If you had 500 calories left for the day what would you eat?

Wait. Does the 500 include evening meal?

If so, I’d try to stay on budget. Maybe have a super light meal, like chopped grilled chicken, lettuce and tomato in a low carb wrap.

I keep a supply of 90-calorie Cadbury Curly Wurlys in the freezer.

Golly, this is hard. There’s no extraneous food in the house right now and a pre-log, so I seldom have that many left.

If I see early in the day that I’m going to be low and I’m on track for good protein level, I’ll go to one of the local bakeries and treat myself to an “everything” cookie or a bearclaw or pimento cheese/fig jam cheese toast from the American one, or a giant ginger molasses cookie from the French one. There’s also a bubble tea place that sells a killer homemade peanut butter cup. Lidl for giant soft Bavarian pretzels.

Everything is within an easy walk, “easy” these days being a mile or two round trip. I figure I gotta work a little extra for it to earn it. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Oh heavens. Now I’m hungry.

Otherwise, it’s a couple servings of BL’s chips, if I really need the calories and particularly some fat. I had a giant barrel of hard pretzels but never again. Couldn’t stay out of them. I don’t even particularly like pretzels but right now I’m on a salt lick.

So you're saying - you have 500 calories left for dinner, what would I have?

I'd have a package of Foppen hot smoked salmon (280 cals) with 1/2 package of Veetee Rice & Tasty parcooked rice (220 cals).....probably add some soy sauce and hot sauce to the rice or just hot sauce and furikake. That's a quick - go-to 500 cal meal. It's got protein and carbs and fat. It's not got veggies which would be nice but if I really wanted veggies I'd have them with it. Honestly cucumbers would be good and fit since they have very little calories.

That's like, and extremely low effort meal though. Are you really just looking for ideas for 500 calories meals?

Depends ... what do I have in stock to prepare a meal with?
Usually I have eggs on hand. One large egg is 70 calories and 2 of them is a usual portion ... so 140 of that 500 could go towards two eggs. Then; what do I have that would pair well with eggs? Also, would it be filling or leave me hungry still? ... Look around

sugarfreesquirrel wrote: »

Assuming you haven't had your evening meal and were really hungry

What did I already eat that day?
How far under or over had I been the last two or three days?

I'd for sure spend 250 calories on a carnitas soft taco. One taco and a 15 minute wait after I eat it usually leaves me feeling decently full. If I had been a fair bit under my goal the last few days, I would go over the 500 and not worry about it for a moment.

700 calories 😂

My partner gets annoyed when I try to talk to him first thing in the AM about dinner, but my philosophy is:


So I normally think about dinner days ahead of time, generally when the supermarket flyers arrive and I am planning shopping.

But if I found myself really hungry at dinner time with nothing prepped, I'd make a meal out of canned tuna fish, or eggs, or something from the freezer.

Tonight while he is grilling steak, I will make us green salads. This AM, I started defrosting the steak and made potato salad. Since I'll keep my portions of steak and potato salad moderate, this will probably come in around 500 calories. He'll have much larger portions plus bread and butter and will probably come in around 1000 calories, but no one is counting him.

My dinners generally are around 500 calories and consist of an animal protein, non starchy veggies, starch, and butter.

The discussion this AM arose when I reminded him that he was cooking tonight. But he said it was going to be too hot for that meal, and since we were actually having the convo in the AM, there was plenty of time to pivot to the steak and salads.

I have a friend who gets a lot of takeout because she doesn't start thinking about dinner until it is dinnertime and she is really hungry. Which could be a valid strategy, I suppose, but then she complains about the cost and the calories.

You're not going to like this, but you asked what I'd eat:

Ezekiel tortilla (taco size), dill mustard, smoked tofu, Jarlsberg lite cheese, thin-sliced onions. Microwave until cheese melts. Add raw sauerkraut, fold over, cut in half for easy handling, eat. Around 360 calories, 29g protein.

Add an apple for less than 100 calories, or a big serving (maybe 180g?) of smashed Winter squash with white miso for similar calories (plus a little more protein); maybe a couple of prunes to get to the 500.