Here’s a semi-serious question for you: do you think eating a healthy diet means you are stuck with boring meals, or foods that “aren’t fun”? Or that you have to deprive yourself if you want to reach your goals?!

We hear this ALL the time as ChicBoxing coaches!  But we’re here to respectfully inform you that way of thinking is INCORRECT! 🙂

SOME GOOD NEWS FOR YOU! You aren’t “stuck” eating bland/boring meals – and you certainly don’t have to deprive yourself! You can even cook and experiment with new recipes – or enjoy old family favourites!

Here’s a little trick…

One of the things you can do when you make a recipe (old or new) is figure out/estimate its calorie and macronutrient breakdown, so you have an idea of serving sizes. Do this, with all your faves (as well as new recipes you want to try)!

When you have an idea of the nutritional breakdown of what you’re eating, you can eat pretty much anything you want – all you have to do is adjust your PORTION SIZE!

It’s easier (and faster!) than ever to calculate nutrition info because there are dozens of tools online to help you do that. Some to check out:

~ Myfitnesspal

~ Verywellfit

~ SparkRecipes

~ Happy Forks

All you have to do is log on to one of those sites and input your ingredients and the amounts and you’ll get an idea how much of any recipe is a serving size for you.

Some tips:

~ Save time inputting your recipes by leaving out calorie-free foods (like spices) since they won’t have much impact on the nutrition breakdown.

~ When you want to be able to increase your serving size, see if there’s a way to scale back or substitute calorie-heavy ingredients without affecting the taste.

This can be a pretty eye-opening exercise, especially if you’ve got a stockpile of old family recipes. You might find that you decide to save your grandmother’s famous lasagna recipe just for special occasions!

It also presents an opportunity to update those recipes (or your normal portion sizes) to reflect your goals. If you enjoy cooking, it can be fun to tweak recipes to make them tastier AND healthier.

In fact, if you want a great resource, you can check out “Meal Makeovers” from the Food Network- as they provide tons of healthy meal swaps for comfort foods and other family favorite recipes!