While you'll still need to exercise and follow a balanced and varied meal plan, using Lean Cuisine meals to practice portion control, avoiding over-indulging, and staying away from fast food can help you diet and lose weight. Frozen meals like Lean Cuisine have built-in portion control -- a major benefit when you're trying to lose weight.
When you're dieting, you can use Lean Cuisine to ensure you're eating the proper portion size. Many people under-estimate just how much food they're eating, and food marketing distorts your concept of what a portion looks like, so you're more likely to overeat, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. Underestimating calorie intake is one of the major causes of obesity, according to a review published in the Journal of Marketing Research in It makes sense -- if you don't truly know how much you're eating, it's impossible to ensure you're taking in fewer calories than you burn each day, which is essential for weight loss.
Since Lean Cuisine packages their meals in single-portion servings, there's no guesswork or estimating the "right" portion size. You'll know exactly how much food you're supposed to eat -- and how many calories you're taking in. Many dieters treat losing weight as an exercise in deprivation, but that shouldn't be the case. Letting yourself enjoy your favorite comfort foods can keep you feeling satisfied with your diet, and the occasional indulgence is good for your overall wellness, according to Rutgers University.
Lean Cuisine meals offer a lower-calorie alternative to many comfort food classics and a "safe" way to indulge. For example, Lean Cuisine Vermont cheddar mac and cheese has calories, while a cup of macaroni and cheese made from dried sauce mix weighs in at calories.
A portion of Lean Cuisine spaghetti with meat sauce has calories, compared to calories in a serving of canned spaghetti. I've loved Lean Cuisine ever since my very first bite of cheese ravioli inhaled during a playdate before I even know what the word diet meant. Ever since my first bite of lower-fat dairy and pasta bliss in the early 90s, I was hooked. Unlike many of the low-fat, lite and fat-free diet-inspired food products of the late 20th century, Lean Cuisine has stuck around, redesigning and reinventing itself to appeal to shoppers in the frozen aisle who have since learned to love organic frozen edamame and meat-free sausage breakfast patties.
On New Year's Day , I, like many a social media user, was inundated with ads for the Lean Cuisine Challenge , a diet created in partnership with the app MyFitnessPal to encourage users to log their healthy meals and exercise plans for the first month of the year, i. Though I did not participate in the challenge, when February rolled around, I wondered if I missed my shot at healthy eating via frozen pre-portioned plates of macaroni and cheese and ravioli in watery cream sauce.
Was the Lean Cuisine Challenge on to something or just a marketing tactic to sell more relatively health conscious frozen meals? A team of chefs, nutritionists and farmers work together to create the meals, aiming for optimum taste and nutrition when inventing a Lean Cuisine dish, of which there are currently over varieties. Lean Cuisine launched in , with the goal of meeting women's nutritional needs by "creating innovative, wholesome and flavorful dishes and snacks," Schmidt explained.
Certified fitness and nutrition coach Madalynne Carattini told The List , "Don't be surprised if you feel hungry because of not only how small the portions are, but how little balance of macronutrients there are in the meal. Fortunately, the company added a Balance Your Plate tool to their website, so you can find out what nutritional foods pair best with your frozen meal. Lean Cuisine meals generally taste pretty good, which is why some folks are perfectly happy eating them every day.
However, if you're powering yourself solely on their frozen offerings, you might be selling yourself short, as noted by weight management specialist Malia Frey. She continued, explaining, "Most nutrition experts agree that heavily processed foods don't support optimal health.
Unsurprisingly, the folks who are experts in healthy diets advocate for a different approach to eating, says Frey. That's not to say you can't supplement your Lean Cuisine-based diet with fresh fruits and vegetables, which would definitely help. But that doesn't solve the issue with processed foods overall.
Lean Cuisines may help you lose weight — but if you eat them every day, you may also lose out on getting the fiber your body needs. Fiber is a super important part of your diet, as it helps you to regulate a number of bodily processes, according to the Mayo Clinic. However, an alarming amount of folks aren't making a concerted effort to get enough of it. Larionova told The List.
Unfortunately, if you eat Lean Cuisine meals every day, you might not be getting enough of this essential roughage. Lean Cuisine meals may not taste like you're eating too much salt , but consuming them every day can skyrocket your body's sodium intake, says registered dietitian Megan Wong. She continued, saying, "Many of the dishes have around mg of sodium, which is around 30 percent of the daily recommended intake.
According to the FDA , the maximum recommended intake of sodium is 2, milligrams per day for healthy adults. Unfortunately, the average American eats 3, milligrams of sodium every day, thanks to our taste for salty foods like pizza, sandwiches, and cheeses. Fortunately, Lean Cuisine does offer options that are lower in sodium than others — so if you're concerned about your blood pressure, low-sodium Lean Cuisines are definitely a better bet.
After all, anything packed with sodium is definitely a food you should avoid if you want a long life. Lean Cuisine might have "lean" it its name, but it's far from a magical weight loss solution. In fact, eating only Lean Cuisines could be one of the reasons you're not losing any weight. Lean Cuisine seems to make weight loss possible thanks to the reduced calories per serving and the small portion sizes. However, if you don't have the proper discipline, you might see the scale tip in the other direction.
As certified personal trainer Sergio Pedemonte told The List , "You may gain weight since the lower calorie content may not be satiating, prompting you to consume additional food. That's not just a once in a while occurrence either, says Pedemonte.
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