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Don't eat less, eat smarter!   Making simple substitutions, such as the greens you use in your salad or the snacks you munch on in the afternoon, can help blast away excess fat.  Erin Palinski, a Registered Dietician provided these strategies for cutting calories while keeping hunger at bay.
1. You've traded Wonder Bread for wheat, passed on white rice in favor of brown – now try substituting rolled oats or crushed bran cereal for breadcrumbs in your meatballs.  People who load their diets with whole grains are more likely to lose fat than those who eat the enriched kind.  Whole grains are higher in fiber so you'll feel fuller eating less.
2. Avocado for butter.  This may sound a little adventurous but you won't taste the difference.  Switch out half of the butter in a cookie recipe for mashed avocado.  This simple change will reduce fat content by 40% and cut the number of calories by nearly as much.  You get the creaminess of butter and the fatty taste but less of the saturated fat in favor of monounsaturated kind.  Your cookies might have a green tinge but they also will be chewier and softer.
3. Cauliflower for rice.  Cauliflower is the low-carb dieter's go to food.  Its mild taste makes the veggie a perfect substitute for carb-heavy potatoes and rice.  Cauliflower also has a lower glycemic index than rice so you won't experience that spike in insulin that leads to carb cravings.
4. Spinach for iceberg lettuce.  When it comes to weight loss, any kind of vegetable gets the green light, but if you really want to lose that belly fat, choose dark leafy greens over iceberg lettuce.  The fiber levels are nearly the same but you're sacrificing a lot of nutrients for that extra crunch of iceberg.  Spinach is higher in iron and packs three times as much folic acid.  Research has found that people with the highest levels of folates lost more than 8 times more weight on a low-cal diet compared with those having the lowest levels.
5. Beans for enriched flour or shortening.  Use beans in place of flour or shortening in brownies made from scratch.  It may sound odd, but you probably won't even notice the legumes.  In a blind taste test in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association in 2005, study participants rating brownies made with pureed cooked cannellini beans give the low-fat confections high marks.  If you like to bake your brownies from a box, add a can to a ready-made mix to give your batch a boost of belly-flattening fiber.
6. Sliced zucchini for lasagna noodles.  Increase your veggie intake by layering zucchini or eggplant instead of noodles in your lasagna.  Hiding vegetables in your food increases veggie consumption and decreases the number of calories that you eat.
7. Yogurt for sour cream.  The next time you're preparing a veggie party platter, make your dip out of yogurt instead of sour cream.  It'll have less fat and calories, plus you'll get the bonus of extra calcium.  Dieters who ate three servings of yogurt a day lost 81% more belly fat than once-a-day yogurt eaters.  For a heartier dip, go with plain Greek yogurt.