Video: How to Plan Low-Cost & Low-Calorie Meals

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A great way to plan low-cost and low-calorie meals is to replace half of your typical meal with vegetables in order to cut down on both. Cut down on both cost and calories with tips from a certified diabetic educator in this free video on nutrition.

- Heart-Healthy Lunch Recipes

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Nancy Dell. I'm a Registered Dietitian and a Certified Diabetic Educator. I own Nancy Dell And Associates Nutrition Counseling in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. Today we're going to talk about low cost, low calorie meals. To make a meal low calorie, it's very simple. Take what you normally cook and add extra vegetables. Try to make half your plate vegetables. That will dilute the rest of the meal because the vegetables are so low in calories and give you a lot of chewing power. When you are talking about getting protein in the meal, you want to use your leanest versions. Things like chicken, fish, turkey, pork tenderloin and round cuts of beef are also very low in calories; almost the same as chicken. Your grain part of the meal or your starchy part of the meal can be potato, rice, corn, peas; but keep it to about a quarter of the plate to keep the calories in check. Now you can make these meals low cost by shopping your supermarket fliers and buying things that are on sale; buying your fruits and vegetables in season and stocking up in the freezer when your meat, poultry, fish is on sale. Now your beans will always be an inexpensive source of protein and you can also make these beans into a nice soup. People who have soup with the meal tend to eat two-hundred fewer calories with the meal. So to substitute a bean soup; like lentil soup or black beans soup for the meat might be a good option to keep the cost down but to have a lot of filling power. If you've got lots of fruits and vegetables to choose from; again, choose what's in season and when it comes to your grains, do try to make them whole grain. Your whole grains have more fiber and will be more filling. The fiber slows digestion and keeps you fuller longer. Also draws water into your stomach so that you fill more full as well. Now you can take your favorite recipes and make them low calorie as well. You may have a low cost recipe for beef stew or for chili. In this chili recipe, you would probably on average get about two-hundred calories per cup. But we can reduce that to about a hundred and thirty calories per cup by decreasing the amount of oil from two tablespoons to one tablespoon; by increasing the vegetables and adding mushrooms. So I pile it up with onions, peppers, mushrooms so that that one cup of chili that had about two hundred calories now can be this big and have more filling power. You can also use a leaner meat. Something that's a very lean ground turkey or ground turkey breast; something ninety-three percent lean or leaner. So you have some choices to put your recipes on a diet instead of putting yourself on a diet and also put your grocery list on a diet. You can just buy leaner versions of your meat, fish and poultry; use more beans, they're very economical and buy your produce in season.

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How to Plan Low-Cost & Low-Calorie Meals

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