Ok so yesterday's dinner idea was a total hit with my family but a total flop when I plugged it into fitday, note to self stromboli has too many cals, so anyways I need to find some ideas for dinners that would satisfy the other 3 members of my family yet allow me to easily stay under my daily calorie goal. It's really starting to get chilly here so we've been doing alot of soups and totally getting burned out on that.

Can someone help me with some ideas for kid friendly meals that are low in calories?

I can't offer much help, but what I do is, I will cook for me and my husband, just a regular meal, than eat a much smaller portion and eat a BIG ol' salad with it... sometimes I eat a whole bag of salad if I think I might eat too much of the dinner (I eat the salad beforehand to fill me up)... and a whole bag is only 45 calories! I usually sprinkle some parmesan cheese on it (2tsp is only 25 calories) and some tasty dressing (I can't do light dressing!!) but even the full calorie dressing isn't bad, like 130 for 2 tablespoons.. so the huge salad would be like 200 calories if you ate the whole bag... I usually don't though, that's a lot of salad!...then have a small portion of whatever you cooked so it winds up being only a 500 calorie meal for me...

Hope that helps!

Good advice from eatnothingalive (love that name!).

It's so difficult to keep everyone happy when you have a family to feed! I'm pretty much eating the same foods I've always eaten, but in MUCH smaller portions. For instance, I love making chicken or veal schnitzels and I used to eat two at a meal. Nowadays, I'm just as happy with one piece and a LOT more veggies. I've also found that they taste just as good if I use one tbsp. of oil instead of two when I make them. At breakfast, I now have one piece of toast instead of two. It's little changes like this that make a big difference in the long haul.

My new lifestyle has to be FOREVER if I want to keep the pounds off, and for me that would be unrealistic to think I could watch my family eating yummy stuff while I'm eating something less tasty.

Fitday is a great way to keep track of your calories (I'm doing a similar one - Nutridiary). I was amazed to find I was snacking on over 400 calories just in cheese and nuts each day!

Good luck to you in your weight loss efforts (and keeping your family happy at dinner time)


yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a
gift - that why they call it the present!

What about fajitas? You can get some good low-calorie tortilla shells, they're pretty quick to make -- if you're super-harried and have the money you can probably buy prechopped meat and presliced veggies, either fresh or frozen. A lot of the calories come from what you top them with, and that's easily varied from person to person. I find salsa and a dollop of LF sour cream does well. Just trying to guesstimate: 100 calories for a huge LF tortilla, 80 calories chicken, 30 calories veggies, 40 calories oil, 10 calories fajita seasoning, 30 calories salsa, 40 calories sour cream? That's 330 calories, and you could cut out the sour cream even.

What about pizza. You can ask to have a few slices to be all veggies and lite on the cheese. The rest of the family can eat what ever they want on it.

Thanks for the ideas ladies. I think I"m gonna give the fajitas a shot tomorrow night. Kids are going to grandmas tonight so I'm just gonna eat a salad and let hubby fend for himself.

We do fajitas at home all the time, and I've got all the data plugged into nutridiary... in fact, we just had them tonight! One of my fajitas is just about 200 calories:

1 tortilla (I buy the small ones-- 90 cals)
1- 1 1/2 oz chicken (or have an all-veggie one to break it up)
1 oz or so of grilled peppers (add onions if you like)
4 g of regular sour cream (just a sm dollop)
6 g of salsa
today I added in a bit of avocado (8 gr)
there's a small bit of oil on the grilled veggies, so I add that in...

they are really yummy, and like I said, you can make an all veggie one if you want. Tonight I had 3 and they were great!


We've also done tacos with ground turkey -- another item each person can customize, so you can add more veggies if you like.

I kind of have this same problem - my teenaged son can eat circles around me and not gain an ounce. I do what others have suggested ... vary the amounts. I tend to stick to a loose formula for dinners:

• 3-4 oz meat for me, more for my son
• 1 c cooked vegetables or 2 c raw
• 2 grain servings
• 2 or less fat servings

Usually, for the two of us, I cook three portions of meat: one for me, and two for him. I also insist he eat a certain small amount of whatever vegetable we have with dinner. I also often make a light dinner, and have my son "round it out" with whatever else (a taco from Taco Bell, ramen noodles, etc.).

Well didn't get the fajitas made last night but definetly doing it tonight. I hope it goes over well with the rest of the crew. But then again usually anything that they can put salsa on works pretty well.

What I like to do is to take my favorite recipes and revamp them to have fewer calories. It takes a few minutes to plug the info into FitDay, but it's worth it if it's something you'll make again.

For instance, you can take a simple homestyle-favorite like Chicken and Dumplings and make a quick and easy meal that's healthier.

What I do is boil a couple of chicken breasts in lightly salted water, then when the chicken is done, take it out and set it aside. Then cut up a few low-carb or low-fat flour tortilla shells and throw them in the pot where the chicken was and boil them until done. In the meantime, cut up the chicken into pieces and when the dumplings are done, drain out all but 1.5- 2 cups of broth (or more depending on how much you're cooking) and add 1 can of reduced fat cream of chicken soup to the pot with the chicken and stir until mixed well. Wa la! You can add a can of veg-all, peas, corn, or serve the veggies on the side. It's actually pretty good.

My point is, you can take almost any meal and make it lighter. I also love http://www.allrecipes.com because it lists the recipe's calories right on the page and you can also scale down the recipes to the # of servings you want. They also have a subscription to special light recipes, too. Hope this helps!

I think that making a big pot of veggie and bean chili or pasta sauce with veggies over rice or pasta is an easy/healthy thing that most children will eat. You can also have "breakfast for dinner" with cereal, fruit and toast
or

pancakes, frozen veggie sausages and juice

Off topic: Mandy, you have the cutest signature ever and I want one like that! Where did it come from?

Fajitas where a major hit around here! Couldn't believe it. Thanks for the help ladies. I think tomorrow I'll just make meatloaf and mashed potatoes but eat a really big salad instead of much of the meal.

And I agree Mandy that is the cutest signature.

meatball (lean beef) and veggie stir fry

Hmm that sounds interesting. Usually I use leftover steak or chicken in the stir fry.

Hmmm...I know I'm getting into old threads now (I must be in a chatty/writerly mood this month)....

There are FF hot dogs out there in the 45 cal/each range. You could just skip the bun (or get whole wheat buns). Add your condiments and away you go! Also, another pitch for vegetarian versions of hamburger patties. You could make hamburgers for the other members of the family and substitute a Boca or Morningstar patty for yourself (someone in another thread recommended the spicy bean flavor as especially good). If you're open to trying vegetarian options, there are "crumbles" sold in the freezer section by both Boca and Morningstar that are hamburger substitutes (these are textured vegetable protein). If you use those in a casserole dish that you want to adapt I'm not sure that anybody will figure it out unless you tell them There's a chain in the South that sells frito boat things and they have a vegetarian chili with the crumbles and they have to reassure people all the time that no, it's NOT actual hamburger in there