The main reason that frozen dinners aren’t really appropriate for use as a lean and green meal is because of the way most frozen dinners are processed, they have too much sodium. Often, they don’t have enough protein either. But sodium aside, I thin even if you were to look long and hard at every frozen meal at your grocery store, you would have a hard time finding something suitable to match the ingredients of your lean and green.

Remember, your lean and green meal is pretty simple. It’s 5 to 7 ounces of lean protein, two cups of salad and 1/2 cup to 1 1/2 cups of raw or cooked vegetables. You can check the list of allowed foods on Medifast to get a better idea, but basically most frozen meals have all kinds of additional ingredients that you shouldn’t be eating (mostly fat) and not enough of what you need (protein and healthy carbs).

You’ll actually find that it would be pretty difficult to find a frozen dinner that contained as much protein as you need to eat. Medifast’s suggested serving is quite generous. You would probably need two frozen dinners to even get close to the right quantity of lean protein.

Now this isn’t to say that you can’t use frozen foods in your lean & green meals. You definitely can! Just avoid the the stuff that is packaged as “dinners” or “meals” and stick to frozen foods that are just packaged single ingredients.

There’s nothing wrong with most frozen meats or frozen vegetables. Just keep an eye on the sodium content and beware of any extra fats. So a bag of frozen broccoli or a block of frozen spinach is fine, but you wouldn’t want to get get frozen broccoli & cheese or frozen creamed spinach.

Plain frozen meats, fish or seafood is fine as well. So try some frozen plain salmon, or fish filets that are already grilled and just need to be reheated. How about some frozen shrimp? Frozen turkey burgers are great too. I’ve even seen frozen buffalo burgers at supermarkets like Whole Foods so you might want to give those a try as buffalo is on the Medifast lean meats list too.

For meatless options, Boca burgers are in the freezer aisle and they have lots of varieties and they are also on the approved Medifast list. There’s also Morningstar Farms products or GardenBurger patties. Any of their options are acceptable if the carb serving is under 6 grams. Even if you aren’t vegetarian, you should try some of these options. They are all quite tasty and quick to heat and serve.

Add some bagged salad greens to your shopping cart and you should easily be able to come up with Medifast lean & green meals that are far tastier than the packaged frozen dinners, but just as fast to heat and serve.

If you haven’t signed up for Medifast yet, be sure to check out the Medifast specials for this month.

Disclosure: DietInspector.com is a paid affiliate of Medifast, Inc.

The Medifast products are the primary foods that you’ll be eating each day. So you don’t need to put a lot of thought into those. Just pick your five Medifast meals and you’re all set. The question of what’s allowed comes up when it is time to think about your lean and green meal. Since you prepare this yourself at home, you’ll need to do some grocery shopping. Naturally you want to know what’s on the shopping list.

As the name of the meal, lean and green, hints, you’ll be picking up lean protein and lots of vegetables. So let’s take a look at each side of the plate.

Lean Protein

The lean part of your meal consists of lean protein. You have both meat and vegetarian options here. Portion sizes depend on the fat content of your selected protein. So if you choose certain types of fish, you can have 7 ounces, but beef or pork choices will limit you to 5 ounces. Poultry falls right in the middle at 6 ounces. For vegetarian options, the choices range from 14 egg whites or 3 whole eggs, with the whole eggs clearly containing more fat. Other vegetarian options include items like Boca Burgers, Morningstar Farms patties and Tofu.

The Green Portion

The green side of your plate is made up of leafy green vegetables and other colorful veggies. Eliminated are foods like potatoes, corn, carrots and other high carb vegetables. Serving sizes, for your greens, are determined by carbohydrate level. So, for example, you can have a 1 cup serving of of nearly all leafy greens such as lettuce or spinach, but only a 1/2 cup serving of cauliflower or asparagus. Your entire green serving is three servings, keeping the portion restrictions in mind. So you could have three cups of leafy greens, or one cup of leafy greens and a 1/2 cup of portabella mushrooms and a 1/2 cup of peppers to make a nice, colorful salad.

Additional Fats

Finally, Medifast also adds some additional fats to your daily diet and the amount depends on how much fat is in the protein choices that you made. Fats are added because some vitamins and minerals are fat-soluble only, so fats are an important part of a healthy diet. For your fat serving, you get to choose from items such as black olives, low carb salad dressing, olive oil, canola oil and even trans-fat free margarine.

As you can see the main items that are eliminated from the Medifast diet are white flour and other high carbohydrate foods like rice and potatoes, etc. But overall you have quite a variety of allowable foods on Medifast and so you should be able to maintain some variety in your lean and green meals without feeling deprived.

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One of the things that many people have a difficult time with, however, is coming up with menu ideas for the Medifast lean & Green meal. If you use this meal properly, however, it can help to keep you focused on the meal plan and also give you the options that you need to be able to have dinner out or to eat lunch with a client without deviating from the Medifast diet itself. If you are having a difficult time coming up with lean & Green meals, here are some ideas that should spark some creativity on your part.

Because each of the lean & Green meals consist of a lean protein and a vegetable, you really have a wide variety of choices and you don’t need to restrict you Lean & Green meal to dinner every day. Feel free to have it for breakfast one day and lunch on another.

You can do such things as omelettes in the morning that are made with one whole egg and five egg whites, a little bit of cheese and the required vegetable. For lunch on the go, you can try a tuna salad that is made from 6 ounces tuna, to hard-boiled egg whites and some diced vegetables along with low-fat mayonnaise. If you want some breaded chicken, you can try making a breading from the Medifast crackers and using it just like you would shake and bake.

Believe it or not, menu ideas for the Medifast lean & Green meals whenever you are eating out are quite simple to come up with. Most restaurants have a healthy portion to their menu and will allow you to mix and match some lean meat with some vegetables. As long as you choose wisely whenever you are eating out, you will not have a difficult time putting together a meal that fits right in with the diet plan. Not only that, it will help to keep you sane so that you can continue on with the entire weight loss program.

If you haven’t signed up for Medifast yet, be sure to check out the Medifast specials for this month.