Ask HN: Favorite Healthy-Ish Recipes?
I guess I’m trying to lose some weight but I know for it to be a sustained thing, I need recipes that taste good as well as being healthy. Any suggestions?
Get your head around calories. For example, I had six slices of dominoes pizza last night, thin crust, which comes in at about 800 calories.
You could say I am tweaking what I have always eaten. Noticeable changes are much less bread, milk, butter, sugar cereal, processed meat and chocolate. More vegetables, salad, eggs, mushrooms, fruit, potatoes, pasta and rice.
My main recipe change is that most days I have a full bowl of homemade vegetable curry for lunch (made at weekend). Whatever vegetables there are around, chick peas, butter beans that sort of thing (followed by a small, good quality, chocolate and coffee). Some call this a Buddha bowl. I call it my Daniel bowl. The old testament reference will be lost on most I am sure ;-)
And finally, I don't eat from dinnertime to breakfast. I think this was all inspired by my being overweight and reading the stats on covid, overweight, intensive care.
We don't have very much space where I live, but we still plant lots of vegetables. One pair of planters always has big leafy things growing in them that we harvest as-needed as baby-greens, so our salads are always awesome. And we always have herbs/spices growing on the ledges - several types of similar items so it never gets repetitive.
We also grow edible flowers of various sorts so things look and taste nice simultaneously. If you like spicy, consider nasturtium. They have a sort of hot radish heat to them. Of course, grow red peppers, too, and dry what you don't eat over the summer.
Don't grow corn unless you have a lot of space. It needs crop rotation, or you'll turn your garden into a desert.
So, although you asked for recipes, there is also this aspect of eating where you can have full control of the ingredients. And you can be experimental with edible items that you don't normally see at the market.
Steak: tastes good, quick and easy to preapare, also low in carbs. Pan-searing a piece of ribeye is my second go-to for an easy and healthy meal.
As others have said make up batches of rice. Get a rice cooker if needed; Zojirushi makes good ones.
Canned beans are cheap. Heat those up in a pot on your stove with a bunch of spices, then put those and the rice into a corn tortilla or a flour one if you want, and you have a tasty burrito. You can also get canned refried beans, which are delicious, but make sure you get the ones without oil or lard. You have to look at the ingredients.
Whatever you eat, remember important thing is body movement. Keep moving as naturally as possible (exercise, walking, playing). For many people gym is not sustainble but you can always adopt another physical activity which is natural to you.
You can eat an entire pack and barely cross 50-60 calories.
finely dice chicken breast into very small cubes, brown in a wok
flip, add red kidney beans
mix around until chicken has a nice color and fully cooked, add sauce of your choice, mix, and then mix in rice
Tons of nutrition and lasts for a few days