To stay in shape or lose weight, should you eat very light? Eliminate starchy foods? Settle for soup? For dinner, dietitians focus above all on a meal rich in protein and one recipe is clearly unanimous.
When a person starts a dietary rebalancing, dietitians first seek to understand their daily life. Who cooks at home? What are the meal times? What makes you break down at the end of the day? All these answers allow us to offer advice adapted to real life, not to a perfect day which only exists on paper. And one point comes up almost every time: hunger. Many feel like they have to spend their evenings with a rumbling stomach. However, this is not inevitable.
Specialists therefore recommend adding more protein to meals. For what ? Because they stall longer. Maggie Moon, dietitian-nutritionist, explains it this way: “Many people find that protein foods fill them up with fewer calories, so emphasizing protein can make it easier to stick to a low-calorie diet.” Simply put, a protein-rich meal helps avoid a detour to the cookie cupboard at 10 p.m. Another advantage: several studies show that sufficient protein intake could help preserve muscle mass during weight loss. We thus lose more fat and less muscle, which remains the objective.
In this context, the dinner that dietitians most often recommend is grilled chicken salad. It combines everything they are looking for in an evening meal: around 31 grams of protein per serving, only 3 grams of saturated fat and plenty of room for vegetables. The recipe combines grilled chicken with romaine lettuce, zucchini, bell pepper and red onion, also grilled for added flavor. The result is hearty, colorful and much more delicious than the image we sometimes have of a slimming dinner.
Another advantage: its simplicity. After a busy day, few people want to spend the evening behind the stove. Dietitians therefore favor recipes that are quick, easy to prepare and above all easy to adapt. One less zucchini? We replace it with mushrooms. No peppers? Eggplants will do very well. A few fresh herbs, a little basil or chives, a spoonful of hummus if you feel like it… The meal is easy to adapt.
