Easy No Prep 500 Calorie Meal

This post is one of my 500 calorie meals I enjoy on a near weekly basis.  If you’re interested in more, be sure to click on the 500 calorie meal tag, to find all the other meals I will eventually share!

Fasting, eat a single 500 calorie meal, return to fasting – this is called a down day.  It is part of a protocol I learned from reading Fast. Feast. Repeat.

When you have a down day, you’re eating few calories and truly minimizing the amount you’re breaking your fast with.  It’s like a small bridge that joins a fast on either side.  It can vary in how it’s implemented, and I suggest you play around with it to see if it’s something you’d like to experiment more with as part of your protocol.

My personal implementation looks like this:

• fast a minimum of 18 hours
• eat a single meal of 500 calories or less (this is a down day)
• resume fasting for at least 18 hours
• break fast the following day (with an up day)

Play around with different ideas

I know 500 calories seems so low, and it’s something to adjust to.  HOWEVER, I absolutely have found there is an abundance of foods that are filling, delicious and low calorie.  The more I do these down days, the more fun I have putting meals together.  You can check out a video with multiple ideas here.

No-Prep Meal

I like to share each meal as it’s rare they each look the same.  Here is my most recent!

First, low calorie beverage.  Sometimes this is a La Croix, sometimes a diet cola but today I made an iced coffee.  I used sugar-free coconut torani (0 calories), black iced coffee (I drink coffee all day, so I never count these minimal calories towards my meal since I consume it even while fasting) and a half cup of unsweetened almond milk (15 calories)

Drink = 15 calories

Next, I love adding berries as most are low calorie and delicious!  However, I went with low prep dried strawberries since we had a number of bags in the pantry.  These are expensive, but a delicious addition from time to time.  It should be no surprise I buy these from ALDI.  The entire bag was added sweetness and crunch to my meal (and also 120 calories).  Also, since added to a fast-food meal, this could be easily added as a road-trip meal since we’re using dried fruit, where no special handling is required.

Running Total – 135 calories

Finally, I ordered my easily favorite low calorie, fast-food addition.  A Jimmy John’s unwhich (lettuce instead of bread).  I picked the Club Lulu this time since it’s low calorie and still have bacon!  I added extra lettuce, cucumbers, hot peppers and pickles.  The total, without bread and with loaded/extra veggies came to a whopping 357 calories only! Crazy if you see how big the sandwich is…. and oh so satisfying!  Jimmy John’s has a great app you can build and customize your sandwich to get calorie counts.

Running total & Final Tally – 492 calories!

Take a look at this meal!  I was full when I finished, I didn’t feel like I was dieting… I was so satisfied.  500 calorie meals are a great tool in both weight loss, maintenance and to increase health. I will continue to do them every week or two especially when they’re this delicious!!

I’m hungry writing this LOL

Chow Down and Ciao!! ????