Cooking Light Mix & Match Low-Calorie Cookbook

This is probably the simplest concept for calorie counting. 300 for breakfast, 400 for lunch, 500 for dinner, two 150 calorie snacks. It's a really good, simple, basic principle to follow. The suggested meals in the book are a nice variety, and I made myself a list of the sides/options they suggest to add to recipes, so that I could use it to apply to other recipes from their website and other books. I have binders of recipes that I've pulled off of their (and other) resources that show calories per serving, and I use this calorie principle to make notes on each recipe about what I should add to fill out the 400 or 500 calorie allotment for the meal. It's working well for me, and meal planning doesn't take up tons of my time. Good eats too!I reduced it by one star simply because they have a lot of recipes that use starchy options like pasta, bread, and white flour. I'm not trying for a keto diet by any means, but I find that I generally do better on a lower glycemic plan. I wish they'd put out a book with that in focus. I regular use their website and buy their books, but I always have to search out the options with more veggies and less starch.

This will work great for my healthy summer eating. I can design the meals and menu that I want each day!

This book is interesting and pretty useful. Its assuming that you want to consume 1500 calories a day (there's another one for 1200 but it doesn't have as many good options). It will give you a variety of meals and snacks that you can have throughout your day and still stay within that limit. It does require cooking (hence COOKING Light) which can be a deterrent to busy dieters. But, it does take out the planning part of dieting which can be a bit time consuming and tedious. If you're used to cooking full meals then this will be a time saver, if not it will be a worthwhile investment of time in the kitchen. The only issue I had with it was that when you're mixing and matching you're not always going to get 1500 calories because each meal doesn't have a set calorie limit to stay within. If you're not particular about your exact number of calories then this should be okay, you'll average out around the same weekly.

I have a number of Cooking light cookbooks and this one is terrific. I appreciate that there are a range of breakfasts options from easy weekday things to fancier weekend or brunch style meals. We like to cook fancier meals on the weekends. There are so many yummy sounding meals I'm not sure where to start! What I usually do is pick an easy breakfast and lunch option for the week and have that on repeat and then have a mix of dinners. The snacks and desserts sound so good, too! Can't wait to try.

This product is a great alternative to the traditional boring, low fat food. The portions are reasonable, and most of the food I have tried so far is really yummy. I cannot stand frozen, "diet" meals and since I love to cook this is a FABULOUS alternative. I would not recommend this for someone who hates cooking though. It requires quite a bit of planning. But it is worth it.Example: Today I had the following:Breakfast - Blueberry Coffee Cake (which I would make again, diet or no) and 2 links of Turkey SausageLunch - Chicken with Wild Mushroom Sauce (contained cream :) ) with Egg Noodles; Carrot Sticks; and a Homemade Mocha Cookie (fairly decent size too!)Dinner - Pork stir fry with Pineapples and Brown Rice; Apple

I have had this cookbook for a couple months now and have tried many recipes... they are fantastic! Recipes vary from super simple to a little more complex, but everything has really easy steps and beautiful pictures to see your outcome. All of the recipes I have tried so far are keepers.Most recipes also give suggestions of healthy sides you could add for a more complete meal. The calorie estimation is great and its nice to have low-calorie recipes that taste as great as these. For many of the recipes you can also swap and switch out your favorite proteins (though that changes the calorie count), but its a nice option.There are also great desserts and snacks that are low-calorie! What more could you want? It's great to use a guideline for a lower calorie diet, whether you follow the book from breakfast to dessert each day, or if you just pick and choose a few meals to make throughout the week.

I’ve liked the book, but realized today that the reason the pictures don’t line up with the recipes is because several pages were torn out of the book before it came to me. Really disappointing, as I’m sure any pages worth ripping out were good recipes but I don’t know if it’s worth buying a whole second copy.

I was hoping for more I guess... I was hoping for meal ideas and like everything was 300 calories and I could eat 5 times a day.. that's not what this cookbook does. Most recipes are over 400 or 500 even 600 calories.. you are supposed to hunt for the 3 that will keep you in your daily calorie range.. I do like the idea and some of the recipes look yummy! It was just not what I was expecting..

I like that the recipes are rich and delicious. It's not necessarily a cookbook I'll use daily, but I will use it for guests and times when I want to make a batch of high-end comfort food. I bought the book before I had a chance to really let the recipes sink in -that's why I'm giving it 5 stars. It's a bit richer than I like to eat on a day to day basis. The recipes are well constructed, good ingredients, and if you can shop and cook and portion carefully (!) and save extras in the freezer, you'll be set to have a wonderful monthly menu. I also like the layout and the photos in the cookbook.

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

This cookbook is amazing! The concept of multiple low calorie meals is awesome and they make it so easy!! I normally go through my cookbooks and mark or write down the recipes I'd like to try but with this one I eventually just stopped because I would eat literally everything in this book. There's an awesome "nutrition note" on every page, a picture for every single recipe, an optional side dish for a lot of meals and "a little more" option for every recipe! A lot of simple, natural, easy-to-find ingredients. WORTH EVERY PENNY!!

complex