FRIENDLY LITTLE DUEL #2
would love to your thoughts on this
in the comments below!
3 Spaghetti Squash & Meatballs Recipes. 3 different outcomes.
They all have similar ingredients and they are all really delicious. However, even though they have similar ingredients, they are quite different when it comes to protein, fat, carbs and calories.
Between the P3tolife dish and the Pinterest dish I found, thereâs almost a 200 calorie difference!
The reason that this matters and why I want to show you a comparison is because up until now our resources for P3 have been to do our due diligence on Pinterest, Yummy and Google. Thatâs what I did and thatâs what most of us did.
Thereâs really been nothing specific to P3 for us to follow. We make it work in general but we run into challenges. For me, I tended to overeat. I really didnât know whatâs in my recipes when I searched on Pinterest or Yummly. My main goal was to find low carb recipes. If it was low carb then I figured Iâm good but in reality I would still find myself having to do steak days because I was still simply OVER CONSUMING food.
Which is probably why Iâm one of those people who never lost more than an initial 5 lbs when trying low carb diets for weight loss in the past. Iâd lose that 3-5 lbs of water weight, and then that was always pretty much it. Because I was still just eating a LOT. Of cheese, nuts, meat, butter, bacon, etc. etc.
Are seeing a running theme here with the whole volume thing? Can you see why Iâve had to get creative to maintain the past 5 years?
You can see all the details of the P3toLife Program and Enroll here:
You can also view our looong list of P3tolife testimonials here:
Ideally we donât want to have to breakdown and research EVERY SINGLE RECIPE we make, right?
Most of us eat 2-4 times a day and if we have to research everything weâre going to put in our mouths for every meal, every day â I donât have time for that.
So Iâve done a lot of research for the Phase 3 meal plan. Iâve done all that research to get rid of the things that are probably not a good idea on Phase 3 and make all the things that are a good idea for Phase 3 a reality.
So that you donât have to do any of that research yourself.
These 2 dishes I found on Yummly and Pinterest. I chose them because the pictures look beautiful â okay, one I burnt by accident, but I promise I did not do it on purpose to make it look worse! I left the broiler on too long (a frequent occurrence in this house). They look delicious in the photos and theyâre labeled low carb. Thatâs how I made my choice.
This first dish is more like a lasagna.
- 590 calories
- 14g carbs
- 40g fat
- 48g protein
- 3g fiber
- 11 net carbs
The great thing about this is itâs only 14 carbs so itâs pretty low carb. Whatâs not so great about it is it has 590 calories and 48g protein.
The protein is not a big problem later but because this dish is so high in protein AND fat, one serving ends up with too high calories for say week 1 of Phase 3. I can eat this dish on Phase 4 but as youâre easing in Phase 3, this might be too many calories once you factor in your other meals for the day.
Dietitians agree that when coming off of a low calorie diet, it is very wise to gradually increase your calories.
Thatâs not something that sounds good in theory, I can tell you by and large that the people who email me or I see online who stabilize during Phase 3 well and donât have to do a million steak days are the individuals who did gradually increase their calories.
MANÂ I wish Iâd been like them. I had to learn the hard way. Self control with eating has never come easy for me.
So with this dish being 590 calories unless you only eat a much smaller amount of calories for the rest of the day for breakfast and lunch during the first week of Phase 3, a lot of us ladies coming off P2 are going to probably end up eating too many calories total for a whole day.
The other thing is this dish got a lot of cheese in it. Most of us can have nuts and cheese but again, by and large, most find that introducing those 2 food groups a little later is usually better for stabilizing. A lot of us end up discovering we have intolerance this food group to some extent.
That doesnât mean you can never have cheese or nuts again. I do have a little intolerance so I can still eat a little bit but I canât have a ton. But just having a bunch right off the bat in Phase 3 can more easily cause you trouble than easing yourself into a little bit later in Phase 3.
The thing about all this is would you know this just looking at the recipe online or even looking at the ingredient list of the recipe. I know for me, I wouldnât have known that.
In fact, when I chose this recipes, because I knew I wanted to make a fair comparison based on what I would naturally do if I were picking out recipes for myself, I didnât actually know if the macro breakdown for each dish was going to be very different or not when I chose them and it turned out that it was.
Letâs move on to the 2nd dish.
again, iâm so sorry about how it looks. i meant to make it pretty and it didnât turn out that way. #burnedit
This recipe called for 1 medium sized spaghetti squash and the serving size is half of one. Itâs got the meatballs, pasta sauce, cheese, and all that stuff. Same type of ingredients.
- 575 calories
- 43g carbs
- 30g fat
- 38g protein
- 10g fiber
- 33 g net carbs
Whatâs good about this?
The only thing I can find out beside the taste, of course it tastes good, was that the protein content was good enough. It had about 38g of protein â so thatâs plenty of protein.
but i ran into some trouble with this recipe.
The ugly
When I picked it, it probably looked the most beautiful of all the photos, it wasnât burned like mine so it had that beautiful half spaghetti squash and it was just all gorgeous. I was like âYeah! Thatâs the one I want to make!â
So I go to the grocery store with my little list of ingredients printout. This one needed already-prepared pasta sauce. Now it can be hard to find a spaghetti sauce that doesnât have added sugar. I lucked out and the first one I grabbed was a natural one and it had no added sugar.
But as I got down to the portion of meatballs and instead of ingredients, it said 1 lb prepared meatballs which is linked to a secondary recipe on her blog for the meatballs. So I got my phone and got the recipe. Keep in mind the recipe was advertised as being low carb and everything but the meatballs recipe I was linked to wasnât low carb.
It has some grain in it. It called for gluten-free cereal. It stopped me in my tracks and thought what do I do? I have 2 choices, leave it out entirely or replace it. Myself, I decided I will just replace it versus leaving it out because I know ratio of ingredients make a difference to their final consistency.
If you were going to replace grain in a dish with a low carb alternative, what would you choose?
Let me guessâŚ.probablyâŚalmond flour, or coconut flour right?
So I chose to replace it with almond flour and it ended up higher in calories than it wouldâve been because of this. Again, this is something I would not have realized would happen when I made this adjustment. And I would have gone on my merry way and maybe eaten 1.5 servings of this or something and gone overboard again.
Another ingredient this recipe called out for is Worcestershire sauce and I saw it had both molasses and sugar which is a no-no in Phase 3, so I was again at a crossroads with yet another decision to make, for literally just this one recipe and I was like, oh man, what do I do?? Once I actually figured it out, one serving will only have Âź g of sugar worth of sauce in the recipe so Iâm not going to worry about a quarter of a gram. However, once again, these frequent decision-makings are emotionally draining and exhausting.
I ran into those problems, I worked through them, I got home and I made the recipe. Then I did the macro breakdown for this one. This dish is 575 calories and 43 carbs.
As you can see, the carbs are actually pretty high for just 1 meal as well! On what was supposed to be a âlow carbâ meal. The serving size of spaghetti squash was too vague (1/2 a spaghetti squash- which would be VERY different in size) and it was just way too much of that ingredient.
So all that work, all those decisions to make which really threw me off emotionally and drained my energy, all to end up making a dish that wasnât even that ideal for me to be eating in Phase 3.
Finally, I personally felt that there was too much spaghetti squash even from a taste perspective and not enough sauce.
This last dish is from the Phase 3 Meal Plan. The Spaghetti Squash & Lean Beef Meatballs
- 336 calories
- 29 carbs
- 22 net carbs
- 8g fat
- 36g protein
This dish without the cheese is 336 calories and 29 carbs, 22 net carbs. This has much lower calories and net carbs. Low carb diets are typically 50g-100g if youâre living in a low carb diet for a while. Thatâs the way we designed the meal plan so itâs totally reasonable. This is actually one of the few meals in the meal plan that is a slightly higher total carb meal than most of the dishes, and I compensated on those dayâs meal plan by making sure the other dishes that days were comparatively lower carb so that the total for the day was still a âlow carb day.â
One thing Iâve done with the meal plan is we donât include cheese and nuts until Week 3Â and at that point its small amount of them. The reason for this is because
by and large people find that they do much better in stabilizing on Phase 3 when they wait to introduce the cheese and nuts.
Whether itâs an intolerance to it or the fact that its calorie dense- you can eat a lot of nuts and cheese and itâs a lot of calories and even eating a small amount and you will still eat a considerable amount of calories, itâs just how it is and itâs SO easy to overconsume.
This dish is listed for Day 5 of the very first week of P3! And again youâll have it without the cheese for that Phase 3. BUT, when you want to make this dish again because itâs really, really delicious, you can make this meal again and now youâre going to add Âź cup mozzarella cheese, when you do that, now with the cheese the full dish is 405 calories and 1 extra carb. Even though the calories have now gone up a little bit 405 calories for a full meal is a completely reasonable amount and still far less than these 2 dishes here.
Notice the amount of found thatâs in one serving!
Iâm eatinâ dat.
Itâs GENEROUS even though the carbs are less. Itâs generous because of the ratio we designed this recipe to have. Itâs got some fat, some carbs, and a good amount of protein.
Thatâs what I want to show you there. The whole Phase 3 meal plan is designed like this.
Itâs specifically tailored to fit within a reasonable amount of carbs but not carb-free.
Weâre not having grains or sugar but we are getting some carbs that are coming from lower-carb vegetables and whole fruits. For me, with all the low-carb diets Iâve done and the reading Iâve done, I think our brains have been just impregnated with this thought of everything needs to be as low carb as possible and I need to look for foods that are 5 net carbs or less and anything above that seems high carb. But itâs not. All it has is one cup of spaghetti squash so itâs totally reasonable.
For instance, we tend to think of dairy as low carb, but if you have enough of it, which is easy to do, the carbs in the dairy add up. And this isnât necessarily bad, itâs just what weâve been programmed to believe it low carb or not low carb, but I have come to learn over time that itâs not just WHAT food but also how MUCH of a food we eat. If you eat just 1 cup of spaghetti squash, this is going to be nice low carb choice still.
You guys know that this meal plan was designed SPECIFICALLY for you to be used on Phase 3 so you can stabilize your weight. Itâs such an important time. You donât want to ruin all that hard work youâve just put in. The weight loss has been a big deal and youâre happy about that. You feel so much better in your jeans or youâre down a few sizes and thatâs exciting.
Now you want to solidify that.
No one wants to keep eating 500 calories and living on celery and fennel.
#notalongtermplan
Some people mention continue eating Phase 2 foods but just increase them. That is certainly an option!
I will say though that this is not usually necessary if you donât want to do that.
With the Phase 3 meal plan, everything is designed. The recipes are designed to have variety when it came to the types of meat, I used a lot of different vegetables and fruits, and different types of cuisine so you donât get bored. You will definitely enjoy them. They are so delicious and they are really easy to modify.
The Phase 3 meal plan is designed to have:
- Variety when it came to the types of meat
- Different vegetables and fruits
- Different types of cuisine
MODIFICATIONS to make it a maintenance recipe.
Just like Phase 2 is a special time period, Phase 3 is also a special time period. So for all the recipes in the first 2 weeks where the total calories of those meals are a little lower to help your body readjust, and donât contain the cheese and nuts, Iâve listed modifications to those recipes so that you can eat those in phase 4 and add a little more calories, taste, texture and dairy or nuts if you so choose.
So youâll see ways to add fat, protein, or carbs in a reasonable amount to that recipe if you so choose for when you make it again.
So there ya go! The friendly little duel with pinterest. đ
So Iâm curious now, when you pick recipes online, how do you guys make your choice? Are you like me and go with whatever looks prettiest and says paleo or low carb on it?
I had NO idea there could be such differences in recipes like this!