■ Be great tasting, popular, and of restaurant quality.

■ Use healthier preparation methods and ingredients or use smaller portions of more indulgent ingredients.

■ Be convenient, easy and quick to prepare, cook and/or assemble.

■ Use ingredients that can be prepared in advance, stay fresh 2 – 4 days in the refrigerator, and be assembled and reheated in minutes.

■ Use ingredients that can be easily found or substituted with other ingredients based on personal taste or availability.

■ Use store bought ingredients (especially flavor enhancers) or prepared food products, found in specialty food stores, farmers markets and supermarkets, for added convenience and/or variety of taste.

■ Have flavors that would complement each other.

■ Be able to be used in multiple recipes.

■ Be based on weights and measures so you could reproduce the quality and consistency of the recipe every time and know the amount of food the recipe will yield.

■ Have easy-to-follow instructions with great tips so even a novice cook can prepare each recipe successfully and make meal planning effortless.

■ Be sized for a one or two person household, since most people diet on their own, but written by exact measurements so the batch size can be increased to fit any household size.

■ Provide enough variety so you will enjoy eating them day after day, year after year and still be able to adjust them to your own personal taste.

Each recipe has been calculated by the total batch size and/or by the ounce, cup or tablespoon so you can determine the portion size you want based on the calories and nutrient content, along with your own weight loss goals.

Hundreds of food charts were created to help you understand, evaluate, and compare the calories and nutrient data for the most common type of foods consumed. A 100 grams/3.5 oz. or 28 grams/1 oz. weight measurement was used so you can compare any food to another by the same unit of measurement.

Hundreds of tips, tools, and worksheets were designed to make your weight loss journey more effortless and successful.

Inside this book you will actually find three books – chapters, recipes, charts – that are comprehensive and formatted to make them easy to read and use. Three separate indexes have been compiled to help you find what you’re looking for in no time at all.

Thousands of dollars and hours were spent creating the recipes and information in this book so that you could enjoy the benefits of my efforts by buying and reading just one book!