Eating is important! If you want to lose weight, and stay healthy, you shouldn’t skip meals! You may ask why can’t you lose weight by skipping meals. Well you can, but it’s not a good idea. It is better to eat more smaller, healthier meals that to skip meals. Skipping meals changes your metabolism. If you don’t eat, your body goes into a survival mode, and starts to store more fat for future use. It doesn’t know that you will be eating in few more hours.
Yesterday I missed lunch. Not on purpose. I went and ran errands at lunchtime. When I got back, I microwaved a Lean Cuisine meal (Chicken In Peanut Sauce). The box had some relatively long times. Longer than I am used to microwaving these frozen meals. Went it was done, I took it back to my desk. I noticed that some of the vegetables looked burned. What happened? I tried a taste of the chicken and got this yucky burnt taste. I spit it out. What the heck happened? I checked the box. I found out what happened. I had microwaved it for the proper time. But I had missed that I was supposed to have waved it at only 50%! I nuked it at 100%! I through the meal away. It was garbage. I was still hungry. I ended up eating an orange, some Girl Scout cookies (thin mints), and some M&Ms. Okay, not the healthiest lunch, but I was hungy, and I didn have any more Lean Cuisines in the freezer here at work!
I was at the library yesterday, and like always, I check the book sale rack for any low fat cook books. What did I find? I found a Weight Watchers cookbook, and a book titled Lowfat Cooking For Dummies. With a title like that, I had to have it! So I bought it for $2.50 (most of the used books are $1 for hardcovers, and 50 cents for paperbacks…but cook books are individually priced). It’s not really a cookbook, but it does contain over 150 lowfat recipes. The book is more of an instructional manual, or a reference book. It goes into the ways and hows of low fat cooking! There is a ton of info in this book. I have been skimming through parts of it. I can’t wait to sit down and read through it straight. Here is a list of chapters to give you an idea of all the stuff this books has in it:
Foreword.
Introduction.
PART I: Getting Started with Lowfat Eating.
Chapter 1: Where Fat Really Lurks.
Chapter 2: Reading Labels.
PART II: Setting Up a Lowfat Kitchen.
Chapter 3: Slenderizing Your Kitchen Pantry.
Chapter 4: Cooking with Oils, Condiments, and Other Flavorings.
Chapter 5: Using Meat, Poultry, Fish, and Eggs in a Lowfat Eating Plan.
Chapter 6: Dairy Products: The Easiest Foods to Change to Lowfat.
PART III: Over 150 Delicious and Lowfat Recipes Made Easy.
Chapter 7: Breakfasts and Brunches.
Chapter 8: Appetizers and Snacks.
Chapter 9: Salads and Salad Dressings.
Chapter 10: One-Pot Soups and Casseroles.
Chapter 11: Fish and Shellfish.
Chapter 12: Meat and Poultry.
Chapter 13: Pasta, Grains, Beans, and Rice.
Chapter 14: Sandwiches.
Chapter 15: Vegetables.
Chapter 16: Sauces and Gravies.
Chapter 17: Desserts.
Chapter 18: Beverages.
PART IV: The Part of Tens.
Chapter 19: The Ten Most Important Steps in Lowering Your Fat Intake.
Chapter 20: Ten Myths about Fat.
Chapter 21: Ten Terrific Web Sites on Healthy Eating.
Chapter 22: Ten Healthful Newsletters.
Appendix: Glossary.
Index.
I am trying to sample all of the various Lean Cuisine frozen meals. I have a bunch of the Spa Cuisine Classics.
For today’s late lunch I had the Lean Cuisine Pork Stir Fry (roasted pork, edamame & water chestnuts in an asian style garlic sauce over whole wheat pasta). The total calories are 280 with 45 calories coming from the 5 grams of fat. That works out to 16%. Not bad. It counts as 5 Weight Watchers Points. I microwaved it for about 4 minutes 30 seconds. I didn’t even need to cut the film (I am so used to doing that automatically). The pork was okay. The pasta and vegetables were pretty good. I am not a huge fan of stir-fry, so it didn’t come as a surprise that this didn’t bowl me over. I may try it again though. The fat percentage wasn’t bad.
I am still digging through my freezer trying all the different flavors of Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice frozen meals. I have a few Lean Cuisines that I have tried that I just haven’t had time to write about yet.
This morning for breakfast I ate the Lean Cuisine Sweet & Sour Chicken (chicken tenderloins in a tangy sweet and sour sauce with long grain white rice). It has 300 calories and only 3 grams of fat. The 25 calories from the fat make up about 8% of the total calories. That is pretty low fat! It counts as 6 Weight Watchers Points.
The sweet and sour sauce was a little too sweet for my tastes. And it overwhelmed the taste of anything else. The rices was…well…rice. It was bland. I mixed it with the remaining sweet and sour sauce and that helped. But there wasn’t a lot of sauce left to flavor all the rice. Overall it the Lean Cuisine Sweet & Sour Chicken was okay. I love how low fat it was. But other than that I wasn’t big on it.
When I bought all the sale priced Lean Cuisine meals, I was excited to try the meat loaf and mashed potatoes! I love meat loaf! I love mashed potatoes. But looking at the 7 grams of fat, I was hesitant to get too many. I grabbed a few of them though.
I brought several Lean Cuisine meals with me to work, and I tried the Meatloaf With Gravy & Whipped Potatoes for lunch. It has 250 total calories, with 7 grams of fat which make up 24% of the total calories. That’s king of high. Weight Watchers counts this as 5 Points. It took 6 minutes of microwave time, with no steps during cooking. How was it? I was kind of dissapointed. The meatloaf was kind of bland, and was the mash potatoes. I had eaten most of the mashed potatoes when it struck me that I could have sprinkled some Molly McButter on them. Oh well. If it had tasted really good, I might have put up with the 24% fat calorie percentage. But I doubt I will buy more of this one.