Green salads are good for us, we are well aware of that, plus we love them. However, we like to pile on the salad toppings to make our greens more flavorful and balance out the health the aspect of the green salad. Those healthy salad toppings are also piling on the calories. What starts out as a low calorie salad can end up becoming a high fat, high calorie meal.

Here are some ways we can swap the high fat, high calorie salad toppings for healthier, lower calorie alternatives.

If you like the crunch that whole nuts provides as a salad topping, consider this; whole nuts are high in fat and loaded with calories. One tablespoon of whole nuts adds over 100 calories to your green salad. Swap the whole nuts for chopped nuts. Choose the lower calorie nuts like almonds, walnuts and cashews and you will still have a healthy crunch on your salad.

Adding dried fruit to a salad is popular and tasty, but dried fruits are smaller than their fresh fruit counterparts, we tend to add more of them to our salads, thereby adding more calories. A couple of tablespoons of raisins adds over 100 calories to a green salad. Swap the raisins for a salad topping of fresh grapes, which will add more substance and fewer calories.

Tossing some meat in with a green salad makes it a meal. Depending on what type of meat your like on your salad, you could be sabotaging your whole healthy eating or diet plan. Fried chicken, steak or bacon adds fats and calories to a salad. Swap the fried, fatty meats for leaner, grilled pieces of meat. Lean chunks of grilled chicken, turkey or steak will add fewer calories and still give the protein boost for your salad.

Vegetables that have marinated in oil will add more calories to your salad than their steamed or raw counterparts.

Cheese salad topping is where the final fat blow comes from that pushes a healthy green salad out of bounds and turns it into a full fat meal. Cheddar, mozzarella or blue cheese can add well over 200 calories to your salad, even when sprinkled on in a small amount. Plus these popular types of cheeses are loaded with fat, the unhealthy saturated fats.

Swap the unhealthy, high fat calorie laden salad toppings for healthy salad toppings that are naturally low in calories and fat content.