Frozen diet dinners, like those made by Lean Cuisine, make for quick options when you are seeking low-calorie meals with minimal preparation. Incorporating these into a healthy meal plan is more challenging than simply eating them for lunch and dinner every day. Many Lean Cuisine meals contain excessive amounts of sodium and too few calories and nutrients to sustain you for the long-term. You can use Lean Cuisine meals in a diet plan, but augment them with whole foods and carefully read nutrition labels.
Step 1
Read nutrition labels on Lean Cuisine entrees, paying close attention to sodium, saturated fat and total calories. Select entrees with less than 800 mg of sodium and less than 3 g of saturated fat. Make sure the entrée has at least 300 calories, and as many as 400 calories. The consumer watchdog group The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) notes that eating frozen meals that contain more sodium and saturated fat are likely to make you exceed Food and Drug Administration recommendations.
Step 2
Add vegetables to your frozen meal, even if it says it contains a full serving of vegetables. Eat a side salad, heat up a bag of steamed vegetables or add carrot and celery sticks on the side to increase your overall daily intake of vegetables. Although many Lean Cuisine entrees claim to provide a full serving of vegetables, CSPI found that most contained only half that amount when examined in a lab.
Step 3
Eat a Lean Cuisine entrée for either dinner or lunch only three or four times per week. Go for whole, unprocessed options at other meals. Make alternative, quick lunches composed of a green salad, roasted chicken and chickpeas with a low-fat dressing, or enjoy a string cheese, a serving of almonds and Greek yogurt with fresh fruit. Using your frozen dinners as references for portion sizes of grains and proteins, cook dinner on some nights. Try baked salmon, steamed asparagus and a baked potato or whole grain pasta with diced tomatoes, fresh basil and low-fat cheese. This limits your exposure to the artificial ingredients and preservatives contained in the frozen meals.
Step 4
Eat an unprocessed breakfast. Opt for whole grain cereal, like Grape Nuts, Cheerios or bran, and milk, homemade multigrain pancakes with berries, or eggs scrambled with broccoli and tomatoes. Snack on fresh fruits, cut vegetables and hummus or a handful of nuts.
Tips and Warnings
- Avoid entrees that contain fewer than 300 calories because they simply will not offer you enough energy to feel full or satisfied. Some Lean Cuisine options have as few as 160 calories, which might sound good when you are budgeting calories, but will leave you hungry and likely to snack or binge later. Be aware that some diet dinners may contain more calories than listed on the package. In a study in the January 2010 "Journal of the American Dietetic Association," researchers from Tufts University measured the calorie content of 10 frozen meals purchased from supermarkets and found that they contained, on average, 8 percent more calories than originally stated.
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