It's pot roast with carrots, potatoes, onions and celery over homemade mashed potatoes. I am very new to crock pot meal prep and while I have enough of this to last a week, I was wondering if I'm missing a key like vitamins or fiber.
Sorry if this is a stupid question.
by HeartHealsHealth
34 Comments
Sounds lovely to me. You can always add some peas or broccoli to it if you are worried about your veggies intake. But as long you are having other meals throughout the week, I do not see anything wrong with this meal.
Looks delicious. Probably not considered ‘heathy’ for weight loss standards though. I’m assuming those mashed potatoes have a good amount of butter as they look pretty creamy. The sauce looks saucing. And beef overall is a high calorie fatty food. If you subbed out the mashed potatoes for a more bland complex carb like brown rice it’d be hitting more into the healthy region. Or put that stew over broccoli? That sounds delicious too in my opinion
I mean, it’s not unhealthy – and you can get somewhat low calorie mash. If you want to keep the volume, get a bit more veg and lower the calories, you can benefit from adding cauliflower to the mash, for a potato cauliflower mash – or you can go full cauliflower mash, if that’s to your liking. Cauliflower mash is around half the calories compared to potato mash – but mixing them, will cut off around 1/4 of the calories and has (in my opinion) a great taste.
Cauliflower can also be used to cut down on rice or add volume to your rice, by making cauliflower rice. Personally, I find cauliflower rice about as nice as ordinary rice – so I mostly eat that.
Other than that, celeriac is a gread addition to slow cooked dishes, that tastes great, is cheap and has a pretty good amount of dietary fibres.
Id personally probably mix half Cauliflower mash and half mashed potatoes to make it even a little more healthier with less carbs but this looks great!
I’d add some greens (beans, peas, broccoli, kale, whatever you like) but otherwise looks great
That looks healthy, though probably not low calorie. Regardless, totally delicious and better for you than fast food!
Carrot and potatoes are superb fibers and nutrition for your gut. You could add some chopped cabage to the stew, or peas for extra fibres. I’d say 8/10 for nutrition.
Foods you can add that are high in fiber: broccoli, lentils, brown rice
You could try replacing the mashed potatos with brown rice for a healthier meal. You could add lentils in the pot roast, or add steamed broccoli on top to increase fiber intake. If you still want potatoes in your meal, try just adding quartered potatoes in the pot roast as well, since mashed potatoes are usually more fatty and calorie dense than whole potatoes.
I would have a small portion of it just the way it is, maybe with a salad or some other veggie side. Home cooked meals like this really stick to your ribs and make you feel satisfied for a long time, which can really be key in healthy eating.
I mean, it’s healthy as in it’s a meal made from real foods with minimal processed ingredients. That said, there’s a reason why meals like this are considered “comfort foods.” They’re delicious but calorie heavy. If you’re not worried about that, then I say it’s fine! Maybe add some veg somewhere, but looks yummy!
For sure, I see some carrots in there and there’s plenty of other veggies dissolved in the sauce.
yum I want some please
A whole food based meal is pretty much always good for you! That looks great! Everyone suggesting it would be healthier if it was lower calorie does not know your personal needs. I’m someone who needs a higher calorie diet and it would be idiotic for someone to suggest I should swap to lower calorie foods to be “healthier”.
Add it to a recipe nutrition calculator and see. Then change the recipe ingredients (add more veggies, remove the mash, or whatever) and see how it affects the nutritional values, calories, carbs, proteins, sodium, etc.
Then you’ll know for sure and it will also give you an idea of what you should do for the other meals of the day.
That is delicious, but probably not as healthy as you think.
Sure! I mix my caulifower in my mashed potatoes, skip the mayo
Lol no probably not healthy. I eat like that though. I’m trying to change to fish and rice.
Looks delicious! Recipe??
You could add a TON of cabbage to this as a veggie content boost and hardly notice it! 🙂
Looks really good! I’d love your recipe for the roast part!
Definitely healthy but not necessarily low calorie, which is totally fine.
Mashed potatoes an excellent source of micronutrients like potassium
Red meat also carries lots of essential nutrients and carrots of course good for you
I’d eat it for dinner over 2 days and be happy with it
Healthy doesn’t exactly mean good for weight loss, but you might not be trying to lose any weight so, yes, it looks healthy and delicious.
Some more veggies on the side would be great!
Hello!! Thank you so much for the feedback! :)) I am gonna be adding way more veggies next batch and totally try the cauliflower suggestion instead of rice! Thank you again for the feedback, always open to criticism especially since I just started this journey.
Note: A lot are asking for my height and weight for better advice, so (please don’t laugh) here it is:
5’5 female, 320lbs. My current goal weight is 250. I want to see how I feel there before striving for lower.
Also I can’t reply to comments quickly because it gives me a timeout? 10 min between replies. 🙁 not sure why but I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m ignoring the feedback.
Not a stupid question!
First off, if you are making stuff from scratch, it’s gonna inherently be more healthy for you. You have control of fat, sugar, and sodium levels much more than with packaged foods.
Others have already given good advice, cauliflower mash is great!
Ultimately, moderation is key. A couple times a week? Go for it. The only thing you eat for lunch and dinner for a month? Do not do that.
Change up for chicken dishes sometimes, as it has less cholesterol. Add a side salad for easy fiber.
Looks delicious….. add more veggies for sure and maybe don’t do two carbs
It’s carb heavy. Replace the potatoes with cauliflower mash. You can also add more veggies to the mix. Veggies like asparagus and celery are great too.
Depends on what you mean by healthy. Dense with vitamins, minerals, micro and macro nutrients? Yes.
Will it help you lose weight? Probably not.
Weightloss is about calories in, calories out. This looks like it could be half someone’s daily calories depending on your recipe.
It’s okay, a bit on the high calorie side and it is missing veggies. If you add veggies to the mash to reduce the potato that already helps a bit. Red meats, especially as stews are high in fat, so also high in calories and cholesterol.
It’s probably middle of the road from a health perspective. You could certainly eat worse, but you’ll want some fresh veggies if you want to eat really healthy. A sad fact about meal prep is that eating really healthy is difficult because fresh veggies don’t hold up very long in the fridge or freezer. It’s not impossible, but it is challenging.
One way to approach it is to reduce the size of the meal that you’re prepping by like 30% and replace those calories with a side salad. You can just buy bag salads that you dump in a bowl if you won’t have the time to chop up veggies. Or dig a little deeper into salad prep and make 1-2 days worth of salad at a time as a mini-prep exercise in between the more elaborate weekend prep work.
Looks nice! It’s a bit of a carb overload with all the potatoes and sauce for one serving but I’d adjust by not eating bread etc. with it.
Also I’d be a bit wary of clostridium perfringens because of the carrots and potatoes but I’m not sure if it’s a universal thing…..?
Add a little hot sauce it’ll be the most healthiest thing u eat
Most home cooked meals are way healthier than any pre-made, frozen, or ordered food. That being said, a meal like this can get “unhealthy” if you don’t have portion control.
There are some basic suggestions that you can follow besides portion control:
* Limit the amount of oil you use. Obviously a home cooked meal will NOT be healthier if it is deep fried haha. Try to use at most 3 tablespoons per meal. (Invest in an air fryer if you like fried foods, it works wonders).
* High protein, low calories. Try to eat a variety of protein. Red meat is totally fine but if you’re gonna use ground meat try to get it as lean as possible. (Consider ground turkey, with the right seasonings it can be very delicious).
* I personally hate chopping vegetables so I pre-chop and freeze my veggies. Don’t overthink it: onions, bell peppers, carrots, potatoes, radishes and zucchini. I also buy some canned veggies like peas, corns, diced tomatoes and beans. Those preserve well and are easy to prepare.
* If you find it hard to eat three full meals a day I recommend eating two meals and several snacks. Dinner should be one of those meals cus it’s best to end the day on a full tummy so you don’t overeat.
* Stay away from “healthy” snacks like dried fruit and nuts which do tend to be nutritious but calorie dense so you can only eat a little bit. Again: high protein, low calories (even with snacks). Protein bars are a great way to go. Fruit smoothies (use almond milk instead of water) as well. Dark chocolate (72% cacao and above). Greek yogurt. Popcorn (careful with the butter, use popcorn seasoning instead).
If you’re not into exercise, find ways to move your body at least three days a week. 30 minute walk/50 sit ups/50 squats/jog in place/grab something heavy and step side to side 40 times.
No but you could add some peas , carrots , bricoli
I just wanna commend you for how open you are to suggestions & feedback! You’re definitely headed in the right direction with the attitude you have, & I have total faith that you’ll get to where you wanna be. Something that helped me when first starting out was “eating the colors of the rainbow” aka getting a variety of different fruits & veg for each meal, & not relying on only one source for protein intake (meat is good, but so is fish, greek yogurt, milk, oats, beans, etc).
I’d wish you good luck on your journey, but you don’t need it! You definitely got this 💪🏿