Sissy, I go several places. You already mentioned Eating Well and Cooking Light, two of my favorites. I also check DiabeticLiving, although the recipes are aimed at diabetics they are usually low fat/sodium and high fiber.

Weight Watchers has some good recipes and so does Prevention, both available on line.

In other words, you have to wade through a lot of information and recipes to find the good stuff.

Truthfully, I don't try to low-fat most of my traditional recipes, I either eat less of it or consider it a treat. For instance, there is no good substitute for Oreos or Sherry's brownies with ganache or Nancy's croissants. They are an occasional treat, although I love them.

Fresh local food, simply prepared, is delicious. I roast nearly any vegetable I like and can get, my favorites are asparagus and parsnips, with butternut squash coming in right after those. I'll even eat cauliflower if it's roasted. Use just a little olive oil, some salt and pepper and let the flavor of the vegetable carry the dish. Lean meats, low fat dairy and my downfall, fruits (which I don't really like very much), whole grains instead of white refined stuff. A small piece of good beef doesn't really need blue cheese sauce, and spaghetti sauce doesn't really need 3 or 4 meats and a serving of meatballs is probably 2 instead of 7. Sigh.

There are some things that you just have to find a replacement for, unfortunately. I love butter on toast, but most often I use homemade jam instead, I will never enjoy a piece of plain dry toast, I just don't like it. Baked potatoes no longer get butter and sour cream, they get fat free honey mustard dressing or yogurt or low fat chili. Corn chowder really can be made with skim milk.

Good luck, it's quite an adjustment. I have found that my tastes have changed. I used to love onion rings from a local restaurant, now they just taste greasy and salty, so it's probably a good thing. I still love my fish battered and deep fried, but I've also learned to like it grilled or baked.

It gets easier as it becomes second nature, if that helps.

Oh, and welcome to the Cooking Forum, the home of calories and fat grams, LOL.

Annie

Welcome to the forum!

I don't have a source for fat-free or low fat recipes because I don't use them. I went on a low fat once, and I was very irritable. You need fat in order to be able to use fat soluable vitamins, and fat also helps you feel full. For me, the best diet was to eat fatty foods in moderation - not to eliminate them. Also, the type of fat you eat is very important - I'm trying to substitute olive oil when possible, but I haven't given up butter.

One way to cut down is to use less oil/butter when sautéing or else switch to grilling, steaming, or roasting. It is possible to make many bean dishes without using additional oil - I'll post recipes later, as I do not have access to them here. You can thicken sauces with cornstarch or potato starch instead of a roux, and that will also cut down on fat.

Lars

First, welcome!!! There's lots of great advice here so hope you post often and ask questions.

I've been eating pretty low fat for almost 2 years now.
Thankfully, I love veggies, I'm also a huge meat eater.

If you think about planning your meals around the veggies, beans and whole grains instead of meat, you can cut a lot of fat.

Lars is right that you need some fat, just not as much as most of us take in and it needs to be "good fat".
Fish and lean meat provide that.
Also olive, flax, canola, sunflower and safflower oils are healthy in moderation. Two teaspoons per day is enough.

Try substituting barley for rice. Use brown rice instead of white, whole wheat pasta rather than white.
Potatoes are fine, just skip the butter (or cut way back) and use a fat free sour cream. Try them with chili, veggies and low fat cheese.

Boost flavor by using herbs, roasting to carmelize, etc.

Today I have in the crockpot at home:
Lean round steak dredged in whole wheat flour, bell peppers, onions, tomatoes and mushrooms. It will be Swiss Steak over whole wheat noodles for dinner tonight!

Smaller amount of noodles and beef, more veggies.

Think about making half of your plate veggies, 1/4 meat, 1/4 starch.

Lots of fluids too!

Deanna

Welcome!

Annie mentioned everything I was going to mention, especially Diabetic Living and WW magazine. I don't do WW, but often use their recipes because they are usually pretty darn good.

I don't try to diplicate high fat recipes with no/low fat ones. I look for things that will taste good for what they are, not be a poor consolation prize for what they were, if that makes sense. No one will ever convince me that "fat free" half-and-half or "fat-free" cheese is palatable. I find if I try to fool myself like that, I just end up feeling deprived and ticked off about it.

I have a gazillion Weight Watcher recipes plus 9 WW cookbooks. Lots and lots of wonderful, normal ingredient recipes.

Welcome indeed!i Was also going to recommend WW recipes - there are a TON of them floating around and BTDT is right, a lot of them are really good.

Glad you have joined us!

Alexa

Oh, and I forgot Clean Eating and EatBetterAmerica. Clean Eating is a bit radical for my tastes but they have some good recipes. EatBetterAmerica is a lot of "redone" recipes, but some of their stuff still isn't bad.

There just are some things that you cannot duplicate, like butter, and anything else is a poor imitator. Those things I either do without entirely or I eat very small amounts of them, I don't try to replace them because I know I won't be happy with a replacement. I'm a very picky eater!

Annie

Annie - How do you mean "radical" for Clean Eating? I've seen it on the newstands and wondered about it, but I had the impression it was another publication where "simple" and "organic" were defined as "hand made by venstal virgins by the light of the full moon and sold at exhorbitant prices." (Kinda like that Real Simple publication that seems to thing "simple" means "four times more than any sane person would pay for it.)

Amazon has a deal going right now. One year subscription to Eating Well for $5.00. I am going to try it at that price.

Here is a link that might be useful: eating well

LOL, Renee, that's pretty close, although I'm not quite sure where they found the virgins.

A lot of their stuff is good, simple, organic, low fat. They get a bit tougher when they start talking about no sugar/no salt/nothing refined, etc. They really push the soy milk which I just detest and won't use or consume, want to replace eggs with tofu, etc. They have a level that I don't aspire to, but some of their stuff is good and they focus on healthy, fresh, locally available stuff without a lot of strange or unique ingredients. I've made a couple of their recipes and they've been good but some of their stuff has so many substitutions of things I don't have on hand that I just pass them by. I'm subbing soy milk for regular milk, tofu for eggs, gluten free flat bread for my homemade honey wheat, bean cakes for ground beef or chicken, well, you get the idea. I'd have to buy every single one of those ingredients, so when they stray away from fresh/local and into the other territory, they lose me.

Annie

Welcome Sissy!

There's a lot of helpful suggestions on here. Lars has it right about your body needing fats. You just need the healthy fats.

I found that I did a lot better by using olive oil and extra virgin olive oil in everything. I haven't managed to switch over to that on my toast yet, but like Annie said, a bit of good jam/jellie will do or honey.

Think like the Italians - they use the olive oil even in their mashed potatoes.

Beth

Welcome! I too think they're great cooks here. I totally agree with Cooking Light and Eating Well. Their recipes are recipes I make just because they look delicious! That is, I am not required to be on a restricted diet. I think their food is good for anyone, not, boy this is good "for low fat" kind of good, just plain ol' good. I'd also heard a long time ago that the Mayo Clinic cookbook's recipes are good, and the ones I've tried, honestly, they are. My version is much older than this one, so I can't vouch for the recipes, but I bet they're just as good as my versions'.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mayo Clinic cookbook

Thanks, Annie. Doesn't sound like anything I'd like. Due to the thyroid issues, I'm supposed to scale back soy intake, so it doesn't sound useful in my case. I'll save my $. :)

Joann, Eating Well is a good magazine. I reluctantly stopped getting it because their print size got too small for me to read after the last redesign, but it always had intersting articles and good recipes.

Thanks so much!! I will check out the WW..I have never thought of them, but it makes perfect sense.
I do get plenty of fat in my diet, believe me. At 45, I saw my reflection in the mirror at the mall and did not recognize it to be me...I have grown into a big fat tub of lard. You all are so friendly and helpful. Thank you.

Hi Sissy and welcome to the Cooking Forum!

I've lost 44 lbs since July on a Portuguese high protein diet and the only fat I'm allowed is a light spray or few drops of olive oil.
I use it on vegetables and toast, and it now tastes to me like melted butter.

Pork is not allowed but meat such as chicken, turkey, lean beef and fish are part of the daily diet, so the good fats come from there as well as the olive oil, and that's enough.

The weight gain happens though not just from fat but mostly from carbs and sugar. I've cut out potatoes, pasta, bread and all sweets, sugar, fruit juices (very high in sugar) and since this is a temporary diet.....I'll keep it up only until my BMI (body mass index) is back where it was when I was younger and slimmer. I know I'm not going to be doing this forever.

The results have been amazing, but I do go weekly to a dietitian for a weigh-in and my weekly list of what I can eat. But I just wanted to mention that so much of weight gain is perhaps not so much fat as it is carbs and sugar.

Keep to dark green and yellow vegetables, raw carrots (cooked is higher is sugar), potatoes that are steamed or boiled...baked are very high in starch/sugar...and fried we know are too fatty. Avoid baked goods and bread made with white flour.

You might want to have a look at the Glycemic Index rating of foods for their sugar rating and stick to those which rate lower on the scale. The Glycemic Index rates foods according to how long they take to raise your insulin level. Foods which are digested quickly cause an insulin spike and may be stored as fat, where foods that digest slowly and have a lower sugar level have a much less chance of being stored rather than burned.

Exercise and walking is a great part of keeping fit but it's a slow method of losing weight.
For example if you weigh 150 lbs, you'd have to walk for 20 hours to lose one pound; if you weigh 200 lbs you'd have to walk 15 hours to lose a pound.
But still it's an essential part of firming up your body once you start slimming down.

Today I just got a newsletter from Delia, the British TV and online cook which has some low-fat menu ideas which you may want to try.

Good luck with your menu changes!

SharonCb

Congrats Sharon!

Welcome Sissy, nice people here which makes it so easy to ask questions. I've learned some great stuff here.

I have a couple of healthy cookbooks in my collection that I like - one is "Canyon Ranch Cooks" from the kitchen of their resort/spa frequented by many a picky-ass celebrity lol, does have the occasional weird ingredient, but does a nice job of explaining nutrition and goals and pantry loading. The other is Chris Carmichael's Fitness Cookbook, he's a trainer (most notably for many Tour De France athletes) and he hooked up with Mark Tarbell to create recipes that are oriented towards fitness, weight loss, and better health. But it is one *boring* book to look at - matte pages, no pix. I like my cookbooks like I like my food - colorful, rich, with depth and a story behind it. If I can't travel right now at least my palate can :)

Hi Sissy
Welcome to CF. I'm fairly new here too. Found the GW Fruit tree blog when I did a web search looking for an answer to bug problems in my peach tree, checked out the farming and homestead blogs next and finally picked up CF. They had a post going about Alien Eggs. I got such a laugh out of the fun they were having with the post I just sort of started hanging here most of the time. You will find some very talented, caring people here. I've learned so much. I like the Better Homes and Garden Dieter Cook Book. It's a little older edition but I've found a lot of really good dish I like in it and they probably have a new edition by now.

welcome again!
Mike