As a single person living alone, I don’t like to cook full meals every day. And Sandwiches and salad can get very boring, and that leads to things like A&W onion rings and bacon cheeseburgers. One thing I do to keep myself away from the fast food places is buy frozen dinners. But when buying them you have to be careful.
Pay attention to the calories and the ingredients.
Here’s some tips for what to look for when buying frozen entree’s. There’s more to it than getting the ones that say Light or Healthy Choice.
~ Less than 400 calories.
400 calories is a meal, so you want to aim for that area. You also want more than 200 or 250 calories, because those won’t fill you up, and then you’ll be prowling the kitchen for something more.
~ Low Sodium
No more than 700 mg sodium per meal. Too much sodium wil lhave you retaining water and feeling bloated.
~ Low in saturated fat.
Aim for no more than 5 gm’s
~High in Fibre.
Fibre is important! Look for meals with at least 2gms of fibre.
~ Veggies.
There are many meals out there with the veggies in them. But to my eye, many of them are high in sodium, (That teryaki sauce in a killer) . So *I* tend to stick with pasta dinners, and have a can/glass of low sodium V-8 juice with it.
I’m not real great at getting all my potions of veggies in, so I’ve gotten in the habit of cheating with the V* juice. It helps. What helps you stay on track?
Sasha,
I don’t stay on track :X. What helps, is being amazingly poor, but I don’t think that’s a solution anyone wants. I don’t eat out, and I don’t buy frozen dinners. Yay professional school. Portion control is very important, and eating small meals, throughout the day, I think. My biggest problem is, I don’t have time to cook, so I’ll starve all day, then gorge on one meal. Healthy snacks throughout the day are good too. If I have time, I’ll cook something and make a LOT of it. I make my own marinara sauce, so I’ll freeze containers of it. That and casseroles, etc. Frozen vegetables make for a quick and easy meal too. I’m well known for having a bag of popcorn for dinner. Or inhaling an entire bag of baby carrots. Or eating plain bibb lettuce for lunch :P.
Hey Sasha!
Choosing healthy between meal snacks is my downfall – I’d much rather have cookies or donut holes than something healthy. I try to keep carrot sticks and/or celery w/Light Ranch dressing for dipping, or a 100 calorie bag of fudge stripe cookies (hard to limit myself to just one bag sometimes – oink). Fat free pudding cups or apple slices w/fat free caramel dip are always good too. I’m not that crazy about many veggies, so I’m always short on the daily requirements there.
Thanks for the great tips!
I know I’m a broken record but fruit LOL (also has fiber) and I keep that bag salad around too for a quick salad before dinner.
have to really watch salad dressing calories, geez, i was pouring that stuff my salads like water, then found out, MAJOR calories in most, the least calories dressing i found was the generic dollar genreal store , ranch, 40 calroies on it
I’ve been working on slowing down my eating. (just an fyi – eating with chopsticks makes for a slow meal. LOL If eating fast is a problem then use chopsticks for everything. LOL)
Well…when we first moved in together we didn’t have much money. So I cooked all our meals and we hardly ever ate out. I bake, broil or grill most of our food. I hardly ever fry so that helps. We have a vegetable with every meal that I cook and I eat fruit for breakfast!
Some great tips here. Thanks everyone. I knwo one of my biggest problems is skipping a food group. I have a hard time eating protein at every meal, and eating a veggie at every meal. I’ve really started to reply on Skim milk and V8 juice to help me get those things in. It slows down my wieght loss progress, but I feel better.
Love V8! And you’re so right, you have to read those labels carefully.
I love V8 too and I feel so much better when I get my fruits and veggies!
I dont add a lot of stuff to my salad (and I like the taste of lettuce so I dont use a lot of dressing) but I figure the good outweighs the bad –or at least balances it out!