Cooking that Counts: 1,200- to 1,500-Calorie Meal Plans to Lose Weight Deliciously Paperback – January 3, 2017

This has to be the best Cooking Light cookbook ever. Using this book as the main recipe provider, I lost 50 pounds over the last year while eating delicious food. My family never felt hungry and asked for repeat meals like pork with magic green sauce. The Greek farro salad, using red and yellow cherry tomatoes is good enough to take to a dinner party. In our house the book is well worn and has a plethora of scrap pieces of paper marking our favorate recipes.

I have OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea). I have the CPAP machine, the Darth Vadar style mask and O2 supplementation. It helps folks like me get off the nightmare of "gain weight while you sleep diet."When you add walking, stretching and meditation with a great low calorie set of meals like the ones in this book, you will drop weight. Guaranteed. I'm a chef and a developer of AR / VR systems. I spend 10+ hours in a nice Herman Miller Embody chair, but I have to eat and drink, too. My RX: Drink 5 cups of coffee daily. It boosts your body's ketones (and Dr. David Perlmutter says so, too). But you have to watch the carbs. Drop the sugars and do not ever cook or eat the crap foods with white breads. This turns to simple sugars in the blood stream.Note this book did use the word "diet" on the cover.Let's face it: The first three letters of DIET are painful: DIE -- because this is what most of us feel like. Eating DIET food makes us want to DIE for food that tastes good. Well, this book has a lot of yummy and simple to follow recipes that anyone can follow. It's not a diet. It's good, healthy food that can help any idiot lose the weight.

We love this book, for the recipe content. The meals are awesome and filling... some are easy to prepare.. some have a lot of prep work- but all are DELICIOUS.The meal plan is a different story. The plan has you making three meals and a snack entirely from scratch every day! Who has time for this?? 28 different recipes in a week PLUS somehow coordinating all the ingredient lists for 28 recipes?? I have no idea how other reviewers pulled this off! We prepare 2 or 3 recipes per week, and for the two of us, we split those up for lunch and dinner. Breakfast we do something simple, like oatmeal.This book has totally changed how we cook, and meal plan, but I have no idea how anyone can follow their 30 day meal plan? This book is SO WORTH IT for all the calorie conscious recipes (over 110 recipes) but the meal plan is not simple .

My whole family has loved each recipe I’ve made from this cookbook. And it has greatly contributed to healthy weight loss. I really appreciate the suggestions of what can be paired with each meal. And the veggie recipes are very tasty!

I really like Cooking Light recipes. They are lightened versions of things you would actually want to eat and they use real ingredients instead of a bunch of low- cal low-fat versions.I don't think the "meal plan" should be taken very seriously because it would result in one hell of a weekly grocery bill. Plus you would be constantly cooking. I'd be more likely to do things like make one batch of muffins and eat them for breakfast throughout the week. I appreciate that every recipe is a complete meal suggestion so for instance if there is a sandwich recipe they tell you at the end of the recipe to have it with a small salad or tortilla chips to reach the calorie count suggested. They also have suggestions if you require a higher calorie count, which is useful for couple dieting together if they have different caloric needs. There is also a whole section at the end about ways to add even more calories if you need to. Very useful overall as my spouse and I have different caloric needs and with this book I don't have to make separate meals.

I like this book for what it is, generally low cal recipes & ideas. However, the book cover and description markets it like it has a focus on 'meal plans'. The meal plan is basically just plugging the various recipes into a 30 day calendar. In the first four days there are 2 different muffin recipes for breakfast. What do I do w/ the other 11 (22 really) muffins that had to be made? There is also no thought given to common ingredients used within a couple days or really anything people might consider when shopping & planning out meals other than simply assigning recipes to meals/days. This to me is not really a meal 'plan' particularly if you have to make/bake things that make 12 servings and no one else in your home might eat it except you (I realize some things could be frozen or I could just eat the muffins for bfast all week long, but that is the point, it isn't really a well thought out 'plan').So for light recipes that are pretty straightforward to make and sound pretty good, it is a good book. For effective and realistic meal planning, I think it misses the mark.

Very easy to follow....My entire family agrees that the recipes are delicious

I've really been enjoying all the recipes in this book! My expectations were low but this is really helping dial in serving sizes and while they are healthy meals they aren't low in flavor or satisfaction. My favorites have been the Bacon-Broccoli Mac n Cheese, Soy-Lime Rice Noodles with Tofu, Ginger-Soy Chicken Thighs, and Chipotle Bean Burritos.