Something else to try (in moderation) is a dab of corn relish on the laughing cow cheese on celery. Yum! But go easy on it - there is sugar in that corn relish. Also with the laughing cow cheese - they just had an ad for it on Aussie TV, "less than 4 g of fat per portion". That is actually a lot of fat, on a diet - 4 g of fat is a teaspoonful.
In Australia, we have after-school snacks of celery spread very thinly with Vegemite. You spread it on with your finger, to make sure it is as thin a smear as possible. Vegemite tastes like solid soy sauce, which is why you should always use it sparingly. It's also loaded with flavour, and salt - other reasons to go easy. But it really doesn't take much at all. It's fabulous convalescent food because it's low fat, zero sugar but high in B vitamins. English Marmite just can't substitute for us.
Vegemite spread thinly on celery should look faintly brown, not black. You spread it on the inner curve of the celery. Eat immediately, or at least within fifteen minutes, because the salt in the Vegemite will draw out the moisture from the celery.
My diet - it's based on the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet, very science-based. The closest equivalent to CSIRO in the US would perhaps be a combination of CDC and FDA. However, I also follow my specialist's advice to cut out sugar, cut out fat. I know from personal experience to cut back on carbs.
The CSIRO diet - it encourages lean protein (about the size of the palm of your hand) at at least two of the three main meals. It also encourages that your carbs be as wholegrain as possible. So we've switched to brown rice instead of white, for example. I try to keep to no more than half a cup of brown rice a day, and one slice of wholegrain bread a day. If you are an active, young person you could double this. Or more.
I don't count calories too much - a bowl of brown rice is allegedly more calories than the same size bowl of white rice, which doesn't make sense - your body uses less calories of the brown. So I only take notice of the calories in a big way, if the food item is NOT wholegrain.
Corn on the cob makes a great snack - yes, it's high carb, but there's so much fibre in the corn, that much of it will go straight through (and take with it any other nasty waste products). I do allow a little bit of butter on the corn - but I do it by rubbing a block of butter cold from the fridge, over the hot corn. I don't cut off a bit of butter, you use more that way.
The muesli recipe - here it is. Take note - I have used rice instead of rolled oats, because I can't eat oats. So use this recipe as you want, mix and match the ingredients to make it suit what YOU like.
Marg's Marvellous Muesli
* 350 mg packet of puffed brown rice (I use a fairly dense puffed brown rice - it is about 6-7 cups in quantity). Substitute rolled oats here if you prefer).
* 150 mg rolled rice (this is very hard to chew, I found it to be like little chunks of plastic. Feel free to substitute some other high-fibre wholegrain)
* 2 cups bran (yes, it's a lot. Choose the bran form as what you want - loose powder, little sticks, bran bubbles even. But if you choose bran bubbles, use the bubbles as part of your puffed rice allowance)
*1 cup small raisins or other sugar-free dried fruit
* 1 cup chopped walnuts
I also add (as part of the nut component, part of the bran component) LSA. This is a blend of ground linseed, sesame and almonds. It looks like loose bran (a bit) but has a nice nutty flavour.
I also add part of the dried fruit component, as other dried fruit such as paw-paw, dried strawberries, I've got some goji berries I'm going to try.
The important thing I've found is to keep the fruit and nuts chopped finely enough so it mixes through evenly. You don't need all the fruit to sink to the bottom, or to get lost on the top so all you have left to eat is the fruit-free powdery bran from the bottom.
I'm still playing with my own recipe. For example, I found a cheaper puffed brown rice - but it weighed a lot less, too. Then when I added the milk, I found the new puffed rice just turned onto a whole lot of tiny sponges and sogged up the milk. Bleah! Because the new rice weighed less, it didn't fill me up as well, either. It also meant most of the bran went to the bottom of the canister, which means it's uneven in how it tastes across the week.
I just weighed a serve - somewhere between 70 and 75 grams. That's without the milk. I use a fat-free milk but that's personal choice.
So whatever recipe you come up with - fiddle with it to make it your own. Use currants instead of the small raisins (we call ours sultanas - they're a small green seedless grape which is delicious dried) or use entirely some other fruit. I have switched from the dried paw-paw because it was too much trouble to cut up small. I've also seen packets of fruit flakes - they're made from concentrated juice and dried fruit, so they would be fairly high in natural sugars so go carefully.
I make up this muesli in a large plastic sealable container. The raw materials are kept in a special plastic bag, to stop people snacking on the nuts/dried fruit component. As I empty a packet, I put it on the shopping list so there will be some for the next batch.
I eat another serve of this muesli as a snack if I'm hungry at other times of the day.
Drinks - low-cal cordial is good. Plain water with a squeeze of lime juice is good, to quench thirst. Chilled water. I also make a form of Frappe coffee with decaf instant coffee, 500 ml water, a splash of low-fat milk and two artificial sweeteners. One of these and I'm not hungry (or thirsty) for ages. It also helps to drink it with a straw. I don't know why, but I enjoy it more that way. I keep a 2 litre bottle of water in the fridge and aim to empty it each day.
Aside from that - I snack on fresh strawberries, one punnet a day.
Good luck!
Marg