400 Colorie meals

So over the last year and a half I have lost 35 pounds. I have decided that I have 10-15 more to go depending on how I look when I loose the ten. So how I have lost the last 15 pounds is eating around 1600 calories a day. So that is roughly 4- 400 calorie meals. PRESTO! So now we come to the point I am going to start posting the 400 calorie meals that I eat with pictures so you can see how much food 400 can be.

When I first started doing a reduced calorie menu, I realized that so I don't starve to death (in my head) I had to eat ALOT. My husbands eyes bugged out of his head when he saw my two pieces of french toast with 2 CUPS of strawberries piled on top. He said, "Isn't that a little extreme?" It might of appeared that way but two tablespoons of of maple syrup is 100 calories (and I would probably use more than that) and guess how many calories 2 cups of strawberries is? 100 Calories! So which one would fill me up better? Of course the strawberries! So that is what I mean by eating a lot. I had to find foods that fill you up with lower calories, and you know what that means? Yep fruits and vegtables... LOTS of them.

So these are some of the tricks I use.

1. Eat at the same time every day. I eat four real meals a day, at the same time everyday. I eat at 8:00, 11:30, 3:00, and 6:30 every day. For a while I tried to do three meals a day with a snack but I was always so hungry at 3:00 that I would snack up to 400 calories on stuff that wasn't filling and then I was still hungry. If I make a real meal, it is much more satisfying.
2. Eat on glass. As a stay at home mom I see way too much brightly colored plastic. It is everywhere I turn. So when I eat it is on glass plates. I even bought what I consider beautiful plates at Market street when they were on sale for $1.75 a piece. Eat with real metal utensils and I drink out of a glass cup, and I even go so far as to use fabric napkins. Its so luxurious in my world of having the entire top rack of the dishwasher covered in halfsized plastic cups. My husband in jest said, "Oh so you are too good for plastic?" And I decided, "YES I AM!"
3. Sit down to eat. I used to eat my breakfast in front of the computer checking my e-mail of face book or I would have a book open in front of me. Now I sit at the table and eat, and that is ALL I do. I can really enjoy the flavors of what I am eating. When I finish I actually feel like I have eaten something, becasue that is what my brain was thinking about. Otherwise I would finish my meal and not feel like I had eaten anything.
4. Eat fruit, lots of it. I am a sweets a holic. I could eat sugary anything (brownies, chocolate, icecream) all day and never get sick of it. Now instead I eat 2-3 servings of fresh fruit a day and I don't have those cravings as much. For the first while it doesn't seem like fruit is that sweet, but when your body adjust to having less sugar, they seem sweeter.
5. Drink water- Whe I look back at days where I ate to many calories, most of the time I realize that I didn't drink much water that day. DRINK! Also I always say I would rater eat my calories than drink them so next time you reach for a calorie laden drink, think of what you could eat for the same amount of calories.