Low-calorie Recipies

[Miss Wiggle]

trying to eat a bit healthier at the moment, i'm a pretty decent cook but my speciality is cakes and baking, i get pestered all the time to make cakes for work, this coupled with a love of creamy sauces is not good for my waist line!!

So trying to make sure i get my 5 fruit and veg a day and to just cook healthier meals, but i've also got a fairly hectic full time job and don't have a huge amount of free time in the evenings so I need nice easy fixes.

would appreciate any nice healthy easy/quick recipies you guys have for evening meals. Also I'm trying to take nice salads and things like that to work for lunch but my salad repertoire is a bit limited.... any suggestions for nice stuff like that, easy lunches that I can throw together in 15 mins in the morning before work or make up the night before.

Thanks

 

[AQUAKING]

I am of no help but i would also like to know if anyone has any!

 

[tucan]

i make lunches for my other half. sometime i make a pasta salad the night before so is ready the next moring. the left over can be for dinner or left for couple of more days in the fridge.

any shape pasta,chick peas, rocket, chopped red peppers, sweet corns.

cook the pasta, and when is almost cooked add the chick pea, drain and left to cool. once is cooled, add peppers, corn and rocket, and mixed. mixed with some olive oil and vinegar ( i like cassie balsamic - is a little sweeter than actual basamic vinegar) you can keep the oil mix seperate until when you want to eat as it tends to make the veg soggy. of course that depend on your preference.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

ok, well i'm doing fairly well so far, been on my healthy eating plan for about 2 weeks now and I've lost about half a stone, best thing being I've done no exercise whatsoever

yeah i know it's bad and I should be doing more, but I travel a lot with work so I'm often out of the house at 4/5am and on a train and not getting back until 7/8 at night then having to sort out the pets, do the housework, cook some dinner etc etc, never seem to find time for the gym.

I'm actually feeling really great at the moment, starting to get my confidence back, got loads more energye and feeling generally pretty positive. Plus Ian's been trying to tactfully say 'you look great' without implying that I didn't before

However here's what I've been doing and some of my recipies

My basic plan is to make sure I get 5 fruit n veg every day and aim for 1800 calories (women are meant to have 2000 a day so it's safe to cut back a couple of hundred for a diet, you're not meant to go below 1500 a day as your body stops metabolising food properly and converts it to fat reserves), not get takeaways and make sure I'm doing home cooked meals, they don't have to be super healthy but just not loads of rich creamy cheesy sauces and bulk them out with veggies rather than extra potatoes, pasta, rice or meat.

I'm allowed as many snacks as I like, as long as they're fruit! I tend to only like expensive fruit like strawberries, mango's and watermelons but decided stuff the cost of it if I've got to cut out a lot of my favourite food's then I'm at least gonna replace them with stuff I can enjoy eating. So on my desk at work I've generally got a punnet of nectarines, plums, strawberries or something like that, then a slice or two of melon or some grapes for the day.

Then I'm having salad for lunch, but nice salad with tasty stuff in, been making different salad's every day with various combinations of the following in

lettuce
tomatoes (various cherry, baby plum etc and normal ones)
cucumber
peppers, also baby sweet peppers which are lovely in a salad
Red Cabbage (gives a nice crunch)
Weight watchers smoked bacon (very lean and only about 28 calories per rasher, grilled)
avocado (got a few calories in but it's really good for you so it's fine)
smoked salmon
boiled eggs
ham
prawns

generally I just have a homemade vinegrette which is 2 parts of extra virgin olive oil and 1 part white wine vinegar with a bit of salt n pepper and wholegrain mustard. The dressing is fairly calorific but most of the cal's come from olive oil which is actually dead good for you and for reducing cholesterol (which is a problem in my family) so providing you don't drown the salad in it that's fine.

If I'm really hungry at lunchtime I've got packest of flavoured cous cous, I can make one of these and bulk out my salad with it.

for my breakfast I have two slices of granary bread with crunchy peanut butter and a cup of tea with 2 sugars.

So my breakfast is 370 calories, lunch is usually between 300 and 500 depending what I've got in my salad, the say another 100 calories or so for snacks of fruit. So I can normally have something like 600-800 calories in the evening which actually leaves me quite free to eat what I like.

If I really fancy chips I've been doing roast parsnip chips instead which although still a little fatty cos of the marg i roast them in are a whole lot better than chips and I actually think they taste better too.

If I'm really craving a creamy sauce then I use creme fraiche instead of cream, again I actually think I prefer the taste. One of my favourites is to do a sort of carbonara type pasta. Fry off my weight watchers bacon, some finely sliced red onion, garlic and mushrooms, stir in a tub of creme fraiche and a little big of grated cheese, season it, just heat it through for a minute or two and then stir through cooked taglitelle.
It's not super healthy but it's significantly better for you than doing it with cream and eggs and can satisfy that creamy sauce craving!!

I'm grilling all my meat where possible, if I need to fry something I use olive oil instead of butter.

Trying to eat loads of fish like salmon and tuna steaks.

I stuck up a salsa recipie a week or so ago and that's a really nice sauce if you want something light and healthy

ummm not many actual recipies there just some ramblings, hope it helps you out a little though aquaking!