[shortandfluffy]

Hello ladies! (and gents if there are any here )

I have posted in this part of the forum off and on. I am a past member of LA. MANY years ago I did LA and lost about 35 lbs. The reason I gained it all back and pretty much just quit is because I got burnt out.

I was eating pretty much the same thing all the time. I ate odd "meals" I guess you could say, so it would fit in with my requirements for the day.

For example:
Breakfast was eggs and some 40 cal. toast
Lunch was maybe a sandwich on the 40 cal bread.. just cheese and light mayo.
Dinner was maybe chicken breast with cucumbers, or broccoli (sp??)

That wasn't ALL I ate, but it was BORING.

I want to learn how to cook meals and figure out how to fit them into LA. I bought a cook book that is 300 calorie meals... . can you use something like that and figure it up to work with LA??

TIA!

[mj2007]

Hi Kelli

You can use the cook book as long as you maintain your portions. That is what I do. Give everything a healthy makeover. Sometimes it works...sometimes it doesn't but I find the following resources very helpful while planning meals.

http://www.eatingwell.com/nutrition_..._day_look_like

http://www.cookinglight.com/food/qui...0400000053319/

Those are my fav. Hope that helps you.

[kaplods]

I've never followed LA, but from the recipes I've seen posted in the past, it looks like LA exchanges follow the "standard." That is they seem to be based on the system developed in the 1950's by the American Diabetes Association and the American Dietetic Association. The exchanges haven't changed much in all those years, and most plans that are exchange-based use the same system:

So if LA exchanges follow this same pattern or one that's easy to translate, you can use any exchange-based cookbook or any cookbook that provides the complete nutrition information, because it's fairly easy to translate the nutrition label information into the exchanges.

The "standard exchanges" follow this pattern (so you can double check if LA exchanges follow the same pattern or one close enough to easily "translate")

protein exchanges average 50 - 70 calories

fruit exchanges - 70 calories

vegetable exchanges - less than 25 calories

bread/starch exchanges 60 - 80 calories

dairy/milk calories 80 - 90 calories

fat calories 35 - 45 calories




I collect exchange cookbooks, and have only found one (so far) that doesn't fit the standard pattern, and that is the DASH diet. A DASH protein exchange is equivalent to 3 standard protein exchanges and they have a nut exchange that is equal to 2 standard fat exchanges (if I remember correctly). You can still use the DASH cookbooks, but you have to remember to "translate" the protein and nuts into "standard."

I love that while the number of servings of the various exchanges has changed over the years, the exchanges themselves haven't - which means I can buy almost any exchange plan cookbook I find and use them interchangeably.

You can also translate any food (if you have the complete nutrition label information) into standard exchanges. I learned how from the the Fourth Edition of the book Exchanges for All Occasions by Marion J. Franz (out-of-print, I think - but you can still buy it on amazon.com) there are instructins (appendix 4 in the back) for calculating exchanges from Food Labels. The other editions may also have this information and there are probably other books or online sources for the information.

[shortandfluffy]

Thank you for the links MJ.. I really like both of those!

Kaplods - wow lots of info! Thank you. I'm going to save all that!