tips + lean cuisine/ww versus home food

The old adage is that nothing is healthier than a good home cooked meal. While this may be factual from the nutrient perspective, I have made an interesting observation, when it comes to weight-loss.

Over the course of the last 9 months I have lost 30 lbs, using myfitnesspal (MFP). I am happy with the results and am continuing to maintain good general health.

Along the way I adjusted many things about what I consume: a lot less of the tasty stuff (both frequency and quantity) & choosing meals thoughtfully. My system treats calories like money. For example, I have mostly been on a 1,200 calorie/day allowance, which is like $1,200 to spend all day. That gives me about three $300 meals and $300 worth of snacks/drinks. When favorites like chicken wings "cost" $500 for three wings, I realize that not being full and outspending myself does me no good.



That is what put me on to the Lean Cuisine/Weight Watchers boxed meals. Including those as one or two of my 3 meals really helped me "save" because most of them are 300 or less calories. As a result, I was dropping pounds at a steady and healthy rate. Although, I became "dependent" on the meals because home food seemed way too caloric. Over the last couple months I have tried to assimilate back to normal food. This is where it got interesting.

Not only has it been hard to make satisfying meals at a $300 allowance, but even with the MFP calorie guidelines, my weight has been static. I still have about 5 more lbs to go for a healthy BMI. I am not the only person that has noticed that one tends to lose weight while on LC/WW microwave-food & then slowly or not at all with home cooked food. Among my friends, I have also noticed this result is more pronounced in males; many of my female friends have not benefited from MFP overall as well as my male friends.

This is just an interesting observation I wanted to share. What do you think?

#leancuisinehack