I want to share with you some more helpful hints on how cooking low fat vegan and plant based meals at home can fit into your schedule and help you on your way to losing weight without too much fuss. If you’re new to the lifestyle and want to reach your goals faster, check out my Low Fat Vegan Starter Kit which covers meals for breakfast, lunch AND dinner!
5 Secrets For Making Quick Healthy Meals At Home
1. Plan in advance what you will be eating (at least 5 days a week) breakfast and lunch and then 4 or 5 nights for dinner if you like.
Take a few minutes to write down some ideas for what you enjoy eating (that is healthy and nutritious) and what you think you can manage preparing for the week. It is very hard to stick to a healthy diet if you don’t do this crucial first step in figuring out your meal options.
2. Shop once a week on a weekend for all the food you will be eating throughout the week.
Know how many fruits, veggies and bags of salad you will need for the week and keep it on hand. If you have healthy items in the fridge you are more likely to eat them than if you have nothing around when you’re short on time and having hunger pangs. Also cleaning out your fridge regularly and keeping it organized will help you see not only what you have to work with but also prevent you from letting food go to waste by spoiling or freezing if it’s stuck at the back of the fridge.
3. Eat the same (or very similar) thing for breakfast and lunch during the week to keep things simple.
Studies have shown those who eat the same healthy breakfast or lunch every day have an easier time sticking to their diet plans and reaching their goal weight. Control temptation for eating on the go and grabbing takeout by planning in advance and eating meals you love every day during the week.
Breakfast ideas during the week: large fruit smoothie, large green smoothie, steel cut oats with dried fruit and nuts, fruit salad with toast and jam and/or peanut butter, fruit salad with coconut or almond yogurt (available at the health food store), fruit salad and a whole grain muffin etc. See my ‘Simply Decadent Smoothies’ recipe ebook for delicious ideas.
Lunch ideas during the week: large salad with fruit, vegetables and homemade nut based dressing (oil-free of course), steamed vegetables and/or lentils and rice with a homemade or low fat store bought sauce, baked potato with hummus and a side salad, homemade soup, stew or chili, roasted vegetable sandwich on whole grain bread with fruit, etc. See my ‘Comfort Soups To Keep YouWarm’ recipe ebook for hot lunch ideas.
4. For hot meals (or salads) do your cooking (or prepping) once or twice a week.
Make a big batch or double batch of soup, stew, casserole, curry etc. that you can easily pair with a whole grain such as rice or quinoa and a salad or veggies. For salads use large tupperware containers and portion out your lettuce and assorted veggies, dried fruit and toppings. Make a homemade dressing or find a tasty oil-free dressing you enjoy and have little containers to take with your salad each day. For delicious dinner recipes the whole family will enjoy I recommend my “Vegan Comfort Foods From Around The World” recipe ebook.
5. Use cooking devices such as slow cookers or pressure cookers to save active cooking time in the kitchen.
With a slow cooker you can prep everything on a Sunday morning or afternoon and then by dinner time you will have a hot meal ready to eat and you can save any leftovers for meals throughout the rest of the week. With a pressure cooker you can easily make homemade vegetable broth, soup, or fresh beans in only a fraction of the time so you don’t have to hang around watching the stove for an hour while things cook.
The most important aspect to sticking to a healthy diet and lifestyle is planning ahead. Life can get hectic at times and we can feel rushed and make a lot of excuses for eating unhealthy snacks and meals on the go, but if you master the art of shopping in advance and learn how to make a few healthy recipes you like to eat every week you will be well on your way to success.
Just schedule yourself some time every week for shopping and preparing a few healthy recipes, a little effort in these areas can make a big difference to your health and not to mention your waistline…
I hope I’ve inspired you to take the next step and get back into the kitchen.
You can do it, I believe in you!
Just checking in. After eating about 90+% lowfat vegan for the past 4 months it really does get easier and more natural and we are really enjoying our meals. Our taste buds have changed and we crave fewer and fewer of the old foods. We have also found some restaurants in our area that offer some reasonable menu options for us. The good news is that both my husband and I have dropped our total and LDL cholesterol by over 60 pts and both of us have lost weight (15 lbs for him, 6 for me – why do men lose weight so easily?). Our meals are based on fresh produce, beans and grains. I love eating this way because the fiber, nutrient and water content of these foods is very filling and satisfying. In spite of “carbophobia” it is not the grains that are making us fat. It’s processed foods and fats. Simple as that! Love having a little potatoes, quinoa, rice, tortillas, etc and still losing weight. Just tried Veronica’s “Yammus”. Totally different take on hummus. Love it! Thanks Veronica for keeping us motivated with interesting new recipes and info.
Wow Margo. That’s awesome! Don’t worry, men usually weigh much more than women and eat more, so they will lose more weight in total than us. I’m so glad you guys are enjoying eating this way together, it’s making such a huge difference.
Yammus – yeah! Great that you made it. I think I want to slather everything in yammus now lol.
I have prostate cancer aug . 7th last year Iam in the stages of a mild cehomtherope
[ excues my englhis ] My whit e blood is down.
what vegtable can Itake to bring up my white blood . Ihave 5 sessions to take.
please can you help. thank you very mutch. Ray McNeill
I can’t advise you how to bring up your white blood cell count. I suggest consulting with a naturopath or homeopath, even some doctors have a good nutritional background.
For prostrate cancer I will suggest a small glass of pomegranate juice every day. There is scientific research that shows pomegranate juice does have properties that destroy prostate cancer cells. You can find the research on the internet if you search. My husband, who was diagnosed 10 years ago with prostate cancer, drinks it every day, and thankfully his cancer has remained very small and is not growing. I wish you the best and believe being vegan – low oil is one researched way to stop early cancers. See the China Study. Wishing you good health. Sharon
Thank you so much for the inspiration. On my way to the grocery right now, and was just sitting here creating a menu for the week when your email came. Perfect timing and it helped me get my creative mojo going! God Bless!
Hey Veronica,
Thanks for all your great recipes! Your smoothie recipes are my fave at the moment- always looking for something other than the usual oatmeal/fruit for breakfast, just to change things up a bit. I like to cook without oil and I’ve just discovered your website recently so have lots of your recipes to try in the near future 🙂 Yum. they all look great. I have to say though, since becoming vegan, there are NO substitutes for cheese…that was the hardest thing for me to leave behind. Processed foods, vegan or not, are best left on the shelf.
I’m so glad I found your website 🙂 You are a refreshing inspiration. Thank you!!
I am from Vancouver B.C. and am a big fan.
Thanks Rita! I used to live in Vancouver, really loved the summers there. Thanks for letting me know you enjoy the recipes. 🙂
So proud of myself. Went out for lunch with the office, ordered a fat free vegan salad, and topped it with homemade fat free beet dressing (from Fred’s salad book Veronica). It was filling and delicious.
Folks, don’t be afraid to carry your healthy low/no fat homemade dressing into restaurants. I enjoyed the crazy looks that I was given, but above all I had the most healthy and delicious meal out of my home.
Blessings.
That’s awesome Al! I’m so glad you enjoyed your lunch. It was hard when I worked at an office they would give me strange looks for having fruit or green smoothies instead of burgers and sandwiches.
I bought a large purse since going vegan.
When I know I am going out for a meal or for the day I carry dressing. Nutritional yeast, vegan Parm. Cheese and sometimes vegan bacon bits. I have also been known to have a dessert and fruit and occasional snacks squirreled away. My motto like the boy scouts ” always be prepared”.
Thank you so much. You have helped me and my family’s journey on the low fat vegan life style.
I have been seeing so much with processed vegan options in the stores. I don’t want to be one who depends on those foods and not my own. Once and awhile perhaps, but not regularly in our home.
Love the suggestions on the oats.
I can’t bake as of yet and have it here, I have work to do on the cravings and will not set myself up for failure.
I am still confused on healthy starches and whole grains. Maybe it is me, but should we actually be eating pasta, rice and so many whole grain, so much and so often?
I like the squash-ta, but family doesn’t.
I know I will have to study more and investigate, to wrap my mind around all of this. There is a big difference between low fat and many of the raw foodie and vegan sites. So many nuts and coconut products being used and the fats are so high. I actually gained weight eating this way and with processed vegan products.
Love your information, recipes and wonderful attitute. You are one of the best out there, no extremes.
I’m thankful as well that those of us subscribing to a low-fat, vegan lifestyle have you as a source to go to, Veronica. Looking forward to lifetime of great health.
What great tips, Veronica.
For breakfast, I make “swamp oatmeal” with 1/3c steel-cut oats, 1/4c rolled oats, 1T chia seeds, some (okay, lots of!) cinnamon, some nutmeg, a dash of salt, some raisins, and about 5oz of water. I stir all that in a bowl and refrigerate overnight. The next day, I cut up a banana and an apple and there’s breakfast! If it’s hot out, I eat it cold. If it’s cold out, I microwave it for a couple minutes (makes the bananas taste awesome!). Easy peasy, prep is done the day before, so it even converts easily to a grab-and-go solution.
For lunch, it’s either green smoothies or leftovers from our normal batch of quinoa, lentils, roasted vegetables, etc.
Always like your tips and I don’t mean to badmouth other bloggers, but when you say low-fat, you mean it. Recipes on other sites that purport to be low-fat seem to take a lot of poetic license there! 🙂
Thanks again for your great suggestions and recipes.
That sounds like a swamp oatmeal indeed! I find steel cut oats a little hard to chew if not cooked, so I use my rice cooker to cook them and set it over night to be ready in the morning. (My zojirushi has a timer)
Well I wouldn’t have my recipes be recommended by Dr. John McDougall or the Forks Over Knives team, so I make sure I only create/share recipes that are indeed low fat, and try to keep recipes to only 1 fat source, so only a little bit of nuts, or a little avocado, and never both.
I’m not sure if you mean other low fat vegan sites, there are some that are strict. But these days far too many recipes think they are low fat if they have 2 tsp instead of 2 tablespoons of oil in the, and have low fat yogurt and cheese etc.
I’m glad you enjoy the recipes and tips. 🙂 Thank you!
I find that the overnight refrigeration does tend to soften up steel-cut oats, but (am I recalling correctly that your teeth are especially sensitive?) slow-cooking them definitely makes them easier to chew.
Yeah, some of the other sites that purport to be “fat-free” sometimes leave me scratching my head. How nice that you’re getting the thumbs up from Dr. McDougall, the FoK folks, et al. It’s well deserved.
Keep up the good work! 🙂
Hi Andy
No I don’t have sensitive teeth. I used to, but now I have crowns on all of them. My zojirushi has a porridge setting so it cooks the steel cut oats perfectly.
I have tried making oatmeal cookies with steal cut oats but it wasn’t a good idea, they were really hard to eat! lol
Now I am just curious about what other sites you mean. I may be thinking of different ones. I tend to only view ones that are strict low fat vegan anyway lol
Re: crowns. Ah, yes, that’s what I was recalling.
I kind of like that super-chewy uh, mouthfeel? from the steel-cut oats. I found an awesome oatmeal-cookie recipe* and I’m inclined to try a batch with steel-cut to see if they’re yummy or bricks. 🙂
I went back and checked some of the e-mails I get from other blogs and realized that a couple of them are vegan, not low/no-fat, so I bet they all blended together for me and I was like, “but vegan recipes are supposed to be healthy!” 🙂 (And I think you’re right: “We reduced the oil from 3T to 3t, so this is now low-fat…” 😛 )
I should just unsub from those other ones since I rarely have the desire to re-work their recipes when there are so many other good sites (like yours!) that are great without needing fixes!
* A few weekends ago, I got the idea that I wanted to bake some cookies and ended up finding what seems like the perfect recipe: http://www.glowkitchen.com/2012/02/no-flour-sugar-fat-oatmeal-cookie/ (I’m embarrassed to type this, but my wife and I literally fought over how many we each got to eat from the first batch. We were calmer with batch #2. 🙂
Looks like a great recipe. Probably very similar to mine. I always end up making baked goods with mashed banana. I always have a ton of bananas because I use them for smoothies and banana icecream and when they get a little too ripe for that I put them in baked goods. But I usually give them away! I used to bake a lot as a kid and overdo it. So now I only bake for potlucks or other people and only have one or two.
Oatmeal banana cookies are delicious. 🙂
And yes most vegan recipe sites are basically olive oil, earth balance, fake cheese, fake meat, vegan mayo etc. It’s like really? I couldn’t eat like that I’d get so tired of it.
Only the best recipes for my readers!
I was afraid of the kitchen (worried I’d do something wrong) until about a year or two. A few pots of quinoa and I realized that it wasn’t that bad. All of which is to say that my newfound baking desire is exciting!
Yeah, I’m the same way when I go out to eat and it’s an otherwise healthy-ish place and they’re like, “Do you want the Daiya cheese on that?”
“Um, why would I want to learn to eat something that is just oil in disguise? Thanks, but no thanks.”
Esselstyn’s (and others?) got it right — after about 30 days, you lose your fat/oil craving. (Sadly, eating out — even if you try to do so in a healthy manner — brings it back… 🙁 Back to the kitchen I go! 🙂 )
WE WILL MAKE IT TOGETHER , Dear V eronica !!
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I love Cumcumber with Tomatoes !! Green Pepper and Red Pepper Together !!
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They are all Wonderful !! I love it !!
Thank You !!
All my Respect ,,
Teresa