Hormonal Weight Loss Recipes (2024)

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5 hormonal weight loss recipes! You may be wondering after listening to last week's podcast episode on hormonal weight loss coaching, what recipes align with eating for your metabolism and the hormones that control hunger and cravings.

Often my clients have diet mentality when they come to work with me. They think they have to be making separate meals from their family when in fact, they can (and should!) be eating the same as their family with tweaks.

The bottom line is if you're making foods that are bland and tasteless and your family won't eat them, then it's likely you need to find new recipes. Good news! This website is filled with many recipes that work with the simple hormonal weight loss approach I teach my clients!

It's also important to note that many recipes on Pinterest and the internet say "healthy," but anyone, I mean anyone, can literally stamp the word "healthy" on a pretty picture. It doesn't necessarily mean the recipe is, in fact, nutritionally balanced or healthy.

In this 5 Hormonal Weight Loss Recipes Dish on Ditching Diets Podcast, you will hear:

• Why you can't rely on the word "healthy" when searching recipes on Pinterest or the internet
• Why you shouldn't be making separate meals from your family
• How you can make simple tweaks to make recipes more friendly to your goals
• 5 hormonal weight loss recipe examples
• Where to get more recipes that align with your goals that your family will love

Never Missing An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets PodcastiTunes,Google Play,StitcherorSpotify

Links From This Episode

• Cookbook
• Lunch Recipe Download
• Chicken Pot Pie
• Turkey Chili
• Shepherd's Pie
• Tuna Noodle Casserole
• Turkey Burrito Skillet

Hormonal Weight Loss Recipes Transcript

Today I'm sharing with you five hormonal weight loss dinner recipes. In the last podcast I talked about hormonal weight loss coaching. That was episode 55 which I'll link for you in the show notes, and episode 28 I also talk about hormonal weight loss as well.

So those two give you an idea of what hormonal weight loss is all about, what the three pillars are of hormonal weight loss but I'll give you kind of high level overview here.

Hormonal weigth loss is about learning to eat for the hormones that control your metabolism and in a way that shuts down hunger and cravings. The the biggest culprit women or anybody really has when it comes to losing weight is hunger and cravings.

If you can win the battle of hunger and cravings then of course your chances of success dramatically increase in terms of adherence to a new way of eating. And what I often find with clients is that they're eating really inconsistently or their meals are really out of balance, and most of us have grown up on the standard american diet, and that diet consists of foods that are high in calories, that primarily are comprised of fat and starches.

Fat and starch are two foods our taste buds really really love and they crave over and over and over again if we don't get the right balance of food. The problem with starch and fat is not only is it really high in calories, it's two foods that our body really loves to store fat.

If we're not really mindful about eating consistent meals, getting a really good balance on our plate, then we're kind of struggling with hunger and cravings all the time and your metabolism gets out of whack because hunger and cravings, there's hormones that are behind that that are causing those hunger and cravings, and it's all connected to your metabolism, which again I talked about in those previous podcast episodes. So I'm not going to go down that path today.

Go and listen to those if you're interested in that. Today I'm going to talk about five dinner recipes that are really good examples of hormonal weight loss approach. I find that a lot of clients are really in this dieters mindset. They think that they have to make themselves something separate than their family. Oh no, no, no, no, no, honey!

If that's you, no, no, we don't do that. Everybody should be able to eat the same thing. What I'm going to tell you in a very nice way is that if your family doesn't like what you're eating, you're making something boring and bland and it should taste delicious.

If it doesn't taste delicious, then probably the recipe you're making isn't quite great or it's maybe missing some seasoning or something else. But you should be able to make exactly what your family is going to love and you should be able to eat it too.

Maybe with a few slight modifications along the way. So no more making two different meals, no being a standby, cook for everybody. This is what you're making and everybody should be able to eat it too. So I think when we go on a diet we always have the mindset like: oh great, I have to make my own food and I have to make their food and it's going to be so much work.

You're eating boring food if you're having to do it that way and it's not going to last. Because honestly, how long can you really make two separate meals for everybody in your household? It just isn't going to work. So that's part of creating this lifestyle thing and I think a lot of us miss this when we try to lose weight.

We don't realize that we have to kind of figure out how to make this work in our lifestyle. Right? A few episodes back I talked about how I lost 80 pounds back in 2009 and I've got to tell you I never would have kept it off for the last, how many years, if I hadn't worked through that process and learned how to make it work in my lifestyle.

I was busy consultant, traveling Monday through Friday every week in a different city around the world and I constantly had to figure out how am I going to exercise, how am I going to eat this week and where am I going to get some healthy food?

You know I had to learn how to do that. Some weeks it was messy, it didn't work out so good. Other weeks it went really well and on the weeks it was really messy, I didn't use it as an opportunity to beat myself up and tell myself I can never figure this out and I can never do this and I should just give up.

I looked at it and literally and said: okay, well, that didn't work. So what am I going to try the next time? You have to be willing to work through that process and really it is a process.

And I think when we start a diet we think, oh, I'm just going to do this for six weeks or six months and then I'll just you know, whatever, magically keep the weight off, because I love how small I am so much, which is just a lie. But we have to work through those habits and truthfully, nobody can do that for you.

A coach can definitely guide you and speed up that process for you. But nobody can do that for you. Nobody is living your life and every day.

Everyone's lives are different, so you have to work on building those habits and skills in your life - how you fuel your body and make yourself feel your best and lose this weight for good. That should really align with your lifestyle and your family's needs as well. You shouldn't have to do two separate things.

There might be some very small circ*mstances where that might be true, but for the most part everyone should be able to do pretty much the same thing. So the other thing I want to bring up before we dive into the recipes, because I know you guys are so hungry and eager to dive into those. But the other thing I want to talk to you about briefly is the recipes that you see on the internet and Pinterest.

And here's a question I want you to consider: did it ever maybe occur to you that anyone, and yes, I mean anyone, can write healthy on a food photo and put that photo on Pinterest, Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, wherever to try to tempt you?

Realize that there's a lot of people, creators, who are out there creating these wonderful recipes. They probably do have the public's best interested heart, but I see a lot of people who are not nutritionists, who are not in the health realm at all, and they're putting these words on foods, on Pinterest and on social media, and the words say healthy, and I'll look at the recipe and I'll be like gosh.

That recipe really doesn't have balanced macronutrients. It's got a ton of butter, it's got a ton of oil, it's got a ton of flour, it's got a ton of cheese and I'm not saying that those things are bad, but I just kind of shudder a little bit when I see that stuff because it's so out of balance.

And let me remind you, you know I'm all about balance. So with my clients I don't say this is all you can eat and you can only ever eat this way and there's never any pizza or ice cream or cookies.

Now, if you really want pizza, cookies or ice cream or making cheese every once in a while and you enjoy it intentionally, you're not enjoying it from a place of desperation, stress, as a reward for having a bad day, feeling sorry for yourself.

Then you can definitely work it in so that you can have it every once in a while to where you know it keeps you more consistent and you can actually reach your goal. I'm all about that, but if you're eating it because you think it will make you lose weight because it's got the word healthy on it.

Well, I'm sorry, it's not going to work that way and that's one of the things that really kind of makes me cringe, like I don't even go on Pinterest anymore because I just go, oh my gosh, look at all these recipes and all this mis-information and all these people who have no nutrition background.

I was just on a website the other day and you know this person who has no nutrition background and had a whole section on their blog post recipe about how this was a weight loss friendly recipe, and then I'm looking at the macronutrients and I'm like this it has very little protein and a lot of fat.

And this is just giving people the wrong information, but you know, that's why I'm here to educate you and hopefully you can be more aware and empowered to make better decisions for you!

And I know so many of my clients, even though I give them a ton of recipes they can make, they still love to run to Pinterest and do a bunch of browsing, because there's just something fun about hunting for all those new recipes. Right?

That looks so enticing and good to us! So I want to help you with this today and I want to give you some guidelines so that you can kind of know like what you should be looking for in a recipe. Okay.

So here's a few recipes, and remember what I said earlier, that most of our diet is really concentrated in starches and in fat. And if you follow me on Instagram, if you read my website, if you listen to any of these past episodes, you know that I preach all the time about adding protein, adding fiber, those two things, and those are the two things that the majority of Americans are really deficient in.

And if most Americans really just focused on adding those two things, they wouldn't have hunger and cravings. Their metabolism would be working much better, they would be at a better weight, they wouldn't be as prone to overeating, because when we eat starches and fats in that combination we're more prone to overeating.

People would probably be more successful with their goals too. Because, like I said, hunger and cravings would be more under control. So we're really looking for higher protein and higher fiber.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking well, what about the calories? To me, the calories that's a different discussion, but in general I don't worry so much about the calories I worry more about am I getting sufficient protein and fiber at every single meal and snack?

Because if you can be really dialed in with protein and fiber at every meal and snack, you're going to notice hunger and cravings are going to go down and you're naturally going to eat fewer calories.

So it's a lot easier when you come at it from this angle versus just looking at the calories. I've had many clients throughout the years who get really hyperfocused on the calories and they'll say something to me like well, that dinner or that breakfast has 300 or 400 calories.

I can't eat that many calories and I'm kind of scratching my head like like that's the bare minimum you probably should be eating honey for your weight, height and age.

Because it really depends on weight, age, your activity level, and so they'll be really hyperfocused on the 300 or 400 calorie breakfast or dinner. Yet they have no problem eating 300 or 400 calories and snacks sitting around at night.

So what I'm saying is you're going to be much more successful avoiding overeating some of those really hyperpalatable foods late at night if you can increase the size of your meals, get the protein and fiber up and not be so hyper focused on that it says 300 or 400 calories for breakfast and thinking I shouldn't be eating that much food for breakfast. No, honey, you probably should be eating that much food for breakfast. Different mindset!

A dieter's mindset says this is 300 or 400 calories. I shouldn't eat that. A person who has a hormonal weight loss perspective says I'm goin to fuel my body. I'm fueling my metabolism and hormones. That's a different perspective.

You're going after those very specific macronutrients. So here's a couple of examples from my website. So if you didn't know, I've got a whole website full of recipes and guess what? All the recipes I create myself and they're all really balanced and aligned with everything that I talk to my clients about. So you can go use all of those.

Here's a couple of examples for you to go look at. The first one is tuna noodle casserole, and of course I'm on to put all the links to these recipes in the show notes so you can go check them out later. So tuna noodle casserole has 245 calories.

It actually makes a really big serving size for this tuna noodle casserole and it's got 25 grams of protein per serving, phenomenal high protein. It's got 7 grams of fiber. That's awsome. The total fat is 6 grams, with 1 gram coming from saturated fat. Saturated fat is the less optimal fat. So the rest is coming from good fat and total carbs minus the fiber is 19.

So you have 19 net carbs. So this tune noodle casserole - a couple of things that I did to make the recipe healthier was - I didn't use mayo because mayo has a lot of calories and a lot of fat, and that is so easy for us to really over consume if we're not super mindful of it.

I also used chickpea pasta. Any of the plant-based pastas like chickpea, lentil, edameme, black bean, etc. those pastas I highly highly recommend over whole wheat or white because they have a ton of fiber and protein.

So you can really add a lot of protein and fiber just make by swapping out the type of pasta that you put into your meals. Very easy swap that most people can do. And I can tell you from experience none of your picky eaters are even going to know the difference.

They're going to think it's just regular pasta. Chickpea pasta tastes almost exactly the same as any other type of pasta that you normally would eat. So that's one example. The other example is called Turkey Skillet Burrito. This is made with ground turkey.

So we're using lean ground turkey and we've got tons of vegetables in there. Plus we've got some beans and I love beans because they're so high in fiber, they're high in protein as well. So this one is 392 calories per serving. Again it makes a huge serving. It's got 39 grams of protein.

The protein is coming from the turkey and the beans, like said beans, are excellent source of protein plus are an excellent source of fibre. And guess how much fibre this recipe has? 13 grams! Oh my gosh, that is phenomenal. The higher fiber the better.

And guys high fiber bars like you know these fiber one bars and things like that, they don't do the same thing as actually getting it from real food. We want to get it from whole foods, real whole foods. Total fat in this recipe is 10 grams, 2 coming from saturated fat.

Again, that's our less optimal fat. And then we've got 39 carbs. But again we've got 13 grams of fiber. So when we do the math it's actually 26 net carbs, so very low in carbs. But we've got a ton of fiber! So it's going to really fill you up along with that good protein.

The next recipe is called Chicken Pot Pie Soup. This is one of our favorite soup recipe to make, especially during the winter time when it's cold! It's very filling and it's a ton of vegetables, so easy to add more to it if you want it to as well. It's got 344 calories per serving, 30 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, 11 total fat, 2 of which coming from saturated fat, and it's got 32 total carbs.

The thing that I did with this recipe to make it really creamy was, instead of using buttermilk or heavy cream is I take cauliflower and steam cauliflower. You can actually steam cauliflower or you can boil it in a pot of water. Just take cauliflower florets, steam it or boil it in a pot of water. Once it gets really soft and tender, blend it up and then you put it in the soup. It makes for the nicest, creamiest soup.

And guess what? You're sneaking in vegetables and none of your picky eaters know that those vegetables are there. But the vegetables have great fiber and they give us great energy.

So a lot of times we struggle with getting vegetables, you can sneak them in by blending them up like that and nobody knows they're there. I do it all the time.

Next recipe is called Shepherds Pie. This is a classic winter recipe that a lot of people use. I lightened this up by using ground turkey again. You could use like lean ground beef if you preferred something like that, and then instead of using potatoes on the top, I actually did like a half potato cauliflower mash.

You could also do just cauliflower mash on top if you wanted to. Either way would be fine, but with just the cauliflower on top and using the lean ground turkey, the recipe is 342 calories, 29 grams of protein, seven grams of fiber, 15 total fat, 4 of which is coming from saturated fat, 26 total carbs. So the last recipe is a Crockpot Turkey Chili.

This is one of our favorite recipes in the fall and this is got 346 calories per serving, 34 grams of protein. It also has lean ground turkey. Again. You can use lean ground beef instead and it's also got black beans in it.

The beans as well as the meat is what's giving us that high protein number. And then it's got excellent amount of fiber. Anytime we use beans you're guaranteed to get a lot of fiber.

So increase those beans if you can! This recipe has 15 grams of fiber. That is a lot of fiber! It's awsome. Our total fat is only 3 grams, 1 of which is coming from saturated fat, and this recipe in particular.

What I like to do is I will serve it to the family with some rice with it and then for me what I will do is put just a little bit of rice and then a frozen cauliflower rice into it so that I'm actually increasing the nutrients and the density of the food so it feels more filling.

So, as you see, all I did was added cauliflower rice to my rice for me in a smaller serving, and for my family, they're just doing the rice, right? So we're all making the same recipes. We're all eating the same food, but as you can see, they really have that protein and that fiber focus.

And that's what you really want to be looking at. So when you're looking and researching for recipes online or on Pinterest, you know be looking for some of these guidelines when you're looking for your recipes. Don't be looking just at the calories. Don't be looking just for that word healthy or Paleo or low carb.

I hate all these labels that we have on things these days. Even when you go to the grocery store it's like there's a label on every food and people just automatically think this must be better for me because it says Paleo, it says Keto or it says low carb.

That doesn't mean it's necessarily better for you. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to fit in your goals. So these are the helpful things that I think can really help you and again these are all free right on my website. You don't have to go any further and there's many more on my website that you're can explore.

But I just wanted to give you five examples today of some really fantastic recipes that you can make for your family that I know that they're going to enjoy and you can easily slip in those veggies. They're not going to know that they're there! Some other ways that you can find recipes.

I have my cookbook. If you have my cookbook, it's called the Low Calorie Cookbook. I'll drop the link to that as well in the show notes for you so you can purchase that all over target: Walmart, Barnes n Noble, Amazon. There's multiple websites that you can go get it even if you're out of country.

But that cookbook also has more ideas of how you can make foods and recipes that align with hormonal weight loss and you know if you think about some of the fundamentals that I'm talking about here: high protein, high fiber.

We're getting lots of vegetables. We're geting a lot of nutrient density through whole foods. This is really lined with the recommended daily amount that we have nutritionally out there just for healthy individuals.

So even if you're not trying to lose weight, what I'm saying is these are really the guidelines you should be using, even if you're just kind of following a healthy lifestyle and your goal may not be to lose weight or lose fat on your body. But these all can fall into a healthy lifestyle.

They really are aligned with the recommended amounts. These are the things that keep us full, make us feel vibrant and give us great energy, help us sleep.

When you look at these recipes, notice that the starches and the fat are really well controlled and even if you look at some of my desert recipes on my website, what you'll notice is that the desert recipes, the oils cut back or swapped out with things like avocado and apple sauce or bananas.

Sometimes you'll also notice that you know I'm swapping for other types of flour. I never use whole wheat or white flour due to my gluten allergy, and because of the extreme processing those flours go through. I really never recommend those to clients.

We want to go for things that are higher quality nutrition with those things where we can. So you'll notice that some of my dessert recipes use different types of flours. I always cut way back on the sugar.

If I look at a recipe on Pinterest, I immediately know I'm going to swap out the fat. I'm going to reduce the sugar because it probably has way more than is necessary for the average person, and that's something you can be doing too.

You can look at those recipes and you can think okay well, it's got two cups of sugar. Maybe I can try just doing one. I'll test the batter and see how it tastes before I bake it and you can just significantly make the recipe so much better for you just by doing these basic swaps. But the dessert recipes on my side I already think through that.

So if you use some of the desert recipes on my side you're going to know that I've already taken those things into account. But I'm just saying, if you're looking at Pionterest or another website, those are things you can be thinking about doing too. And if you're looking for some lunch recipes that are fitting this bill: higher protein, higher fiber. I also have a free download.

I'll link that in the show notes where you can get some recipes all bundled together for some lunch ideas. So if you want to grab that, grab it in the show notes. So again, Skinny Fitalicious dotcom. We've got tons of recipes that fit hormonal weightl oss that are this high protein, high fiber model and my cookbook, the Low Calorie Cookbook.

That's the name of it. I'll put that link in the show notes too, and the download for the lunch recipes that align with hormonal weight loss. I hope that this was helpful for you guys today and I'll talk to you soon.

About Megan

Megan is a certified nutrition practitioner, author, freelance food photographer and fitness instructor living in Phoenix, Arizona. On her blog, Skinny Fitalicious she shares EASY, gluten free recipes for weight loss. Follow Megan on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram for the latest updates.