Can I use frozen dinners for my Medifast lean & green meal?
Not a big fan of cooking? You might wonder if you can use frozen dinners for your Medifast lean & green meal. I wish I could say the answer is yes, but in the long run, that solution isn’t really ideal. Let me explain why and then offer a few alternative suggestions.
The main reason that frozen dinners aren’t really appropriate for use as a lean and green meal is because of the way most frozen dinners are processed, they have too much sodium. Often, they don’t have enough protein either. But sodium aside, I thin even if you were to look long and hard at every frozen meal at your grocery store, you would have a hard time finding something suitable to match the ingredients of your lean and green.
Remember, your lean and green meal is pretty simple. It’s 5 to 7 ounces of lean protein, two cups of salad and 1/2 cup to 1 1/2 cups of raw or cooked vegetables. You can check the list of allowed foods on Medifast to get a better idea, but basically most frozen meals have all kinds of additional ingredients that you shouldn’t be eating (mostly fat) and not enough of what you need (protein and healthy carbs).
You’ll actually find that it would be pretty difficult to find a frozen dinner that contained as much protein as you need to eat. Medifast’s suggested serving is quite generous. You would probably need two frozen dinners to even get close to the right quantity of lean protein.
Now this isn’t to say that you can’t use frozen foods in your lean & green meals. You definitely can! Just avoid the the stuff that is packaged as “dinners” or “meals” and stick to frozen foods that are just packaged single ingredients.
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There’s nothing wrong with most frozen meats or frozen vegetables. Just keep an eye on the sodium content and beware of any extra fats. So a bag of frozen broccoli or a block of frozen spinach is fine, but you wouldn’t want to get get frozen broccoli & cheese or frozen creamed spinach.
Plain frozen meats, fish or seafood is fine as well. So try some frozen plain salmon, or fish filets that are already grilled and just need to be reheated. How about some frozen shrimp? Frozen turkey burgers are great too. I’ve even seen frozen buffalo burgers at supermarkets like Whole Foods so you might want to give those a try as buffalo is on the Medifast lean meats list too.
For meatless options, Boca burgers are in the freezer aisle and they have lots of varieties and they are also on the approved Medifast list. There’s also Morningstar Farms products or GardenBurger patties. Any of their options are acceptable if the carb serving is under 6 grams. Even if you aren’t vegetarian, you should try some of these options. They are all quite tasty and quick to heat and serve.
Add some bagged salad greens to your shopping cart and you should easily be able to come up with Medifast lean & green meals that are far tastier than the packaged frozen dinners, but just as fast to heat and serve.
If you haven’t signed up for Medifast yet, be sure to check out the Medifast specials for this month.