Hi, there,

I've been lurking for awhile and I've learned a TON of stuff from the great people here!!

I've need some suggestions for low fat foods. I'm on the Curves diet and we're supposed to have 1600 calories, 120 carbs, 180 protein and ... 45 fat per day (plus a Curves protein shake). My problem is that I can never get anywhere near the calories, protein or carbs, but the fat is always over the top.

I guess I shouldn't complain, between the diet and the workout, I've lost 8 1/2 pounds in 2 weeks. Just seems to me that if they are recommending you eat a certain amount of each thing, I should be at least *approaching* the levels.

I guess I should add that the stuff I *know* is low in fat, high in the areas that I need to fill, I don't like. Tofu is right out, hate cottage cheese and fat free cheese is like eating plastic.

I'm averaging 1261 calories, 55 fat, 102 carbs and 86 protein over these 2 weeks (God, I love Fitday!).

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Vegetables, beans, lean meats (tuna and salmon and fish in general are great, seafood if you like it, skinless chicken breast, turkey). There are some decent fat free cheeses out there--Kraft Fat Free American singles are good and even melt well--worth the extra price for the brand name! What about FF yogurt? Fruit is good for adding carbs. Egg whites (perhaps an egg white and veggie omelet with a slice of whole grain toast?).

You might want to cruise around in the Food forum for some more ideas.

I hate non-fat cheese, but low-fat cheeses are OK. Carbohydrates should be easy to add -- any starch or fruit or even dairy will cover it.

Do they give you no guidelines of how much of various food categories to eat, no sample menus, just give you those raw numbers? If you have sample menus but don't like some of the choices (i.e., cottage cheese), then figure out what that item is "worth" in calories, protein, etc. and find an equivalent to sub. This is easy to do with an exchange-based diet, but you can still use the basic info to tweak any plan. You can get more info on exchanges at this page: http://www.mealsforyou.com/cgi-bin/c...exchanges.html

Thank you for the response, miss_elisha! I hadn't thought of beans at all and I have a great recipe for black bean soup! I'll look for the Kraft FF American singles and try that if I can find it in Canada. I've been eating FF yogurt all along.

I've been pretty lite on the veggies, mainly because my husband and I can't find a vegeatable we agree on, other than corn

Thanks again! Heading over to the Food forum

Hi, funniegrrl

We do have guidelines, even sample menus for each day. Curves is an American based company and the diet is written based on American products. Everyone is finding the same problem, the products that are readily available in the stores here have very different nutritional values than what is listed in the Curves books. I got frustrated with crossing things out and double checking every item they list and just decided to follow the nutritional limits set and do it myself. It's just less frustrating than having to do double the work. Granted, chicken is chicken everywhere, but bread isn't bread, the carb values vary by 5 grams per slice. They recommend some Lean Cuisine meals for lunches that we can't find, either, so in alot of cases, I'm just having to figure it out on my own.

It's *great* when you bring it up at the meetings and the leader just looks at you, smiles and tells you to bear with it.

Thanks for the advice and the website is bookmarked and looks like it will be alot of help!