5 Quick & Healthy Low Calorie Meals For Weight Loss & Building Lean Muscle

What’s up, it’s Chris Heria. Today, I’m gonna be showing you how to make five quick and healthy low calorie meals that are gonna have you losing weight and getting shredded while simultaneously building some solid lean muscle, as these meals are also highly packed with protein. And you’re gonna be able to use these meals to create a caloric deficit. Now of course, being on a caloric deficit, meaning that you’re intaking less the amount of calories that you burn each day, is gonna allow you to lose weight. But that doesn’t mean that you’re putting the right fuel or the right nutrients into your body, to allow your body to perform, grow healthy and strong, and build some solid muscle.

But with the meals I’ll be showing you today, you can be sure that you’re gonna have all of that covered and finally see some real results if you haven’t already. And even if you’re not trying to lose weight, incorporating these meals into your diet can ensure that you don’t exceed your maintenance calories, allowing you to maintain the shredded physique while simultaneously building muscle without an excessive or unhealthy bulk.

This is the exact same way that I’ve been eating and building my physique for the past 12 years. So, I hope you guys are hungry. Without further ado, I’m gonna show you how to make the best meals to lose weight, get shredded, and simultaneously build some solid muscle.

Let’s start off with the first meal. All right, the first meal is gonna be eight ounces of chicken, 3/4 cup of broccoli, a cup of spinach, a cup of sweet potatoes, and 1/4 cup of chopped onions. So, we have our chicken, the first thing we’re gonna do is cut it in half so that it cooks more even, and so that it cooks faster. After we cut our chicken, we’re gonna use complete seasoning to season the chicken, it has zero calories. Tap, flip them over.

We got this all seasoned up. Next, we’re gonna put this on the stove, but the real secret to flavor is the ingredient that we’re gonna use next. Some onions. Let’s turn on the stove, put it about mid. I’m using avocado oil, again, zero calories.

Spray the pan, gonna give it a couple seconds to let that heat up, then I’m gonna drop the chicken in.

Next, I’m gonna start cutting some onions. If you want your proteins, salmon, chicken, steak, whatever it is, to have an insane amount of flavor, cook it with some onions. We’re gonna be using about 1/4 cup of onions. Stove it hot, time to drop in the chicken.

Now, they can’t be cooking for that long, ’cause they are thin, so keep an eye on them. Just gonna place them in here for a couple minutes. In a couple seconds, I’m gonna throw in the onions. While that’s cooking, we’re gonna get into our broccoli. This is about half a cup right here.

I’m probably gonna add a little more, because I love broccoli. 3/4 cup of broccoli. Let’s check on the chicken. Woo, look at that. Beautiful.

Smells delicious. Look at that glaze. Not it’s time to add the onions. Look at that flavor popping. All right, while that’s cooking up, we’re gonna get into chopping up our sweet potato.

You can just slice it up or you can peel off the skin. All right, these chicken strips are nice and juicy.

They are completely ready. Move the onions around. Forgive me guys, I completely forgot a spatula, so we’re gonna be doing this without a spatula whole video.

Got ourselves some nicely glazed onions. Go ahead and drop that down onto of the chicken. Woo, that smells delicious. We are almost done with this meal. Make sure that pan’s ready to go and let’s drop in our broccoli.

Now, again, with the broccoli, you can lightly season it, complete seasoning. Also, throw in a tiny bit of onions just to give it that flavor. While that’s going, I’m over here cleaning up my sweet potatoes. You can cut these in any which way you want. I’m making slices.

This is gonna be the easiest and fastest way for them to cook. All right, the broccoli is just about ready. You really want to put the broccoli in for about three minutes or so, or until the broccoli is just generally tender. Let’s go ahead and drop that in. That is looking delicious.

Gonna start working on my next side, that’s gonna be a cup of spinach. That’s about a cup right there. Bam. Make sure to get these nice and wet. I’m also gonna be adding in some black pepper and some salt.

All right, look at that. Soak up all that flavor, baby, let’s go. For those of you that don’t like to eat spinach, I promise you, you saute the spinach, look how much smaller the portion becomes. It’s so much easier to eat a whole cup of spinach and it taste a thousand times better when you make it this way also.

Sauteed spinach is ready.

Put that down on the side. Now we just need sweet potatoes. You can go ahead and season these a tiny bit if you want. Pepper, a dash of salt, spray so make sure nothing burns. We are ready to go.

Now, this is a lot of sweet potato, I’m only gonna be using one cup. Now, of course, if you just had a bag of frozen sweet potato fries, this would be a whole lot faster and easier. Stuff those in the oven or something like that while we are cooking everything else. So, doing it this way may take a little bit longer, but you know 100% what’s going into your sweet potatoes and how it’s being made. All right, it’s time to plate this.

It’s not about the presentation, it’s really about the taste test and the nutrients that you’re gonna get from eating this. And there we have the first meal. This whole entire meal is only 449 calories, 32 grams of carbs, 12 grams of fat, and 49 grams of protein. Slam packed with nutrients and vitamins as well. Now, to give you a comparison, I Googled up the macros for a Hot Pocket, it’s 580 calories, 72 grams of carbs, 25 grams of fat, and only 18 grams of protein with barely any nutritional value, nutrients, or vitamins.

All right, you know the only thing we have to do, go for the taste test.

Chicken, some onions in there, some sauteed spinach. Oh my God. Mm, sweet potato fries, amazing. You have to try this Stefan.

Let me know what you think. – 10. – Amazing. – All right, the next meal is gonna be a ground turkey burrito. We’re gonna be making two burritos for one serving.

We’re gonna be using two whole wheat carb balance wraps, eight ounces of ground turkey, 1/4 chopped onions, two tablespoons of cilantro, 1/4 chopped tomato, and 1/4 chopped spinach. Lets get right into it. First step, we’re gonna heat up the pan on the stove, make sure it has some avocado spray on it while we prepare our ground turkey.

We’re gonna take out eight ounces of ground turkey. Now, this is one pound, so eight ounces is gonna be pretty much half of what this is right here.

Now, I love to use turkey because it is a very very lean piece of meat, and it’s a very good source of protein. All right, now let’s go ahead and season this with some complete seasoning. All right, let’s check on the pan. Got a decent heat in it, I’m gonna drop in our turkey.

I’m gonna chop this 1/4 cup of onions.

Woo, look at that. Now, really quick, just add a touch of salt, touch of black pepper, try to make everything have a nice glaze all around it, without it being burned. If you do see something starting to get burned at all, you can always just slightly lower the heat. All right, while this heats up, we’re gonna go ahead, chop up our other ingredients. We’re gonna be chopping 1/4 cup of tomatoes and 1/4 cup of spinach.

That’s about that right there. And in just like three or four minutes, the protein is already cooked. So, I’m gonna go ahead, take it off the stove while I finish preparing the rest of the ingredients. Chop up this spinach really quick, all right. And lastly, we’re gonna be using two tablespoons of cilantro.

This is about two tablespoons right here. This is gonna add a lot of flavor as well. All right, let’s put our protein to the side. We’re down to the last step. Take out one of these wraps, we’re gonna use the same pan, so that we absorb all that flavor.

All right, we’re gonna leave these in here for a minute and a half. If you want something delicious, nutritious, and on the go, this is gonna be perfect for you. And these are right about ready to go. So, there we have our wraps. So now all we need to do is go ahead and fill up our taco burrito, whatever you want to call it.

Next, I’m gonna drop in our protein, ground turkey, the grilled onions. Ooh. Lastly, top it off with our tomatoes, and then our cilantro. And there we have it, our healthy and delicious ground turkey tacos. Both of them are one full serving size and within this meal is only 468 calories, 33 grams of carbs, 21 grams of fat, and a whole 53 grams of protein.

Lean enough to allow you to lose weight but packed with protein to ensure that you’re gonna be building some muscle.

Now, just to give you guys another comparison or different perspective, a McDonald’s Big Mac meal with a burger and medium fries is gonna be a total of 928 calories, 92 grams of carbs, 50 grams of fat, and only 30 grams of protein. So, now it’s time to give it the taste test. Go ahead and take a bite. The wrap is nice and crunchy.

Woo, the cilantro, oh my God. – Damn. – Yep. – That’s good. – Yes sir.

– Yo, this is the one for sure.

– So good. – All right, next up, we’re gonna be making one of my favorites, a classic chicken and vegetables. This meal consists of one cup of vegetable mix, carrots, peas, beans, and edamame. Eight ounces of chicken breast, one half cup of peppers, 1/4 of avocados, and 1/4 of a cup of chopped onions.

So, first things first, we’re gonna heat up the pan, get it prepared for our protein. Keep it on a low heat.

And now we can start preparing our protein. So, just like before, we’re gonna cut it in half. All right, there we have our chicken.

Let’s go ahead, season it. It’s got seasoning all over. Now, as we let this cook, we’re gonna keep it under half of the heat, you don’t want to burn this chicken, plus we want to have time to prepare the rest of our food. Next up, we’re gonna be cutting 1/4 of a cup of onions, chop them up, got 1/4 of a cup right here. Now, I know touching this pan with the metal spoon is really not good, so I’m not trying to touch the pan with the metal spoon at all.

I really wish I had a spatula. In the meantime, let’s cut up half a cup of peppers. Yes sir, these are ready to be flipped. All right, we got our peppers.

Let me go ahead and throw that into the mix.

Let’s go. That’s gonna bring out the flavor. I’m gonna lower the heat just a little bit so that I can continue prepping the rest of the ingredients. We’re gonna be using 1/4 of avocado. These are ready to be plated.

Go ahead and take this off. Hopefully this inspires you guys never to eat fast food again. If you’re ordering this from a restaurant, I guarantee you this is gonna be made with way more sauce and extra calories and condiments to make it taste better, but who knows if it actually really taste better.

Wow, guys, take a look at that. Grilled chicken, the glazed peppers, glazed onions, delicious.

We’re almost done here. Lastly, we have our one cup of mixed veggies, drop that in there. Woo, we’re gonna saute these. And something that I like to add, it enhances the flavor, liquid aminos. And it’s five calories only.

So, let’s go ahead and add a nice little drizzle. You know what, add a couple onions in there, just to enhance the flavor. And keep in mind, we’re using the same pan that we cooked the chicken in so it’s gonna have flavor from that as well.

All right, while this is finishing up, let’s get our last ingredient, 1/4 of a cup of avocado. So, cutting this directly in half is literally 1/4 of the avocado.

We’re basically done. Man, this smells delicious. Do yu guys smell that? When the onions get nice and glazed like this, you know we’re ready to go. All right, let’s go ahead and plate this.

The avocado is not only gonna add flavor to this dish, but it’s also gonna complete the macros, giving you the healthy fats that you need. So there you have it, one of my absolute favorites, chicken and veggies. This entire plate of food is only 475 calories, 26 grams of carbs, 18 grams of fat, and slammed with 53 grams of protein, along with nutrients, vitamins, and deliciousness in every bite.

Now just to give you a comparison and to put some things in perspective, if you had just two slices of cheese pizza and two breadsticks from Papa Johns, that alone is 920 calories, 128 grams of carbs, 30 grams of fat, and only 31 grams of protein. So with that said, there’s only one thing left to do, that’s to give this a taste test.

All right, I’ll go first. Here we go with the chicken. We already know that’s gonna taste good. Some peppers in there, some veggies. Mmhmm.

Woo. This thing is slam packed with flavor. You guys gotta give this a try. What do you think? – Amazing.

Still, the tacos my favorite. – Okay, I’ll take that. – 10 out of 10. – Again, this next dish is one of my favorites, we’re gonna be making a salmon salad. You can actually find this dish a lot in Miami.

A lot of healthy spots actually serve this salmon salad here.

Inside the salad is six ounces of salmon, just under 1/4 cup of onions, one boiled egg, half a cup of tomatoes, two cups of mixed greens, three ounces of baby carrots, and about half a lemon squeezed on top for the dressing. But really, you can use any type of low calorie dressing that you’d like, just keep in mind that whatever dressing you do use will effect the macros, like a light Italian dressing. All right, first things first ladies and gentlemen, gotta prep the pan. While we get that heating up, okay let’s go ahead and season this salmon up real quick.

We’re keeping it simple today using the same complete seasoning for every protein. We’ve got that nice and rubbed down. You don’t need much ’cause really the flavor’s gonna come out with the onions. All right, we got our beautiful piece of salmon, let’s go ahead and drop that in. Damn.

Salmon is slam packed with omega fatty acids, which are healthy fats that your body needs for hormone regulation, energy for your workouts, and even brain function. Chop up some onions, about 1/4 of a cup or a little under that.

Bam. Let’s drop that flavor in there. Now, when it comes to salmon, I normally know when it’s ready to be flipped over when I start to see the sides start to change color, gets more peach.

It’s already started to cook. Let’s go ahead and flip that. Look at that, perfectly done. And while that’s going, let’s start preparing our salad. Let’s go ahead and wash our salad real quick.

We’re gonna be using two cups of this mixed greens. Check on the salmon, you can see from the middle line right here, it is almost ready. This might actually be the fastest meal that we’ve made. Yes sir, we are ready to go. I’m gonna go ahead and take that out of the heat, finish preparing our salad.

I’m gonna take out half a cup of tomatoes.

We’ll also be cutting 1/4 of a cup of Haas avocado. All right here we go, let’s go ahead and add these. All right, here we go, we got the boiled egg. I’m gonna go ahead and cut this egg in half.

Right in the middle, we’re gonna place this bad boy. All right, we have our main ingredient. Go ahead and drop in the onions. Lastly, we’re gonna add half a lemon squeezed to your preference. And there you have it, Chris Heria’s signature salad right there, baby.

Tell me that doesn’t look delicious. Now, inside this whole entire salad is only 437 calories, 20 grams of carbs, 18 grams of fat, and a whole 46 grams of protein. Now, just to give you guys another perspective, a KFC crispy chicken breast meal with a biscuit and potato wedges, is 960 calories, 78 grams of carbs, 52 grams of fat, and 43 grams of protein. But there’s only one thing left to do and that’s to give it a taste test. Let’s get into that salmon.

Oof, that salmon is so soft. Wow, that is delicious, and with the lemon squeezed on top, phenomenal. All the natural vegetables, ingredients, you can really taste the flavor. It’s like eating straight from a garden. I love this.

You guys have to give this a try. – That’s a really good salad.

– Let’s go. – I usually don’t like salad, but that is a good salad. – All right, our last meal is gonna be a chicken wrap.

It’s actually gonna be two wraps again for one serving, so we’re gonna be using two spinach carb balance wraps, half a cup of spinach, eight ounces of chicken, half a cup of tomatoes, 1/4 cup of Haas avocado, and 1/4 cup of chopped onions. So, you know what’s first, let’s go ahead and heat up the pan half way heat. All right, you already know what to do, cut these half, thinly sliced. Time for the seasoning. And you guys should be pro chicken makers after this.

Ready to go. Gotta treat these with love. Bam. All right, let’s go ahead and just chop up these onions anyway, they were right here. Gonna need those.

Now I wait for the first side to get nice and cooked, then I flip it over and I add the onions, start getting glazed. Then in the meantime, let’s go ahead and prepare the rest of our ingredients.

We’re gonna take out half a cup of spinach, 1/4 cup of Haas avocado, and lastly, chop up half a cup of tomatoes. You can actually add some of those bell peppers into some of this as well if you really want to enhance the flavor. That also will effect the macros of course, but not very much at all.

Bell peppers are very high in nutrients, and also very low in calories. Let’s check on these. They are ready to be flipped for sure. So, you can see, when it starts getting around the edges cooked, and you still go the top, that’s how you know when you’re ready to flip. Especially when it’s thinly cut like that.

Throw in the onions. Now it’s looking pretty dry in there, I don’t want anything to burn, so. All right, these are pretty much ready to go. Every one of these dishes was pretty much under 10 minutes. This is super fast to prepare.

If you’re used to eating at a fast food restaurant or even ordering food, this is gonna be done way faster than the time it even takes to deliver the food. Plus, if you learn how to cook like this, your partner will thank you forever. You’ll never be single by choice, that’s for sure. All right, look at that protein. Flavor just dripping off of it.

I’m gonna put this back on the stove. We just have one small little step, that’s gonna be to make our wraps nice and toasty. Gather up that flavor. All right, we’re gonna wait for about 90 seconds. While I’m waiting for the wraps, I’ll just go ahead and cut up this chicken a little bit, so that fits neatly in a wrap.

All right, my favorite part, time to build these wraps. Gonna start off with the spinach.

All right, let’s drop our cut up grilled chicken in there, nice and neat. Wow, look at these. Slam packed with protein.

They definitely don’t give it to you like that at Taco Bell. Now let’s add on top our caramelized onions. Last but not least, top it off with the tomatoes and our avocado. There we have it, Chris Heria’s healthy and delicious and protein packed chicken wrap. Inside this chicken wrap, is only 498 calories, 46 grams of carbs, 22 grams of fat, and a whole 59 grams of protein.

If you order at Taco Bell a deluxe cravings box, which is three tacos and nachos, is 1,370 calories, 138 grams of carbs, 70 grams of fat, and 49 grams of protein. So, this dish actually has more protein, with only half the amount of calories and way more of an impressive nutritional profile. So, now you know what time it is, we’re gonna get into that taste test. Here we go, I’m gonna pick up this one. Woo, this is a big wrap.

Here we go. Mmm. I like that slight crunch from heating up the tortilla. You guys are gonna love this. Give that a bite.

See, I’m having these guys taste it ’cause I don’t want you guys to just take my word for it. – Favorite. – So there you have it ladies and gentlemen, five quick and healthy low calorie meals that are gonna have you losing weight, getting shredded, while simultaneously building some solid lean muscle because they are just slam packed with protein.

And each one of these meals are under 500 calories and took 10 minutes or even less to make. I hope you guys enjoy them.

Try them out, make them for yourselves, let me know what you think down in the comment section below. Or you even post them on your social medias and tag me so that I can check it out. I’d love to see what you guys are making. But if you enjoyed the video, then definitely smash that like button, leave a comment down below. We really appreciate it and it helps YouTube share our videos to more people out there.

And to show our appreciation, if you comment down below within 30 minutes of any upload, you’re always gonna have a chance to win some Heria apparel.

And speaking of Heria apparel, we have a brand new drop at chrisheria.com, check out the collection before we’re all sold out. We have brand new joggers, hoodies, fleece shorts, designed by yours truly, with the intentions of creating something with the perfect fit, made from the most comfortable, highest quality material out there. Also, if there’s anything that you’d like to see me make or cook in the next vlog, please leave it in the comment section down below.

I’m actually gonna be choosing the best recommendations down in the comment section, for our next vlog and I’ll also be giving you a shout out for recommending it. And don’t forget, if you need a proper workout program or workouts to go with these meals, definitely download my Heria Pro app in the app store or Google Play store.

You’re gonna get full access to all my personal workout routines that I do, as well as personal workout programs that I’ve created with specific goals in mind, like burning fat and getting shredded while simultaneously building some solid lean muscle. It’s like having me as a personal trainer right in your pocket. So, make sure you hit the subscribe button with bell notifications on.

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