How to eat a little bit healthier during March Madness

March Madness is here, which means there will be non-stop basketball through the rest of the month. On the first day of the NCAA tournament, there were 16 games played in fewer than 11 hours. No human being can digest that much basketball without food to fuel them through the day.

The thing is, though, the wrong foods will slow you down, and compounding the wrong foods on top of the wrong foods can turn you into a slug for months. There has to be a way to do this March Madness thing healthier. There just has to be, right?

So I embarked on a short mission: To find out what people are eating when they watch basketball and pose a healthier, but equally tasty alternative for their gameday meals.

All that doughy, cheesy, porky goodness is a staple of sports food choice. Got a big football game on? Order a few pizzas. Snoozing your way through a baseball game? Pizza will wake your ass up. And if you’re trying to power through 16 college basketball games in the first round of the NCAA tournament, you can’t go wrong with ordering a pizza, especially if you have some friends to body it with you.

But consider this: One small Dominos pepperoni pizza pie is 1,235.3 calories. Who orders a small, and who only orders one topping?

If you’re willing to ditch the pork on the pizza, there’s a much healthier and tastier alternative. You’ve heard of a margherita pizza before, right? And no, not like the margarita you order in pitchers.

It looks a little something like this:

A margherita pizza includes fresh mozzarella, parmesan cheese, tomato sauce, basil, sometimes garlic, and olive oil. You can get toppings on them, too, and those toppings are often fresher than the ones you’d get at a fast food pizza chain.

Often times, a margherita pizza is served with an arugula salad on the side. It’s full of flavor, and a large pie checks in at 1,110 calories. Yes, a large margherita pie has fewer calories than a small pepperoni pizza from Dominos.

If this isn’t your style and you really want a traditional pizza, here’s a list from Eat This, Not That! of healthier pizza options you can order from some of your favorite spots:

And if you live in New York, or have so-called New York-style pizza spots near you (pro tip: there no such thing as New York style pizza outside of New York), look for a green slice or a Grandma’s slice.

You can’t have a basketball game without buffalo wings, or any type of wings for that matter. That’s like going to a Mexican spot that’s out of chips and salsa.

But almost every wing spot you go to on game day deep fries their chicken wings in huge vats of vegetable or peanut oil. The result is a 8-to-20 pieces of piping hot, crispy-on-the-outside, steamy-on-the-inside goodness, but it also comes with a high fat and calorie count. It also increases your risk for obesity, stroke, diabetes and cancer. That’s the stuff they speed up at the end of an infomercial.

But there’s a quick fix that can help cut at least some of the risk factors of eating fried chicken wings. Nobody eats just one buffalo wing. They’re like pistachios: Once you get your hands on one, the whole bag is gone.

Instead of getting some deep fried chicken wings, break out the grill, or find a place that grills their wings instead. You could even bake and/or broil those wings for a similar crispy texture.

Just before the Super Bowl, Consumer Report published a recipe for a healthier alternative to buffalo wings. They’re calling them Buffalo Chicken Skewers, and it’s a recipe you can mimic with different sauces. Instead of frying chicken, and instead of using chicken wings, they suggest slicing chicken breasts into strips and broiling them on a skewer in the oven. It looks pretty delicious on paper, though I haven’t tried it out myself.

Another pro-tip: If you’re going to go the textbook pizza and wings route, do yourself a favor: Don’t order pizza from a wing spot, and don’t order wings from a pizza spot. Wings from pizza spots are generally soggy, and the sauces never quite do the night justice. Pizza from chicken wing spots is never good.

The holy grail of sports appetizers can’t be complete without your chip and dip platter. Most people go the Tostitos route for both chips and their salsa, and for good reason: It tastes great.

But according to Fritolay, one serving of Tostitos Original Restaurant Style chips has 140 calories and 115 milligrams of sodium. There are just SEVEN CHIPS in one serving. SEVEN. I don’t know about you, but I lose count of how many chips I’ve eaten before I even start eating them.

Blue corn tortilla chips, at least from Tostitos, aren’t much healthier. They check in at 140 calories and 80 mg of sodium for six chips. Ditching the tortilla chips for pita chips doesn’t help much, either. They have a similar caloric and sodium breakdown to fried tortilla chips.

If you are absolutely fixated on having tortilla chips on your spread, Eat This, Not That! recommends these three bags:

You should also definitely, absolutely go the carrots, celery, and hummus route. They have that crunch you’re looking for, and obviously contain mounds of nutrients you won’t find anywhere else on the platter.

Salsa is mostly made from vegetables, so you can do what you please here. Try not to overdo it with the cheesy queso dip. I’d stick to traditional salsa. My favorite is Desert Pepper, but Tostitos is always more accessible. More importantly, it’s not a big tick in the calorie count. Also, go hot or go home.

Sports and burgers with fries go hand-in-hand, but it’s safe to say we all know a burger and fries isn’t the best bet for your belly. Red meat is one of the slowest-digesting proteins you can eat, and I already explained the health risks of too much fried food earlier. Eating both could be a long-term recipe for disaster.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t enjoy a burger here and there. Matter fact, I might go get a double cheeseburger right now. But if you’re looking for a healthier alternative, you probably already know the answer.

Turkey burgers can be delicious when cooked right. When prepared wrong, they can be gamey and tasteless. If you’re cooking at home, here are is a pan-stuffed turkey burger recipe with spicy mayo from Food Network. If you’re out somewhere, just ask if they have turkey burgers instead of regular burgers. Sometimes, they’ll have grilled chicken sandwiches instead, which are also hella good when prepared the right way.

Are french fries really fries if they’re not fried? No, then they’re just potato wedges, and potato wedges are damn good. You can do so many things with them, and they’re really simple to make. You can go the sea salt and rosemary route, or the garlic-parm route. If you’re really feeling it, you can load them up with other toppings like you would do with nachos, too.

Nothing wrong with a solid, hard-shell taco when watching a flurry of basketball games. But to keep this one short and sweet: the red meat is your downfall here. It’s not as bad as, say, fried chicken wings with french fries, but it does take a toll on your digestive system.

Quick fix: Seafood tacos! A seared shrimp taco or fish taco is light and delicious. Your body will digest it and rejoice after your first bite. Don’t believe me? Order one and if you don’t like it, I’ll cash app you $4.

If you’re into cooking at home, here’s a shrimp taco recipe from Food Network that looks pretty good. They’ve got some combo green and purple cabbage action going on in it, too.

You can also go the veggie taco route, but the last time I ordered a vegetable taco at a sports bar, they put peas and carrots on a corn tortilla and charged me $6.50. Don’t be like me. Make a spicy bean taco at home instead.

Hopefully you found this little list helpful. Eating healthy on game day is a tough task, but eating healthier than you usually would goes a long way. If you think I’ve missed something on this list or have some suggestions, please throw ‘em in the comments or @ me on Twitter. We can debate this for days.

Remember two things: a pizza with pineapple is no pizza at all — it’s an abomination — and if you’re gonna have food for game day, go hard or go home.