Watching Those Calories

We’ve been using CalorieKing’s software for months now to track our food and calorie intake. In case you missed those review entries, we’re talking about a food diary program that uses a nutritional database to quantify what your eat and that helps you track progress toward your diet goals. Also, as it happens, it’s useful for drawing conclusions about what actions help you to stick to the weight-loss plan.

For us, it really seems to all be about the quality of our breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. Keeping those meals healthy and low-cal gives us a lot more freedom for our main meal of the day, dinner.

For example, on a typical day, we eat a breakfast of cold cereal or oatmeal. Since we stick to low-sugar varieties and use skim milk, these are also low-calorie meals. We start the day with a meal that clocks in under 200 calories, but the fiber in the cereal keeps us feeling full until lunch.

The takeaway? Invest in high-fiber breakfast foods such as oatmeal, Cheerios, bran-based cereals, Fiber One (Hungry Girl always recommends that one), etc., to start the day full.

Alternatively, if you prefer protein-based breakfasts, stretch a 74-calorie large egg by scrambling in low-cal veggies and egg whites (a large one is only 17 calories!).

Lunch for us usually means sandwiches or soups (for Scott, sometimes both). We naturally tend to eat a smaller portion of soup at lunch than at dinner, usually just one or two one-cup bowlfuls. For sandwiches, we keep the calorie counts low by sticking to low-fat lunchmeats (chicken, turkey, and lean ham rather than salami or loads of bacon) and low-calorie spreads such as spicy brown mustard, light mayo, and light tartar sauce.

We skip the accompaniment of chips that I at least grew up with and is often seen at delis. If we have a side, it’s fruit or leftover veggies from dinner.

It is a long wait from lunch until dinner having only eaten two light meals, true. That’s why we try to stock healthy snacks to eat mid-afternoon. Right now, we have apples, almonds, low-fat cottage cheese, light cheese wedges, and pretzel twists. Bananas are especially filling, too.

On the other hand, those pretzel twists really don’t satisfy your hunger for a 100-calorie handful — I buy them to satisfy salt cravings. I find that it’s important to satisfy a craving as soon as possible because if I wait too long, my willpower crashes and I overindulge. Makes sense in a way, as it appears that using willpower saps your body of energy.

We don’t miss scads of extras at breakfast or lunch because in American culture, the main meal is dinner. Thus, we expect a big meal at suppertime, and it’s then that we feel deprived if we have to cut back. Of course, in countries like Slovakia where lunch is the main meal, you could follow the same basic plan, just changing around which meals are the extra-light ones.

At dinner, I tend to cook just about anything that I can make into a relatively healthy dish (moderation, moderation), and we feel free to eat larger portions knowing that we’ve been good so far. We are able to indulge in some homemade hamburgers, thus keeping us from going deprivation-crazy, without derailing our diet.

Of course, I do accompany the hamburgers or whatever the main dish may be with lots of seasoned vegetables and salads rather than French fries to keep things healthy, but still — it’s a triumph to know that we can feel OK eating the macaroni and cheese in the first place.

Kraft Healthy Living Meal Planner

I’ve mentioned in my reviews of CalorieKing’s food diary program that they offer a meal planning service on their web site as well for an additional cost. You pay them a small fee each month, and they lay out exactly what you should eat each day to stay within your calorie budget.

 

CalorieKing is, of course, not the only web site to offer this service. In fact, eDiets is probably the most famous online meal planning and tracking site, although Weight Watchers, more well-known for its offline diet support, also offers such a service through its web site.

 

If you’re leery of the time commitment involved in tracking your calorie intake on your own and interested in testing the diet-guidance site waters, I’d recommend giving Kraft’s Healthy Living Meal Planner a try first.

 

To start, you fill out a pretty simple questionnaire that asks you for your age, weight, and height, among other things, to calculate how many calories you should eat each day to lose weight at a safe, slow pace.

 

You can opt to customize a fitness plan to go along with your meal plan. You can select one cardiovascular exercise you doing (options include swimming, housework, and even dancing), and you can also specify which days you want to be instructed to complete the cardio and strength training.

 

Your diet plan specifies what to eat for five meals a day (that’s including one snack and one dessert). While all of the recipes and many of the standalone foods include Kraft products (think South Beach Diet foods, Kraft salad dressings, and Philadelphia cream cheese), some snacks or desserts are as simple as a pear or a banana.

 

You track your calories through the Interactive Nutrition Diary. Here, you can tell the web site which of the meals you have eaten and add or change anything based on what you ended up eating that day. The page includes a small box for journaling about your diet experience each day.

 

As for your exercise activities, those are recorded on the main meal plan page. When you’ve completed the day’s assigned activities, you simply click “I did it” and the box at the top of the page will update to show how many calories you’ve burned so far that week.

 

Finally, just like on the big-shot sites, you have access to a message board for support in your quest to lose weight. Often, people find having others to lean on through this ordeal makes it a lot easier.

 

But it ain’t all peaches and cream, kids.

 

For one thing, I take issue with the seemingly arbitrary limits on your food preferences. For example, you can only mark two items as excluded in the meat/poultry/seafood category. As I’m particularly picky when it comes to meat, I’d really like to be able to knock fish, shellfish, and pork out of the running. Instead, I can only eliminate two and thus must manually switch out any pork chops recipes on the meal plan page.

 

I know Kraft probably just wants to make sure it can offer up a good variety of recipes from its database, but maybe the better solution would be to give the user five to 10 possible eliminations from that entire page of food items rather than limiting by category. I didn’t choose any fruits, nuts, or spices to ban from my meals, so why not let me avoid pork?

 

You can choose to have a meal plan that’s lacto-ovo vegetarian or that eliminates all red meat, true, but I don’t have anything against beef, so that doesn’t help me. Also, note that if you’re vegan or lactose-intolerant, there doesn’t seem to be any way to eliminate either eggs or all that Kraft cheese from the diet plan.

 

And that illustrates one particular drawback of this approach. Obviously, the meal plan here is free because it’s designed to sell you Kraft products. That means a lot of the recipes have cheese or salad dressing worked in somehow, and many snacks are packaged cookies or meal-replacement bars.

 

On the other hand, if a recipe calls for Kraft House Italian there’s nothing stopping you from subbing in the store brand. And eDiets, which you have to contract with and pay for, is always trying to upsell you to their fitness plans, meal deliveries, etc.

 

Overall, I find the trade-offs to be inconsequential compared to what you’re getting. Generally, I like the homey recipes Kraft comes up with anyway; I already had saved a bunch before I even discovered they’re tracker years ago. I did use eDiets for a while, and although it offers more diet plans and tracking tools, Kraft’s site has the basics covered at a much better price.

 

It can be tough to get out of some of the pay sites out there if you decide after a couple of months that they’re not for you; eDiets is not going to give up your monthly dues to Weight Watchers that easily.

 

If you’re not sure if you’ll be able to stick with a prescribed diet plan like those on eDiets or CalorieKing, test drive the system with this free site for a few months and see how it goes. If it’s working for you, then maybe start shopping around to see if another site might be more to your tastes.

Building a Pantry

I’ve now had several experiences with creating a pantry from scratch in a new kitchen, and I think I finally understand the unspoken rules.

First, a pantry should be built around what you know for sure you will cook; i.e., don’t stock up on inexpensive canned soup if you don’t particularly enjoy eating soup for a meal.

Meal planning plays a part in this as well. I’m a big advocate of mapping out in advance what you will serve for dinner each week. When you plan, you don’t end up with a freezer full of sausages and veggie burgers slowly turning into ice crystals over the course of a year.

For my third pantry, I started out with the usual blind buying of food items during my first grocery store visit, but through careful dinner planning I thinned the stock down to the always-on-had basics.

 

Take this list as guide to the most basic American pantry. Use it for your first shopping trip in a new kitchen, along with a list of ingredients you might need for your first week’s meals. If you’d like an expanded pantry that takes into account particular cooking predilections you might have, I’ll provide a few lists of extras.

 

Cooking Fats

Olive oil: The healthiest fat you can buy. Use it for vinaigrettes or sautés. Pure is usually cheaper, but some prefer extra-virgin for the added flavor.

Canola oil: Probably the second-healthiest cooking oil. Keep this around for any cooking that requires a higher temperature, such as deep-frying or stir-fries. Also good for salad dressings that you don’t want to be overwhelmed by olive oil’s flavor.

Non-stick spray: It’s great for reducing the amount of fat you use in cooking on the stovetop, and it’s necessary for almost any pan you pop in the oven. Sure, you could use butter to lube some baking pans, but it’s messy and time-consuming.

Butter or butter-flavored spray: Unless you’re a baker (see the Baking Pantry), you can get away with using oil for most recipes calling for butter and save yourself from saturated fat, but butter is good for flavoring bread and steamed veggies. A refrigerated butter-flavored spray can do the flavoring without the fat.

Filling the Canisters

All-purpose flour: Unless you bake, you’ll probably only need the small bag to use for thickening gravies and sauces, for making pancakes or waffles, and for breading meat.

White granulated sugar: For any sweetening needs. You only need a small bag or box (again, unless you bake), and it doesn’t matter whether it’s “cane sugar” or just “sugar.”

Baking powder: For any small baking tasks. It’s not expensive and will keep for months.

Baking soda: Get at least two boxes (very cheap stuff!). Put one in the pantry for recipes and one, open, in the fridge to deodorize.

Iodized table salt: It’s the cheapest and easiest-to-find salt around, it provides two necessary minerals in your diet, it dissolves easily and so won’t leave salt pockets in baked goods, and no, kosher salt does not taste any different. Unless you’re talking pricey fleur de sel or other designer salts, salt is salt, so don’t waste your money. Use about half the salt called for in recipes written for kosher salt.

Spice Rack

Black pepper: If you have a grinder, get whole peppercorns (check the ethnic aisles for inexpensive bags). If you don’t, get a small can so you can replace this about every six months.

Spice blend: Having a bunch of herbs and spices all together in one jar is a good shortcut for adding flavor to your cooking. Sprinkle it on potatoes, meats, veggies, whatever. If you cook Rachael Ray recipes a lot, you’ll probably want that salty, spicy Montreal Steak Seasoning from McCormick; if you love barbecue potato chips, try Lawry’s Seasoned Salt; if you’re watching your sodium, Mrs. Dash Table Blend is great; my mother-in-law recommends slightly lemony Greek Seasoning. Chili powder is also a good, easy-to-find blend of spices; just make sure it’s CHILI powder, as in what you would add to chili, and not powdered version of some kind of dried chile pepper, like Ancho chile powder.

Garlic powder: It’s good to have on hand to add mild garlic flavor to dressings and dips. You can also use it in a pinch if you’re out of garlic.

Paprika: Hot, sweet, smoked — your choice. Paprika adds nice color to meats and mayo-based salads. You eat with your eyes, of course.

Cinnamon: A sweet spice for desserts. Great on apple dishes. Plus, it’s the secret ingredient in many chili recipes.

Cayenne: For adding heat. Alternatively, go for crushed red pepper flakes.

Bouillon cubes: To make broth for cooking rice or soup.

Italian seasoning or herbes de provence: A shortcut for getting some dried herbs on your shelf. Use it until you have a real (recipe) reason to buy other dried herbs.

*Another possibility – a spice rack: My husband is a big proponent of this route. For about $20-30, you can pick up a spinning rack pre-filled with a variety of seasonings, probably including most of the above. It’s usually cheaper than buying individual jars of each spice. If you think at all that you’ll be using a lot of spices in your cooking, go this route and save some money long term.

Produce

Onions: You can add them to just about any dish to fill it out and add flavor. They keep well in a cool, dark, dry place — NOT under the sink and NOT near the potatoes.

Garlic: Me, I’m a sucker for the jars of peeled cloves in the refrigerator case, but whole bulbs keep longer and don’t need refrigeration.

All-purpose potatoes: If you’re not a low-carb person, potatoes are cheap and filling. Smashed, mashed, fried, roasted, baked, whatever — they make a great side dish. Look for the white or light-colored all-purpose ones that are decent in any application. Keep them in a cool, dark, dry place, far away from those moisture-releasing onions.

Salad greens: Adding a salad with dinner most nights will help you eat less of the richer foods on your plate. Buy them buy the bag or head.

Tomatoes: Along with the onions and salad greens, they make a great side salad. Sliced on their own they make a good side dish. Chopped, you can throw them in a variety of dishes.

Bananas: Or apples, or oranges, or whatever. Some fruit to have available for snacks or desserts. Eat healthy.

Dry Goods

Bread: For sandwiches or a dinner side dish. I like whole-wheat loaves.

Popcorn: For snacking — cheaper and healthier than any sort of chips or pretzels. It’s a whole grain! If you go the microwave route, avoid any brands with diacetyl butter flavoring. Apparently it kills your lungs.

Apple cider vinegar: It’s slightly sweet, making it vastly more palatable than white vinegar (which is great as a cleaner). It’s also the cheapest vinegar after the white stuff.

Tea bags: Iced tea is easy to make at home (if you like it sweet, add simple syrup made by boiling equal portions of tap water and your sugar, or invest in artificial sweetener) and inexpensive. Also, grab coffee if you’re a coffee drinker.

Cereal: Whatever kind you like, though I prefer one that’s not too sweet and features whole grains. Oatmeal is a good cereal, too.

Condiments

Mustard: Essential for sandwiches and homemade salad dressings. It can also supplement your spice rack (no need for powdered mustard).

Mayonnaise: I prefer light mayo for sandwiches and dressings.

Ketchup: Great for those potatoes and eggs.

Worcestershire sauce: Adds meaty flavor to recipes.

Refrigerator Staples

Eggs: So versatile! Eat them on their own, bind other ingredients, make other dishes richer-tasting for the fat . . .

Cheese: I like a sliced cheese for sandwiches and grated cheese (parmesan or pecorino romano) for seasoning.

Lunch meat: Go with what you like. The idea is to have something you can eat for lunch when you don’t have leftovers.

Bacon: It makes everything yummy.

Milk: For drinking and cereal.

Keep in mind, this is just to get you started. Your pantry will grow as you start buying more things to meet your recipe needs through weekly grocery shopping.

Of course, there might be a few things on my list that you wouldn’t use. If you’re vegetarian, you’ll likely want to leave out those meats and replace them, maybe roasted red peppers for the lunch meat and kalamata olives for the bacon.

The point is, don’t go stocking up on stuff because you think you might use it or because it’s on sale. That can of beans is no good if it’s just taking up space in the pantry until the day comes when you need it and discover it’s past the expiration date. Why keep around the sack of arborio rice only to throw it away when you move, having never touched it? It’s a waste of money and space. Plan and keep the stored staples to a minimum.