Cooking that Counts: 1,200- to 1,500-Calorie Meal Plans to Lose Weight Deliciously

This book is amazing! Good recipes beautiful picture easy to follow daily routine of what to eat!

I have OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea). I have the CPAP machine, the Darth Vadar style mask and O2 supplementation. It helps folks like me get off the nightmare of "gain weight while you sleep diet." When you add walking, stretching and meditation with a great low calorie set of meals like the ones in this book, you will drop weight. Guaranteed. I'm a chef and a developer of AR / VR systems. I spend 10+ hours in a nice Herman Miller Embody chair, but I have to eat and drink, too. My RX: Drink 5 cups of coffee daily. It boosts your body's ketones (and Dr. David Perlmutter says so, too). But you have to watch the carbs. Drop the sugars and do not ever cook or eat the crap foods with white breads. This turns to simple sugars in the blood stream. Note this book did use the word "diet" on the cover. Let's face it: The first three letters of DIET are painful: DIE -- because this is what most of us feel like. Eating DIET food makes us want to DIE for food that tastes good. Well, this book has a lot of yummy and simple to follow recipes that anyone can follow. It's not a diet. It's good, healthy food that can help any idiot lose the weight.

We love this book, for the recipe content. The meals are awesome and filling... some are easy to prepare.. some have a lot of prep work- but all are DELICIOUS. The meal plan is a different story. The plan has you making three meals and a snack entirely from scratch every day! Who has time for this?? 28 different recipes in a week PLUS somehow coordinating all the ingredient lists for 28 recipes?? I have no idea how other reviewers pulled this off! We prepare 2 or 3 recipes per week, and for the two of us, we split those up for lunch and dinner. Breakfast we do something simple, like oatmeal. This book has totally changed how we cook, and meal plan, but I have no idea how anyone can follow their 30 day meal plan? This book is SO WORTH IT for all the calorie conscious recipes (over 110 recipes) but the meal plan is not simple .

I love this cookbook because it's calorie-based, which is a nice feature. I know not all foods have exact calories, but it's a guideline, and it includes delicious recipes!

My sister in law kept making all this great food, and almost every time I asked where she got the recipe, it was from cooking light. So when I decided to cut calories and be a more portion conscious, I was thrilled to find this cookbook. I went through it this morning, and was starving by the time I was done. Everything looks so good! And a good majority of the ingredients are things I would keep on hand anyway. My favorite part about many of the breakfast meals is that even though the “calorie count” at the top of the page says 300 (or whatever), the entree they’ve made is almost always meant to be supplemented by 20 to 50 calories to reach that 300. So besides the breakfast quiche (as an example), you also get to have fruit or coffee with cream to actually hit that 300 calorie mark. If you want a totally guided meal plan, there is a 30 day breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack meal plan at the front of the book. Everything in each meal section has similar enough calorie counts that you can easily swap whatever you want. There’s also a list of staple foods you should have on hand (so that you have no excuses when it comes to whether you can cook a delicious meal from scratch). Each recipe also includes suggestions on how to supplement your entree for increased calories (if you should be eating 1300, 1400, or 1500 calories a day instead of 1200). There are plenty of options for vegetarians and meat eaters alike. I can’t wait to get cooking.

I like this book for what it is, generally low cal recipes & ideas. However, the book cover and description markets it like it has a focus on 'meal plans'. The meal plan is basically just plugging the various recipes into a 30 day calendar. In the first four days there are 2 different muffin recipes for breakfast. What do I do w/ the other 11 (22 really) muffins that had to be made? There is also no thought given to common ingredients used within a couple days or really anything people might consider when shopping & planning out meals other than simply assigning recipes to meals/days. This to me is not really a meal 'plan' particularly if you have to make/bake things that make 12 servings and no one else in your home might eat it except you (I realize some things could be frozen or I could just eat the muffins for bfast all week long, but that is the point, it isn't really a well thought out 'plan'). So for light recipes that are pretty straightforward to make and sound pretty good, it is a good book. For effective and realistic meal planning, I think it misses the mark.

This has to be the best Cooking Light cookbook ever. Using this book as the main recipe provider, I lost 50 pounds over the last year while eating delicious food. My family never felt hungry and asked for repeat meals like pork with magic green sauce. The Greek farro salad, using red and yellow cherry tomatoes is good enough to take to a dinner party. In our house the book is well worn and has a plethora of scrap pieces of paper marking our favorate recipes.

I've loved every Cooking Light cookbook I've ever owned. I love the magazine too. I'm on the CL Diet and this book is a great accompaniment to the diet plan. I actually wouldn't even call the diet a "diet" - it's a plan to eat the healthy, well balanced meals your body needs with the added bonus of losing weight. I never feel hungry, I feel alive and healthy, and my skin is glowing. I've made a dozen meals so far from this book and everything is delicious. I'm the type who prefers a cookbook that is intelligent, informative, and full of fantastic, mouth watering photos. This one has it all. I have to say I've never cooked a bad Cooking Light recipe. Buy this cookbook, you will not be dissapointed!

my friend was delighted

Good quality book. Alot of useful recipes and nice pictures. Glad I bought it. I will try some recipes.

Such a great book. Every recipe is delicious - the mushroom bacon casserole, muffins, everything

So much shopping! We typically make all of our own meals at home and are very familiar with regular grocery shopping trips but this book takes it to another level. Lots of prep work as well. In our experience, it is best to make large batches of the recipes to minimize daily prepping. The book relies on portion control and the recipes do not fear the use of healthy fats, which is nice as it seems to help reduce cravings. All in all, the meals are pretty tasty and satisfying but be prepared to work for it.

The book offers exactly what I wanted. Meal Plans. They are easy to make, instructions easy to follow, ingredients easy to get at a local grocery store.and extra spicing so that you don't feel you are following a "diet plan". Pictures help visualize.