About Me

Welcome to Spoonful of Skinny.

I’m a retired, married, empty-nester. Prior to retirement I did research and taught at a state university.

I’m a home cook and definitely not a food stylist. Truth be told, I’m a ‘slap it on a plate and chow down’ type of gal. Here are some of my slimmed down recipes. Hope you’ll find something you like.

In summer of 2015 my world turned upside down when my hubby had an unexpected heart attack. During our education visit, his doc recommended he keep his saturated fat to 12 g or less a day. From that day forward my mission revolved around my hubby’s diet and keeping him alive.

Unfortunately, I cook like my grandma, a pinch of this and a handful of that. One by one, I tweaked all my long time recipes, getting the saturated fat as low as possible. In addition to tweaking the recipes I grew up with, I started throwing ingredients together to come up with new creations.

One thing I learned early in the process, if it doesn’t taste good, you’re not going to eat it. You might be able to choke it down the first or second time if it is so-so but long term, the battle is lost.

I’m not into cooking multiple meals, so I eat what the hubby eats. During the covid shut down, I put on weight that I couldn’t get off. On a lark I signed up for WW. We were already eating healthy meals, so incorporating point counting for me was fairly easy and the weight started to come off. Unfortunately, my protein intake ramped up on WW and my kidneys objected. I still do WW but I keep my protein intake to 50 g or less a day. The weight is still coming off but at a slower rate with the reduced protein intake. Slow but sure weight loss is better than the alternative – I’ve learned to take small victories where I find them.

I’ve started this blog to share my tweaked recipes. I included a WW link to my recipes so others will be able to check the point values for themselves.*

While I am doing low saturated fat for the hubby and sugar free for myself, I realize not everyone has dietary restraints. Prior to my hubby’s heart attack, all my recipes were prepared as written. No changes were made to any of the original ingredients. Post heart attack when I tweaked a recipe, my goal was to get as close as possible in taste to the original recipe. In all of my posted recipes, I include the original ingredient and amount that is being replaced for those who may need to customize the recipe to meet their own needs. If you change up the recipe and get good results, please leave a comment with the changes so others may benefit from your experience.

Hopefully, those cooking for cardiac patients or those on WW will see something of interest.

*Note, now that WW has switched to app only, I can no longer provide clickable links to my WW recipes.

Disclaimer: Everyone should check with their own medical team on dietary guidelines they should be following. What my husband’s doc recommended for him may not be what your doc recommends for you. Similarly, you doc may have other recommendations for you regarding weight loss.