Packaged or home meals?

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  • malibu927
    malibu927 Posts: 17,565 Member
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    olivia_june wrote: »
    I hate trying to guesstimate calories per serving when I make a big pot of soup or whatever, so I just look it up in the database and go with the highest calorie suggestion. I treat my calories like a rough estimate and I don't eat back my exercise calories, though.

    I like to keep a couple of prepackaged meals in the freezer just in case I'm lazy or overly hungry and don't have patience for cooking. But I also keep servings of homemade soup in there too (because sometimes it's 6:30 and I'm like, wth am I eating for supper?), or whatever else I happened to make a huge portion of. I have a deep freeze and then the regular freezer, and I have a lot of stuff on hand, like chopped up onions and mushrooms, etc. My son has strict dietary requirements so all of his stuff has to be prepped beforehand and frozen as well, so I'm used to it by now, haha.

    I buy a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store (cooked is somehow less expensive than raw) every week, I usually have 100g of that and whatever raw veggies I have on hand, with ranch, for lunch... easy and fast (I save the carcass and bones for stock and then use the stock for soup). Breakfast is hard boiled eggs (boiled ahead of time and hanging out in the fridge) and a banana with PB. I have an hour between when I wake up in the morning and when I have to take my son to school, and then I go to the gym after I drop him off. He takes a year to eat (he has severe special needs and needs someone to feed him directly) so my breakfast has to be fast and able to fuel me for my workout.

    For snacks I eat almonds, bananas, grapes, pickled asparagus/pickles, cheese, protein bars, etc....basically a lot of grab and go stuff. I don't really have the time to stand around making overly complicated meals except for at supper, and the complex ones can only really be done on the weekends. *shrug*

    I'm a year into doing this seriously and I've lost almost 50lbs. Works for me!

    If you're making your own soup, you can enter all your ingredients into the recipe builder and determine how much you're eating. Database entries are going to be wildly inaccurate to choose from as you won't know the types/amounts of ingredients used.
  • CockneyLady2014
    CockneyLady2014 Posts: 199 Member
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    I batch make soup and freeze it. I calculate the whole and then work out how much is in each portion.
  • gothchiq
    gothchiq Posts: 4,590 Member
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    I make everything from scratch at home. Costs less, better nutrition, more veggies, etc.
  • broekendy
    broekendy Posts: 11 Member
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    Home meals are best. Pre-packaged means tons of salt usually. It bites the big one...I am personally sick of cooking meals most days...after 30 years of it...gets tiresome.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    I enjoy cooking and hate eating tasteless, small amounts of low calorie packaged foods which is what I think Weightwatchers ready meals are

    if I do buy ready meals I tend to go for things like Innocent Thai Curry / Noodle pots and eat them over a huge green salad or I might have the Taste meals from M&S. If you look outside the low calorie ready meals a surprising number of ready meals / sandwiches are actually acceptable calorie amounts (for me for a meal that's under 500 calories)

    Generally I cook a couple of big pot foods at the weekend and then have those for lunch / easy supper during the week - so it just needs heating up but tastes great and is decent sized / nutritional portions
  • Annr
    Annr Posts: 2,765 Member
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    Sometimes I do buy the Lean Cusine, but only the ones with less than 500 mg of sodium. I then pile my plate up with fresh baby spinach, a sprinkle of water and spices. Then I zap it for 40 seconds (I know microwave is bad but I like the spinach wilted but not slimy)...then I put my meal over it. I always try to "make a bed" of veggies for all my meals. It just feels nice to mix my proteins up with either spinach, or zucchini, or cabbage.
  • mrsdcsmithiv
    mrsdcsmithiv Posts: 16 Member
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    I'm not a good cook. I pack healthy choice meals for lunch. Sometimes my husband will grill a bunch of fish and chicken and we will put it in baggies and eat on that a few days.
  • ginny92802
    ginny92802 Posts: 66 Member
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    missiontofitness wrote: »
    Feistychick68 wrote: »
    Ty all btw for your input. I totally agree making ur own food is the healthiest choice. My issue with it is Ik if I'm making let's say spaghetti. I have to figure out how much each individual thing is for my portion. So I will basically have to divide and measure how much meat, spices etc in my particular serving is. I am clearly more lazy and find measuring and calculating each freaking thing a pain in the *kitten*. Would be so nice to say on I had half a cup of noodles and so much sauce so that equals this. I know I'm gonna get frustrated taking out my portion and calculating it ingredient by ingredient. Packaged food seems way easier but is not something I can stick with life long. Props to ppl who have the patience to measure each freaking thing. This is and will be my stumbling block to overcome.... I just am not patient to do it! Ugg


    Easier way: weigh all the ingredients, cook it. Weigh the final product in grams. Set the servings to the weight of the final product in grams. All you need to do is weigh what you want to eat, and input the weight of your serving.

    Example: My recipe weighs 500 grams. I will put that there are 500 servings in the recipe builder. I put 100 grams on my plate, so I will put in that I ate 100 servings.

    2000x easier.

    OMG I can't believe I never thought of this, but it's going to make my life so much easier! Thanks!
  • Annr
    Annr Posts: 2,765 Member
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    @mrsdcsmithiv cooking is really easy. It's just a matter of being patient with all the flavors mixing and things not getting overcooked. I had some whole wheat spaghetti left over from a dinner meal. So I drizzled in some olive oil in a pan, put some all-spice, some course pepper, and a tsp of ketchup, then added some diced tomatoes. I added a few pieces of bacon bits (the kind you put in salads) and waited for them to get soft etc. Then I added some fresh baby spinach leaves ripping them with my fingers. I poured in maybe 1/8 cup of broth, (I used chicken broth in a carton). When the spinach looked wilted I tossed in the portion of spaghetti noodles and put a lid on it. On low heat for most of the makings. Let every flavor mix with others. Then I sprinkled just a bit of parmesan cheese on the top.
  • DancingMoosie
    DancingMoosie Posts: 8,619 Member
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    I use packages to make home cooked meals, which makes it easier to calculate certain things. Example: king ranch casserole. It takes 1 can rotel, 1 can chicken, 1 can cream of mushroom soup, x # tortillas, and let's say 1 cup shredded cheese. All of these things have barcodes or can be found easily in the recipe builder. You can then either weigh the final product and then base servings on weight, or (what I do) is say that its 4 servings, cut it into 4ths, take one, give hubby one, and save the other two for tomorrow.

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