making the right choices

I find meal planning is the only way I can kept to my healthy eating plan. And I would be lost without my fitness pal calorie counter. Things you assume are 'healthy' can have much more calories than you think. Especially vegetarian food, which you would think would be lower in calories but can be high in fat.

For me its about keeping it simple, instead of buying a veggie bake, I now try and have a salad and raw vegetables with a lean protein.

I have also swapped my juicer for a vitamix blender. While fresh juice is great its better to either eat the whole fruit or blend it with some spinach to make a green smoothie, so you get the fiber as well. But you need to count the calories even though you are drinking them.

Small changes can make a big difference, and every calorie counts !

[Portlandprincess]

If you've got the time....and inclination, have a go at making veggie meals from fresh produce. huge meals with very few cals.

[andrewleeone]

I got sent out to the shop the other night - 'Go and get me a bag of kale!' Uh? 'Yes, KALE!' Apparently it was for the young people's breakfast smoothies. Kale. Well we live and learn!

You do need to watch for veggie food - I was veggie for decades and overweight for most of that time. If its veggie it must be good for me, so pile it on. Learned the hard way. I agree about how much there is to learn to get this right!

[Portlandprincess in reply to andrewleeone]

Yep am careful to count the cals. And stick with green leaves and generally laway from the potato ....going well so far. I'm not a veggie though, Im just trying new things.

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I've def suffered from the illusion that being veggie is healthy! I was using a lot of oil and frying onions as a base for everything, having far too much rice/pasta/cheese and generally serving over-large portions. But today I made a red thai curry for dinner, very carefully measured with only 80g coconut milk and 1.5 tsp curry paste, and it was well within my cals. In the past it would have been chock full of coconut milk, with sweet chilli sauce on the side, and twice the portion of rice. Not to mention a couple of glasses of wine too... I now see this was like a day's calories in one meal, even if it was veggie and looked healthy, full of veg, quorn, etc. To try and lose weight I found I had to just go back to scratch and make all my meals more simple, but now I've got a grip on calorie content of more of the ingredients that I used to use, I'm finding I can start to have the tasty veggie food again. But in more sensible portion sizes, and being aware which parts of the meal bump the calories up.