Hungry Girl Lisa Lillien Gives Diet Anxiety a Rest

Lisa Lillien, creator of the Hungry Girl brand, insists it’s possible to have your cake and eat it too without feeling the slightest bit of guilt.

Case in point: her two-ingredient chocolate cake, a recipe that tastes amazingly decadent but is also low in fat and calories. Made by mixing one box (15.25- to 18.25-ounce) devil’s-food cake mix with one 15-ounce can of pumpkin, Lillien has created a high-fiber chocolaty cake that weighs in at only 152 calories per slice.

“You can maintain a healthy lifestyle without depriving yourself,” says Lillien, 49, who admits to being a yo-yo dieter for many years before finally overhauling her eating habits 16 years ago. “It’s easy to find satisfying substitutions for the foods you love.”

With her free daily newsletter (hungry-girl.com) that reaches more than 3 million subscribers, magazine, cookbooks and podcast (“Hungry Girl: Chew the Right Thing,” available on iTunes), Lillien makes eating healthy easier than ever. After discovering that many of her “guilt-free” foods had twice as many calories as they claimed, Lillien launched her Hungry Girl empire in 2004. Today, she has published 13 cookbooks, including her latest “Hungry Girl Simply 6: All-Natural Recipes With 6 Ingredients or Less” (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2019).

“I want people to know first and foremost that big portions of delicious foods can be healthy, help to kick cravings, and also be low in calories,” she says. “In addition, fantastic recipes can be super simple and require only a few ingredients, allowing anyone to feel like a chef in the kitchen.”

Become label smart

After losing 30 pounds in 2003, Lillien became a self-described “food sleuth” by learning to read labels. She even had the calorie counts of some of her favorite “guilt-free” treats tested at a food lab and learned they had twice as many calories as she thought they did.

“I learned that the Food and Drug Administration has a rule that nutrition facts on packaged foods can be inaccurate by up to 20 percent,” Lillien says. “So a protein bar that says it has 250 calories could actually have 300.”

When reading labels, Lillien also recommends looking at portion sizes.

“One of the traps people fall into is not realizing their so-called healthy snacks have two or three servings in a package that looks like one serving,” she says.

Beyond weight loss

Once Lillien had lost 30 pounds, she turned to Weight Watchers to help her maintain her weight loss, and she continues to include Weight Watchers Freestyle SmartPoints values on all her recipes.

“People usually want to know what foods they can eat and still lose weight,” Lillien says. “They also are very interested in feeling satisfied and not getting bored eating the same old things.”

Lillien emphasizes the fact that she’s not a nutritionist or dietician but rather a “foodologist” who enjoys finding the best-tasting foods and using smart substitutes. Two of her favorite strategies include using Greek yogurt instead of sour cream because it offers more protein and lowering calories by swapping unsweetened almond milk for regular milk.

“My focus is on real-world eating strategies and helping people to make smarter food choices when it comes to foods they crave,” Lillien says. “The main focus of my recipes is calories, fat and taste. More and more, I am being asked for easy recipes with few ingredients, which is how the new book “Hungry Girl Simply Six” came to be.”

On the move

While drinks such as coffee, tea and smoothies can seem innocent, Lillien says the calories from sugary beverages can really add up.

“I’m a big fan of staying hydrated to avoid imaginary hunger pangs,” Lillien says. “I prefer regular water at room temperature to anything flavored.”

For people who don’t enjoy the taste of water, Lillien recommends purchasing a pitcher or water bottle that allows you to make spa water by adding things like lemons, oranges, strawberries and cucumbers.

When she makes smoothies, Lillien turns to healthy ingredients such as unsweetened almond milk, powdered peanut butter (which tastes like regular peanut butter minus most of the fatty calories), vanilla protein powder, fat-free plain Greek yogurt and Dole frozen mango chunks.   

Video credit: Maridav, Shutterstock
Photo credit: allensima, Adobe Stock; Siam, Adobe Stock; Sebra, Adobe Stock; St. Martin’s Griffin