What I Cooked | Cooking Light Diet

This month Todd & I signed up for the Cooking Light Diet (CLD).  Cooking Light Diet is an online membership diet meal-planning program by Cooking Light.  Since Todd and I have subscribed to Cooking Light magazine for years and have cooked many many Cooking Light meals, we thought this would fit into our current lifestyle just fine.  I signed up for three months and it was $29.95.  Each week you get a meal plan for all seven days which includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.  Breakfast is usually 300 calories.  Lunch is usually 400 calories, and dinner 500 calories.  The snacks usually add up to 200 calories.  For my weight-loss goals, it aims for 1400 calories per day.  You can click on which meals you want to make, and the website will generate a shopping list for you.  Also, most of the meals take 30 minutes or less to make.  Todd & I cook together and it comes together really fast.

Our first week with the CLD meal planning, I realized that I don’t need the breakfast, lunch, and snack planning.  The reason is, your shopping list becomes HUGE because you’re eating a little bit of many different things.  This promotes wasted food.  I didn’t like that.  I don’t mind eating the same basic things for breakfast and snacks everyday.  Since there are only two of us, our lunch everyday consists of leftovers from the night before.  So really, I only need dinner planning!  Realizing that has made the shopping list much easier to handle. 

Here are some of the dishes we have cooked so far.  I’ve also added them to my “Stuff I Cooked” Pinterest board. 

 

Linguini with Basil Pea Cream

This one was not my favorite.  This dish has too much peas and basil, making it really sickly sweet. If I make it again, I would use a lot less peas and somewhat less basil.  More garlic!

 

Superfast Chicken Posole

It really was fast, and actually quite good. The bitterness of the radishes compliments the sourness of the tomatillos and lime juice.

 

Pan-Roasted Chicken Cutlets with Maple-Mustard Dill Sauce

The chicken sauce was slightly too sweet, but it was pretty good.  We served it with green beans instead of rice.

 

Tofu Curry with Bok Choy and Peanuts

This was probably my favorite out of the Cooking Light Diet dishes I’ve cooked so far.  It was super-fast and easy. Used regular bok choy instead of baby bok choy. Great vegetarian meal.

 

Loaded Mashed Potato Soup

This dish sounded good but didn’t really taste good.  The potato soup tasted too sour to me.  Plus, my soup looked nothing like the one pictured on their website.  Their soup looks like it has cream in it, since it’s so white. 

 

Fresh Tomato, Sausage, and Pecorino Pasta

We’ve actually made this dish before, but since it showed up in our menu this past week, we decided to make it again.  We hadn’t had it in years.  This was super-fast and so yummy. 

 

I just wanted to share my personal experience so far with the Cooking Light Diet.  I like that you get to pick from its suggestions and that meals are planning for you each week.  But I’ve found that we only use it for dinners, which is fine.  Even though I’ve been on a “diet” for two months, I haven’t really felt hungry, which is good.  I’ve lost about 5 lbs, with a goal to lose a total of 15 lbs.  But diet is just one part of being healthy.  I am also exercising quite a bit, and getting over 10k steps in each day.  Making progress!