Day 30 – Lean Mean Lasagna Machine

“Don’t dig your grave with your own knife and fork.”

~ English proverb

210.1 lbs.

Last night I didn’t sleep a wink. It’s not that I tossed and turned; that would imply I actually lay in bed for a while. No, I just sat up reading and surfing the web. I’m fatigued all the time, but not sleepy. Weird.

Today I ventured forth to Sobey’s again (for those of you just tuning in, it’s a grocery store). This proved to be more problematic than I thought.

I’m normally a very warm person. I don’t mean all smiles and chocolate, like ze Germans. I mean I radiate a lot of body heat. Half the time a girl scootches up next to me it’s because she wants to keep warm. The other half is, I’m told, I smell nice. So basically I share my two most attractive features – warmth and a pleasant scent – with a fresh loaf of bread. Go me.

In addition to having to watch the vitamin & mineral intake though, I’ve discovered that since I started this diet that warmth characteristic has faded. I’m cold all the time. I’ll have friends over and the furnace at 22º C, and still have to wear a thick robe over my clothes or I’ll shake like a chihuahua in a rainstorm.

So there was your author, ladies and gentlemen, venturing forth out of doors this morning, and it was… snowing. The wet, slushy, goopy snow more common to the coast than these prairies. With chattering teeth and white knuckles I piloted my awesome 1980s Honda Accord to the grocery store. I wanted to try one of those Weight Watchers’ meals I mentioned on Day 12.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any of the Weight Watcher’s brand at Sobeys – whether too exhausted, cold and hungry to spot ‘em, or just in a store that was out of stock of that item today, I dunno. So I picked out a couple of Lean Cuisine dishes instead.

The Meat Lasagna (the package shouts New Recipe! I guess their old recipe was crap) is the highest calorie one I spotted, at 310 Calories per serving. My body has been projecting images of fatty foods into my mind lately, trying to get me to eat more to offset the fat it’s burning up. Its particular favorites are toast dripping with melted butter, and lasagna. So into my cart the lasagna went.

I was happy to see that the ingredients were all things I recognize. Even the longer stuff like “textured soy protein concentrate”, which was about as NASA-y as the ingredient list got. Most of it was things like “partially skimmed Mozarella” and “roasted garlic”. I still encourage people to read labels and be skeptical of heat-and-eat foods.

The Lean Cuisine box also displays the Weight Watcher’s points for the meal on the package. This 310 Calorie indulgence  (just a little more than a Calorie per gram) dings you 6 points, compared to the 5 or even 4 points of some of the other Lean Cuisine offerings.

Standard disclaimer: I haven’t been through the Weight Watcher’s program, so the points are a mystery to me. If you’ve done WW (or are in it now) you likely know what they mean and if you’re not, then the points don’t mean much to you anyhow.

What makes the Lean Cuisine meals effective as a means of weight control (or weight loss) is they’re a form of portion control, kind of like the Subway diet touted by Jared Fogle. You eat meals with fewer calories than normal and your body burns up some of your stored fat to make up the difference. Just remember to avoid “rewarding” yourself with something else that adds back the calories.

The meat lasagna is part of lean Cuisine’s “Sélections” line, which is touted as “low fat”. 8 grams of fat out of 274 isn’t bad at all, so I’d call that truth in advertising. Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine has two other menus, Spa (“almost all the meals are preservative free”, says LeanCuisine.ca) and Panini (a collection of toasted sandwiches with meat and cheese in them).

Back home, safely parked and indoors, I popped the lasagna into the microwave. The directions said 4 minutes covered with the clear film, and 2-3 more after that…. all on high. I don’t know what sort of prissy microwaves the good folks at Lean Cuisine use to test their stuff, but after the first 4 minutes the previously frozen lasagna was hissing and popping like it was about to burst into flames. Good enough for me.

Something to keep in mind: as of day 30 on this crazy, I’m-doing-this-to-show-you-how-harmful-it-is starvation diet, I’ve been eating tiny meals that are usually made up of one thing at a time. Beans. Peanuts. Spinach. Lettuce with lemon juice. I stopped eating the Campbell’s Chunky stews about a week ago (though I picked up more on this morning’s hunting and gathering expedition). So when I say the lasagna was overall tasty, keep things in perspective. Blended flavours are strangers to me now and come not as an expected feature, but a pleasant surprise.

It doesn’t have a ton of cheese on it, which in a way was disappointing but I’d rather it thus than slathered in some low-cal “I can’t believe it’s not cheese!” lab grown substitute. It was hot, it was somewhat meaty, and it was quick to prepare. At more than 300 Calories it’s a bit on the high side for my specific goal of keeping consumption between 250 and 400 Calories a day – that’ll be pretty much it for me, today -  and 620mg of sodium is a little salty (though not KFC Double Down territory by any means). But the average person wanting to lose weight would probably find this to be an acceptable, portion-controlled, reasonably low cal lasagna substitute.