Category: Recipes

Just out of curiosity, I wanted to find the lowest calorie, lowest carb food that could be considered a dish/meal. The goal is to be able to lose weight while feeling full after eating something that is relatively tasty with a flavor that everyone is familiar with. When it comes to filling foods, most people would think of rice or bread. Apparently, there’s something very similar to rice called Konjac.

It has a neutral taste and its shape is very similar to rice. But, it does have a slightly different texture than rice. Nevertheless, one pack (150g) contains only 5 calories and 0 net carbs.

Of course, eating plain rice alone, especially Konjac rice, doesn’t taste good. After considering various ingredients to add to Konjac rice, I decided that chicken broth is one of the best flavorings to add. Everyone knows what chicken tastes like and since it doesn’t contain meat, even vegetarians can eat (drink) it. It’s also not a forbidden food by any of the major religions.

This particular brand of chicken broth is organic, doesn’t contain salt, provides a mere 5 calories for 1 cup, and has 0 carbs.

If we cook one pack of Konjac rice with 1 cup of this chicken broth, we’d only be consuming 10 calories and 0 net carbs! Since 1 pack seems too little to make me feel sufficiently full, I’ll go with 2 packs and 1 cup of chicken broth (15 calories total). That’s nothing! (calorie-wise)

The broth says “no salt added”. That may be good for people with high blood pressure but for me, the rice just didn’t taste good without salt so I added some. Here’s the finished dish.

I know it looks super boring and tasteless but since I added chicken broth, it actually tasted like chicken soup. On a scale of 1 (yuck) to 10 (yum), I’d give it a 7 (not bad). Of course, the only reason for eating this is to lose weight until you reach your target weight after which time you can adjust your diet so as to just maintain your weight.

Now, don’t go eating this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

• The Konjac rice has 0 fat, 0 net carbs, and 0 protein = 0 essential nutrients
• The chicken broth has 0 fat, 0 carbs, and 1g of protein = hardly any nutrients from protein

So, if you eat this and nothing else, your body won’t be getting any of the essential nutrients it needs from fat and protein.

This ridiculously simple dish is good in combination with other food so that your total daily caloric intake is less than your calorie expenditure so that you can actually burn fat and lose weight, especially for people who don’t want to exercise in conjunction with dieting.

According to one calculator, my basal metabolic rate (BMR) or, calories I would burn each day by being sedentary / not active, is 1788. You need to burn 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound of body weight. So, if I was sedentary and could consume a max of 1288 calories per day (which is not easy to do considering how so many foods contain so many calories), then I could have a deficit of 500 calories per day and lose 1 pound of body weight per week or 10 pounds in 2.5 months.

Konjac rice with eggs

If you’d like to eat Konjac rice with something else that is full of nutrients and is healthy, then you may want to try mixing the rice with scrambled eggs. One scrambled egg has 100 calories, 8g of fat, 7g protein, and 1g of net carbs.

Konjac rice with chicken

Since we’re adding chicken broth to the Konjac rice, it would make sense to add real chicken as well. Pictured below I added pregrilled chicken breast from Costco. It tasted good and was super easy to make since everything was precooked.

A 3.5-ounce (100-gram) serving of chicken breast provides 0 carbs, 165 calories, 31 grams of protein and 3.6 grams of fat.

Konjac rice is relatively expensive. For a cheaper alternative that still has much fewer carbs than rice, you can use riced cauliflower.

Many people will snack on something like potato chips. Personally, I prefer Ruffles Original. But, 160 calories from just 12 chips is unacceptable.

Here are some healthier and/or low calorie alternatives.

Celery Sticks with Garlic Hummus

The hummus comes in at 60 calories per 2 tbsp. That seems like a lot but at least they are healthy calories rather than empty ones. Celery sticks are only 7 calories per stick and they mostly contains water.

Edamame

This is an interesting type of food. It has the same amount of protein as meat. It often comes precooked so you just need to heat it up. Eating it involves removing the pod and eating the peas. The fact that you have to remove the pod can limit your consumption since it takes time. The taste is pretty neutral. Half a cup is only 94 calories.

Pasta can be a very filling and tasty meal to have. But, the pasta itself is high in carbs and calories. For example, angle hair pasta (my favorite) has 200 calories per serving.

Fortunately, there are substitutes for pasta that taste almost exactly like pasta. For example, Costco sells Healthy Noodles. On the box, there’s a recipe for Italian Marinara using these healthy noodles. The noodles are precooked and each box contains 6 packs.

Nutrition-wise, they only contain 30 calories per serving. Plus, it’s got zero carbs because all of the carbs are from fiber which doesn’t get digested by the body and simply passes through. This is ideal if you are on the Keto diet.

Preparation is very easy. Just rinse the noodles and use them since they’re precooked. I tried this out with Rao’s marinara sauce and surprisingly, it tasted about 90% the same as regular pasta. I still prefer the taste of regular pasta, but for the calories saved by using Healthy Noodles, it’s worth the small difference in taste.

You can also try Shirataki Noodles by Miracle Noodle. They sell an angel hair style noodle containing only 5 calories per serving. No wonder it’s called Miracle Noodle!

UPDATE: I actually tried making pasta with Miracle Noodle Angel Hair style noodles. The shape wasn’t like angle hair pasta at all but more like spaghetti. More importantly, the texture wasn’t particularly good. It was too sticky. I think the Healthy Noodle option above tastes better.

You can also Nasoya Pasta Zero spaghetti but like the Miracle Noodle Angel Hair style noodles, I didn’t care for the texture which tasted like rubber.