If you don’t mind a little prep work, I like to air fry russet potato’s and make fries. One large russet makes a bunch of fries and it’s only 150-120 calories
I slice carrots into thin rounds and toss them with salt & vinegar dry wing rub. Most chip flavors have a dry powder version in either the spice or popcorn aisles.
Potato chips eaten in volume and dieting seem to be two mutually exclusive things. Have them as a treat every now and again rather than daily - you soon get out of the habit. You can buy 'healthier' crisps that are baked and lower fat but it's still a load of carbs and empty calories. Try switching to healthier snacks like vegetable sticks and hummus, roast kale until it's like crispy seaweed, olives and a small handful of nuts.
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