Healthy pizza?

What is your definition of healthy? What macros are you short on?

melissajmeek35 wrote: »

Hey, can you hook me up with a good healthy pizza recepie? One that isn't too complicated, I don't really want to make my own crust or anything.

I make my own crust (Fleischmann's Pizza Yeast - 1 step easy). But if you don't want to make your own crust, there must be some pre-made one that's not too bad. Flat-Outs are supposed to make good crusts.

My "healthy" pizza is sauce, 2% mozzarella, turkey pepperoni and veggies.

I'm a fan of baby pizzas made with Thomas' light english muffins. They have a lot of fiber and it's easy to portion control. Some people make pizzas on whole wheat tortillas or flat outs. But I find faux crust that thin unsatisfying. English muffin, skim mozzarella, muir glen tomato sauce (it's the lowest in sodium I can find), fresh chopped mushrooms and green peppers, olives, and morningstar farms breakfast "sausage" links.

On the other hand, sometimes I just order a pizza on a whole wheat crust/frozen pizza and eat what I can calorically "afford," or have a pizza orgy and work my butt off the next day. Though I am a vegetarian so there's at least already vegetables on that thing.

So OP - when you said "healthy" you were looking for something more calorie friendly?

A few options - the calorie density with pizza tends to come from a couple of culprits - crust, cheese, and meat toppings. So thinner crusts, easy on the cheese, add more veggies and less meat are one way to trim the calories. You can do this by making it at home, or looking for commercially available pizzas, the big delivery chains offer the ability to customize and several crust options as well.

Another option is that you could save up calories during the week for a pizza night with your boyfriend, a hundred or so calories less each day means you'd have 500 or so extra for Friday night pizza.

I eat pizza with the family about once a week, usually have beer or wine too. It didn't prohibit me from losing 30 lbs and currently maintaining that loss.

xmichaelyx wrote: »

I've used a low-cal tortilla as the crust, then just some sauce, veggies, & (a little) cheese.

Just bake until the cheese melts.

For people who are looking for a light option, this is actually one of the best ways to do it. If you're willing to give up your wheat, you can use small white corn tortillas and lighten up the load even more. It's also important to look at the calories in the cheese you are using. You don't have to use mozzarella to make a pizza, but there are about 10 different mozzarellas options out there and some of them have half the fat and calories of the original.

There are of course wheat tortillas out there that are the medium sized ones and have only 60-80 calories each, whereas the originals have like 120. So that route helps cut off a lot of the calories.

So xmichaelyx has the right idea.

I wouldn't recommend "saving up calories" which was mentioned to you earlier. That isn't a good idea, especially if you're working out because you need those calories to power your body on a daily basis. People always say to save up calories because weight loss is only dependent on a 7-day-ish average, but your overall health and wellness is dependent on what you do to your body daily.

MinmoInk wrote: »

Ditch the cheese and add veggie toppings. Make sure to tell them not to drizzle any extra olive oil on top! Then you can add seasoning, parm, chili pepper, whatever from your table and you can eyeball how much parm goes on your pizza

But, parmesan IS cheese (?) and it's pretty high calorie. I wouldn't eye-ball it.

OP- is looking for lower calories.....it's still possible to lower calories and still have something that resembles pizza.

TeaBea wrote: »

MinmoInk wrote: »

Ditch the cheese and add veggie toppings. Make sure to tell them not to drizzle any extra olive oil on top! Then you can add seasoning, parm, chili pepper, whatever from your table and you can eyeball how much parm goes on your pizza

But, parmesan IS cheese (?) and it's pretty high calorie. I wouldn't eye-ball it.

OP- is looking for lower calories.....it's still possible to lower calories and still have something that resembles pizza.

Yah I just mean ditch the mozzarella they put on it, if OP doesn't want to try to eyeball a lil bit of parm powder then she could always add s n p to it too. Hey, don't knock cheese-less pizza ya try it. I like all pizzas, cheese or no cheese. Tomato pies are delicious.

xmichaelyx wrote: »

I wouldn't recommend "saving up calories" which was mentioned to you earlier. That isn't a good idea, especially if you're working out because you need those calories to power your body on a daily basis. People always say to save up calories because weight loss is only dependent on a 7-day-ish average, but your overall health and wellness is dependent on what you do to your body daily.

Depending on how low the OP's calorie goal is set at currently, I wouldn't think 100 cals less/day would have a significant impact on her overall health and wellness. If she's at a 1200 cal goal, I probably wouldn't recommend it, but if she's at 1500, then reducing by 100 cals M-F would give her 500 extra calories on Saturday for pizza.

bezza666 wrote: »

Replace pizza with omlette. Much healthier

How so?

• Lower calorie; restrict yourself to one or two slices
• Lower carb; thinner crust. You may make one on a tortilla crust, for instance.
• Lower fat, low fat cheese.

My very favourite pizza this week is one I made from scratch myself. I made the dough in my breadmaker, classic white bread dough (that took 1 1/2 hours). I slow roasted onion and garlic together for about ten minutes while I was waiting for the dough. I took half the dough and stretched, stretched it to fit in to my large cast iron frying pan. I brushed it with olive oil. I spread maybe 1/8 cup tomato sauce, and added fresh herbs from my windowsill. I thin sliced Hungarian sausage and bacon bits (meat on hand) and sprinkled it on top along with the onions and garlic. I covered all with thin sliced low fat Swiss cheese (because this is what I had on hand. I baked it at 400 degrees in my cast iron frying pan for twenty minutes until the crust was crispy and cheese bubbly. I got 1 1/2 slices and hubby devoured the rest. A win.

I only needed half the dough for the pizza by the way. I used the rest to make croissant buns Hungarian style.

I find pizza I make at home not that high cal and eat it reg. crust is 2.5 cups of flour, a package of yeast and one cup of warm water and a teaspoon of salt mix kneed and let rise. pat out add low sodium tomato sauce, oregano, mozzarella and Parmesan cheese ( don't go crazy on the mozzarella) bake at 425 degrees about 10-15 minutes depending on pan and your oven.

WinoGelato wrote: »

MinmoInk wrote: »

Ditch the cheese and add veggie toppings. Make sure to tell them not to drizzle any extra olive oil on top! Then you can add seasoning, parm, chili pepper, whatever from your table and you can eyeball how much parm goes on your pizza

This does not sound like pizza to me, with no mozzerella cheese. I know people eat all sorts of different kinds, but to me, the gooey cheese part is kind of what makes it pizza...

I really like the flavor of sweet pizza sauce and Italian herbs on a pizza dough. Often times pizza can have flavorless cheese (or places actually put on too much cheese and it ends up having grease pockets yuck) if you go with plain ol shredded moz

Another good one, OP, is margarita pizzas. Those tend to be a little easier on the cals from what I've seen you don't get over saturation with cheese


Also I'm from Chicago, home of the deep dish and the lesser known cracker crust pizzas... Lemme tell ya I have had a LOTS of pizzas lol.

Cauliflower crust pizza!