Remember how many time I’ve said you can eat carbs and still lose weight? Look! I’m going to say it again: You can eat carbs and still lose weight. Potatoes? Magic little spuds.

@lowcalkristen Easiest & tastiest air fryer garlic parmesan fries (Flip 🐶approved recipe) Makes 2 Serving, 270 calories. Ingredients 👇🏼 600g russet potatoes (or two potatoes) 5g salt  5g onion powder 2.5g paprika 5g garlic powder (or 1/2 tbsp of all spices) 5g grated parmesan (optionally an additional 5g) 1/4th tsp cooking oil Cut potatoes long ways into fry like shapes, lightly coat in cooking oil, add in all spices & parmesan. Cook in air fryer for 20 minutes at 375 degrees or until crispy. IMPORTANT NOTES 👇🏼 – Additional parm is not included in the calorie counts. If you add in the extra parm it will add in 15 calories (285 total) #airfryer #lowcalorie #airfryerrecipes #dachshund #wirehairdachshund #weightloss #cico #caloriecounting ♬ original sound – Kristen

Somewhere along the way diet culture said, “hey you know what would be great and unsustainable so people don’t actually lose weight? cutting out the food group that give them energy and then telling them that they need to workout”. It’s a little sadistic isn’t it? How else are they going to make money without telling you it’s your lack of self control, not their completely unrealistic standards of cutting out a food group.

Lets kill the most toxic myth that carbs are inherently bad and directly cause weight gain – defying the laws of physics. You might have your reasons for cutting them out but most people do not need to cut out carbs and saying generic things like “i avoid carbs” only helps spread the fear of a harmless food group.

I do want to mention that yes, we all know by now that some people need to medically avoid carbs and unless your doctor told you to, there’s no reason to “fear” them. The amount of people who need to medically avoid them is very small compared to the average person. Statistically, the odds are in your favor that you don’t need to avoid them. If you feel better without carbs, that’s fine too – I personally can’t get through a single day without feeling foggy and exhausted without carbs.

While were talking about it let’s kill another myth while we’re at it: all carbs cause you to be hungry for more.

Sure that applies if you’re eating gushers and gummy worms but no, that’s not the case for every carb. That’s really only for refined, processed carbs. Complex carbs like potatoes are among the highest ranking on the satiety index so you’ll feel fuller longer incorporating these with a balanced diet.

So basically what we’re saying is: Eat the french fries. Enjoy your life.

Wait…Spices have calories?

Sorry. I know. I’m going to be the bearer of bad news. All those spices you put on everything to make them taste good? yeah, they have calories too. This recipe calls for 5g or 1/2 tbsp of a few spices. These are the calorie counts of each of those spices for 1/2 tbsp.

Garlic Powder – 18 calories

Onion Powder – 17 calories

Paprika (2.5g for 1/2 tbsp) – 7 calories

Grated Parmesan – 16 calories

You can choose to track these or not, generally speaking I don’t bother tracking them. They are tracked in this recipe in the listed calorie counts but this is 58 additional calories (29 per serving) that generally would go untracked. If you are really close to your goal weight and stop losing weight, untracked foods could be the cause. Three meals a day with 29 extra calories is 609 untracked calories per week which is almost 1 extra pound of weight loss per month.

So how are these low calorie?

Potatoes. That’s it.

Okay, not really. These french fries are low calorie because we are air frying them.

We’re going to use an extremely small amount of oil just to get the spices to stick, when I say extremely small – 1/4th a tsp of oil.

but the can I use says it’s 0 calories? what gives?

It’s not. legally cooking oil sprays are allowed to make their serving size impossibly small – 1/4th of a second spray. Additionally anything that is under 5 calories per serving is legally allowed to be listed as 0. A one second spray is 8 calories, the average spray of a pan is 4 seconds. This is 32 calories of oil that is being absorbed by your food that you aren’t tracking. Again – 32 x three meals a day x 1 week: 672 calories untracked. Just in spices and cooking oil 1281 calories untracked.

By using an appropriate amount of oil and an air fryer instead of deep frying in oil you’ll get the same delicious french fries for a portion of the calories.