Recipes Under 200 Calories

" Now, if you're trying to eat healthy but you simply can't resist your favorite foods, and who can. Today's guest shows us how to bend the rules without breaking them. Lisa Lillien's fist book "Hungry Girls" put 6 months on the bestseller list, and now she's here with her next miracle, "Hungry Girl 200 under 200", 200 recipes under 200 calories. So I have to ask, how do you come up with "Hungry Girl" and where do you get all your inspiration for those amazing light recipes."

" Well, I am like most women obsessed with food and so I came up with "Hungry Girl" because I wanted to find ways people could eat the foods they were craving and they really wanted to eat, and still fit in to their cute jeans. Now the inspiration for the recipes comes from a lot of different places, and a lot of the time it's from our 700,000 subscribers who signed up for our daily e-mails that get "tips and tricks for a hungry chicks" e-mails to them every single day, and they give us a lot of feedback and write them with their requests."

" When it comes to restaurant dishes. What are some of the biggest shockers you found among those supposedly light menu items and is there any rule of thumb for avoiding them?"

" You know it's a great question. At restaurants, I think the biggest shocker is salad dressing. Sometimes, actually most of the time the salad dressing has way more calories than the salad itself, so I say definitely bring your own dressing or order dressing on the side and then dip, don't pour."

" And what are some tips for cutting calories when you're cooking."

" Well, when I'm cooking I never really use oil. I use sometimes, you know, if I'm gonna use oil it'll be a little bit of olive oil. For the most part I use nonstick-cooking spray and instead of butter and oil in cake, I use pumpkin. That's a really good tip."

" And you have some pantry essentials in front of you that you say that we should go all out and buy ASAP?"

" Yeah. I mean, you know, all of these foods in front of me are must haves for your pantry because there are ways you can save calories, and fat, and eat the foods you crave. Over here we have tofu shirataki noodles. I think these are America's best kept secret. I had given up pasta because I like to eat too much of it and pasta has a lot of calories. These noodles, unbelievable 40 calories for a bag, I can actually make a fettuccine alfredo that has less than a 100 calories. They are excellent. Okay, Fiber one that is another pantry essential. In addition to being a breakfast cereal, you can take this stuff put it in a blender, turn it in to bread cramps, season it, and then make anything and everything seem fried and just bake it. So, I make onion rings, eggplant parmesan. You name it, you just coat in a Fiber one and bake it. Fantastic! Next we have a laughing cow light cheese. Again, an amazing secret weapon, 35 calories a wedge you can use it as a cream cheese swap or you can melt it and use it in cheese sauces. So good, I mean life-changingly good. Almond breeze, this to me is the best milk option out there. Now, it's nondairy, so it's more of a milk substitute but it has 40 calories for a cup. It tastes amazing and again 40 calories a cup which is 1/2 a calories of skim milk and you can use this not only in serial, smoothies, shakes everywhere you would use milk. And finally these are high-fiber, low calorie tortillas a great bread swap, good for wraps. You can even make pizzas with them, unbelievable."

" Well, thanks so much Lisa. To find out the light version of any of your favorite recipes, pick up a copy of her book, "Hungry Girl 200 under 200". You'll be shocked to see how much is in there. It's available now."

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