Pre Packaged Meals

I think they are loaded with sodium. They are a quick meal but I don't think they are as good for us as a home cooked meal.

I encourage you to cook as many meals as you can. You can build your own recipes--you just put in the amount and calorie count, serving size, and go from there. You do it once and then you just use your recipe. I've done a few of those.

Measure and weigh your portions if you are cooking only for you and you will be fine. When I cook for Don and I, I measure out my portion only and he gets to eat what he wants.

Edited to add: for lunch I make a salad with lettuce, tomato, chicken, olives, and almonds. I rarely eat lunch out, and I used to take the Healthy Choice meals but they were not satisfying and had too much salt.

Love/Hate relationship from my side.

Here are what I find to be pros/cons -

Pros:

- Low calorie
- Quick
- Tasty
- Helps us to get to goals very fast
- Available in most shops
- Lots of different meals
- Add perspective - Their sizes are small and show you what small meals should be like
- Easy to find on the MFP database

Cons:

- Can get expensive if bought daily - though still much cheaper than a meal out
- Lots of sodium - really bad for weight loss and a whole ton of other stuff like blood pressure
- Lots of preservatives - I've never really bought the whole preservatives are bad for you argument, but hey, nothing beats fresh ingredients
- Small?! Sometimes they just don't fill me up (especially for the main meal), often I find myself trying to add carbs next to them to make the difference, this is dangerous and defeats the purpose
- Can get redundant - this is bad for losing weight, you need options so you won't lose motivation and home cooking fixes this

So in essence I just echo what the others said. Have some around for the off days when you cant be bothered to cook or do anything else.

Also, some places, like M&S here in the UK, have a great selection of fresh(er) low cal/low fat meals. They are MUCH better that the frozen ones.

For me it's just nowhere enough food for the calories. I don't know what they put in there, but really I could make myself much more food for 300 calories.

This is me. I have had them but I never feel satisfied. I am always hungry almost instantly again. Maybe they don't have enough protein for me or something but if you find that they are keeping you full then I don't see an issue with having them occasionally. Normally my lunches are just leftovers from the night before. Normally when I cook I try to make extra portions so that I always have 'something' to eat in the freezer.

Buy a kitchen scale if you don't have one and enter your ingredients in MFP, see if the thing fits your macros then start cooking. I see no reason why you'd eat more when you cook your own food than with the frozen stuff. These are expensive and full of sodium/preservatives.

Expensive?

You can get some for less than $2

I have them once in while for lunch when I'm in a pinch. I try to stick to the lower fat, lower salt variety.

I eat Smart Ones. They are the best on sodium and very low calories. I find that they have more flavor and choices than the rest.

I've found the opposite, LC has more flavour and has more protein which is key in keeping you full. If LC is higher in sodium, it would be the lack of meat in SO. LC are 250-310 in cals – just as low if not lower than SO. SO do appear to have more veggies visually but that's also b/c of all the protein they are missing they need to fill in the space with something. Since they always go on sale for the same price (LC actually goes on sale even more often) LC is my #1 choice for a fun lunch - neither are very filling for dinner on their own.

LC gives you FREE GIFT CARDS* so for all of these reasons, LC is personally my #1 choice.

*You get gift cards/prizes of your choice as you obtain points. You get 250 pts for every regular LC pin # you add to their website which means after 30 meals I can get $10 Walmart gift card (my #1 choice). Of course this means you have spent $60 on 30 meals but getting 16% back an already cheap meal ($2 per meal is the same as 1 chicken breast on sale or 1/3rd the cost of Subway or other healthy fast food options) is great!

Honestly, I never eat them. I have tried them but they were just repulsive to me. One of my coworkers makes them for lunch and they really stink up the office. Ugh. I couldn't make them at home anyway, I don't own a microwave.

I get one every now and then (aldi do some great steam meals) for days when I don't have anything in or for convenience but I wouldn't eat them too often. I prefer freshly cooked meals now.