Low-calorie advice?

[MaggieTheCat]

Also keep in mind that high calorie does not always mean bad. Stuff like nuts (which are often in granola and granola bars) are pretty high calorie, but they're good for you. Just don't go eating handful after handful or else, yeah, suddenly you have a quarter or even half your daily caloric intake.

Most commercial bars like granola bars aren't very good anyway since they have artificial sweeteners and/or preservatives in them. I'm going to be making some homemade granola tonight; rolled oats, honey, butter, vanilla, salt, and cashews. It's probably not the best thing, calorie and sugar-wise, that I could eat, but I'd rather eat that and know what's in it, than some low-cal store bought stuff with aspertame or whatever in it.

[Parrothead]

Don't know caloric info but I just made this with some fresh basil and it was awesome!

Just, make sure you're rolling the chicken up the way they show, mine came apart as I was taking them out.

[Eireann]

Yeah, granola bars contain sugar - I don't think I've seen any with artificial sweeteners; I won't touch that crap. But if I make my own, I'm in control of the ingredients. I'll limit the nuts and add more seeds, such as sunflower. I'm also getting into making sourdough bread, because it's fermented by lactobacillus; I discovered that when you make your own starter, it DOES get sour! So sour, I couldn't eat the first loaf. I'm adding honey to the next one.

[FreakyGeek]

I'm the opposite way right now, I've got to increase my caloric intake.
But! I love to cook things from scratch and throw together meals.
Sauted veggies is always a good choice, especially if you only cook them enough to steam the outside, so their still crunchy inside.
Its a bit more filling but a really healthy salad:
Avocado, cubed
Red Grapefruit, peeled and cubed
Romain Lettuce, cut into 1 inch chunks
Red Onion, chunked
Toss together in a bowl with a dressing made from vanilla yogurt, honey and lime juice.
Its refreshing, filling and full of healthy calories.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

BUMP~~~
Erieann! How goes it!?
I know you've had a load of stress since you started this thread... >_> ... but now that you are now more caloricly aware... how's the revamp of your diet going?
remember, things like the temperature of your environment and your minimal activity level do matter... as in if it's not 72.5 degrees F (the temperature of your skin, considered 'ideal' by most), then your body is working to warm or cool itself...

[Seshat]

Empty (nutritionally useless or nearly useless) calories:
* Simple carbohydrates (sugar, highly processed grains - eg white flour, high fructose corn syrup).
* Most fats which are solid at room temperature (eg meat fats, butter, lard, margarine) (note: some margarines have nutrients added)

High calorie food you MUST have:
* Essential fatty acids. Found in olive oil, linseed oil, oily fish, some other vegetable/fruit oils. But you only need a teaspoon's worth or less per day. A teaspoon of olive oil on a salad will be plenty, or a serve of an oily fish for dinner.

High calorie foods which are high nutrient:
* nuts and seeds
* lightly processed grains (which are seeds, actually)
* unprocessed or lightly processed oily fruits (eg avocado, olive)
* unprocessed or lightly processed sugary foods (eg high fructose fruits, milk (lactose), honey (sucrose), stevia, maple syrup)
* tubers and bulbs (eg potato, onion, carrot, parsnip, turnip)
* flowers with nectar
* lean muscle meats
* some organ meats

Only eat small amounts of nuts and seeds.
Aim for two pieces of fruit a day, where 'a piece of fruit' is the equivalent volume of an apple you can comfortably hold in your hand. If you want to be particularly careful, chop up an apple and stuff it in a measuring cup. That will tell you how much volume of berries, olives, etc is reasonable for you.

Eat grains which are as lightly processed as possible, so that you maximise the nutrient value. If possible, you want both the bran and the germ, as well as the endosperm.

Oats are a fantastic nutrient source, and most forms that you can buy in the supermarket are very lightly processed - the outer, inedible husk has been removed. The bran is also often removed, because it contains an enzyme that reduces shelf life; but the rest of the oat is either intact, or lightly pre-cooked. ('quick oats' and 'instant oats' are the partially pre-cooked form).
Oat bran is available separately.

You can read up on grains in the wikipedia grains article. (yeah, I know, wikipedia isn't always totally accurate, but it'll do as a starting point for these purposes.)

Grains, especially whole grains (with germ and bran), are very filling. In volume, you can easily have a double-handful of whole grains per day without overloading calorically, unless you're especially sedentary.


Medium and low calorie foods:
* stems, branches, leaves, seed pods, some flowers (eg rhubarb, celery, spinach, lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli)
* some organ meats


For all vegetables, try to have a daily mix of roots (tubers or bulbs), stems & branches, leaves, and flowers. The Australian nutritional body is pushing for people to have five serves of vegetables a day.
A 'serve' of vegetables is much like a 'serve' of fruit - take that apple you can comfortably hold in your hand. That's a good size for your potato, chunk of broccoli, or handful of carrot cubes.
Fortunately, you don't have to try to squeeze down your lettuce, spinach or celery: leaves and stems are low-calorie enough that you can just grab a comfortable handful of leaves or stick of celery and call it good.

For meats, a palm sized serve of meat is plenty. To replace meats with vegetation, add a serve of legumes or pulses, and a serve of cereal grains (one of the grasses). The combination of pulse & cereal grain provides a full protein.
One or two eggs can replace meat, as well.

Milk, cheese, and other dairy products are useful, if only as a source of calcium and additional protein. Skimmed and other low-cream milks, and cheeses/yoghurts/etc made without cream, avoid the problem of adding unwanted fats to the diet; but beware the possibility that sugar of some sort may have been added.

Recipe coming up next post.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

A low calorie "diet" is doomed to fail and I'll tell you why. You can't sustain it over the long haul and your body will only tolerate being hungry and underfed for so long.

Plus, it doesn't really work all that well. My husband and I were at our heaviest when we were trying to cut down on fat and calories. It just doesn't work over the long haul.

This has to be a sustainable lifestyle change.

It's not about the calories or the fat. It's about the carbohydrates and sugars. Which not only makes you fat even while it keeps you hungry, but it puts an incredible amount of stress on your body.

[Monica]

Ingredients

1 bunch kale
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
Directions

Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line a non insulated cookie sheet with parchment paper.
With a knife or kitchen shears carefully remove the leaves from the thick stems and tear into bite size pieces. Wash and thoroughly dry kale with a salad spinner. Drizzle kale with olive oil and sprinkle with seasoning salt.
Bake until the edges brown but are not burnt, 10 to 15 minutes.
Nutritional Information

Amount Per Serving Calories: 58 | Total Fat: 2.8g | Cholesterol: 0mg

Really good and really low on calories! A win-win!

[Mytical]

No recipes, but a suggestion. Keep ice water nearby..when you feel hungry or thirsty..before eating or drinking anything else, drink 16oz ice cold water. Or even 24 if you want. Cuts down on what you eat or drink, and calories

[Seshat]

Generic, highly flexible soup/stew/casserole

Ingredients:

1 serve of a root vegetable per person
1 serve of a stem vegetable per person
ditto florets
ditto seed pods
ditto botanically-fruit/culinary veg stuff (eg tomato, pumpkin)
ditto pulse or legume
ditto grain
if desired, ditto meat
Spices, herbs, salt and pepper to taste.

Necessary pre-prep:

If your grains, legumes or pulses are dried, soak overnight in water. Drain them, rinse them, then use them.


Ideal pre-prep: make a stock
Get (clean) potato and carrot peelings, celery tops, carrot tops, and assorted other vegetable offcuts. Also, if desired, meat bones. Shove into water. Boil while preparing everything else.
When everything else is prepared, sieve the offcuts out of the water-now-stock. Keep the water, that's your stock.


Put all ingredients except the stock into the pot.
Add stock: for casserole or stew, cover the ingredients but keep an eye on it and make sure it always has enough.
For soup, just add plenty of stock.

Bring to a simmer. Keep an eye on it, making sure it never goes dry (if you run out of stock, add water).

If you want a thicker 'liquid' portion, mix a half cup of cornflour (or plain flour) with cold water. Make sure all the flour is dissolved into the water. Add to the stew/soup/casserole while it's simmering, mix until it's evenly distributed. Wait several minutes - if you want it thicker than that, add more cornflour/water mix.

Serve when all ingredients are cooked and the liquid portion tastes yummy too.

Makes more than enough to satisfy every person - if you count, there's 8 'serves' of food in there, and most people only really want four or five for a full meal. You'll have leftovers, which is not a bad thing.

[Seshat]

I often make a variant of the above, which goes like this:

1 serve meat per person.
1 or 2 bags of frozen mixed vegetables, depending on how many servings of the final stew/soup I intend to make.
1 tin tomato soup, or cream of (pick a vegetable) soup.
Optionally pasta, rice, or some other grain-y thing that doesn't need to be presoaked.


It's quicker than the full version, but almost as good.

[FuzzyKitten99]

As a personal chef, I actually specialize in special dietary needs cooking. I have 3 diabetics in my family plus I myself lost about 70lbs post-2nd-baby and have kept it off for 4 years. I do have a culinary degree if that helps any.

I track my diet daily on LiveStrong.com. It's free, but the phone app is not. I may buy it later, but for now I just write stuff down and enter it later.

Like others have said: get to know and love veggies. Lean proteins are good, but try making them like a side dish vs. main attraction. Red meats are good and as long as the fat % is low, eating them 1-2 times per week, at 4-6oz portions are enough to keep your iron stores and nutrients up between.

Increase your spice rack variety. Try to avoid most pre-mixed blends and blend your own. This way you can control the salt volume.

Some standard ones to keep on hand at all times: Coriander, Cumin, granulated Garlic, whole peppercorns (fresh ground makes a huge difference in taste vs. pre-ground), true sea salt (iodized is devoid of any real nutritional value. true sea salt is actually full of minerals that are good for you), lemon-pepper blend, dill, basil, oregano, chinese five-spice, paprika, celery seed, and onion powder.

Want to dip your veggies in something? Try this:

1/3 cup 0% plain Greek Yogurt (i prefer chobani's texture the most over other brands, but you can use any brand)
sea salt (in a grinder)
dill weed (fresh is best, but dried works too)
granulated garlic
onion powder
coriander

Mix the spices in to your taste. Some like more dill than garlic, and V.V.

When I was on my weight-loss program, I lived on grilled anything. Grilled vegetables are the best!

This is what I love to eat still to this day:

10 asparagus spears, trimmed and washed
5 carrots (green top still on, but cut off just before grilling)
Handful of Baby Spinach
1/4 c Feta Cheese (regular)
Olive oil (regular or EV is fine)
Lemon-pepper seasoning
Dried oregano

Fire up the grill (you can do this on a griddle or in the pan, but the flavor that a grill brings to the veggies is unmatched).
Brush veggies lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with lemon-pepper
Grill veggies until JUST tender.
Place spinach on a plate and put grilled veggies on spinach and top with feta cheese and the oregano.
Enjoy!

One tip to know: try to avoid products with processed corn, like corn flakes. There is no real nutrient value in those products and causes your blood-sugar to spike similar to OJ. Processed corn is like sugar-crack to your body.

Fiber one bars (esp the 90 calorie ones) taste AWESOME and if you eat one with a glass of water, it will help keep you feeling less hungry between meals. There are some not-so-nice after-effects with high-fiber anything, but after a few weeks, your body will adjust and you won't react as much to it.

Try to limit dairy intake, but don't cut it out. I have found Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze to be a weight-saver in terms of wanting a bowl of cereal every now and then, but I don't want the calories of 1% milk (I hate skim). One whole cup (8oz) is only 40 calories!

Want a sweet breakfast in a cup or travel mug?

Try this:
1/2c 0% plain greek yogurt
1/4 c frozen mixed berries (bags at most supermarkets are less than $3 depending on your area)
2 Tbsp whole flaxseed (or 1 Tbsp milled)
2 Tbsp Oat Bran (can get this in the bulk areas of supermarkets)
1/4 c. Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze
Water as-needed

Dump all but the water in a blender and puree. Add water if it is too thick. Nutritionally it is under 300 calories. Protein is something like 20g, fiber something like 7g.

I am needing to get to bed now, but I will post more as I think of them.