10 Recipes

Low-Calorie Volume-Eating Recipes

Cucumber tomato salads, vegetable soups, big chopped salads, bok choy bowls, and cabbage rolls — meals that look enormous and stay under 400 calories.

Contributors
Samantha Robertson
Victoria Zmuda
Ashley Breaux
+7

Lunch

Chicken Tortilla SoupLunch

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Unintentionally healthy, but purposely good. This soup is jam packed with veggies and protein in a silky and spicy broth. It is just asking to be your favorite. Hungry yet?

25 min250 cal30g proteinServes 87,659 saves
Samantha RobertsonSamantha Robertson

Ingredients

  • 1 pound Chicken Breast (Boneless/Skinless)
  • 1 Onion (medium)
  • 1 Red Bell Pepper; chopped
  • 4 Garlic Cloves
  • 2 tsp Chili Powder
  • 2 tsp Ground Cumin
  • 2 tbsp Chicken Bouillon
  • 1/2 tsp Smoked Paprika
  • 1/2 tsp Dried Oregano
  • 1/2 tsp Kosher Salt
  • 1/4 tsp Black Pepper
  • 2 cans Rotel
  • 1 can Fire Roasted Tomatoes (not drained)
  • 1 can Black Beans (rinsed and drained)
  • 1/2 can Corn
  • 6 cup Chicken Broth
  • Cilantro (garnish)

Instructions

  1. 1Over medium high heat, add olive oil to the bottom of a large soup pot.
  2. 2Add onions and bell pepper to pot, and cover with lid until onions are almost translucent and peppers are soft.
  3. 3Stir in minced garlic, sauté 30 seconds.
  4. 4Add chicken broth, rotel, tomatoes, black beans, corn and chicken breast to pot.
  5. 5Cover Soup and bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer over medium low.
  6. 6Simmer for 20-25 minutes OR just until the chicken is tender enough to shred. Remove chicken and let rest 5 minutes, then shred.
  7. 7Add chicken back to pot along with lime juice and cilantro. Taste and season with additional kosher salt/lime juice to taste.
  8. 8Stir in additional chicken broth if you would like a less chunky soup.
  9. 9Top individual servings with desired amount of Tortilla strips amd garnishes. We used cilantro, sour cream, and Tortilla strips!

P.S. We update the recipes on this page every few days. If you want to cook this recipe over and over again, we'd love it if you downloaded Pepper 🤝.

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Why Volume Eating Is the Sustainable Low-Calorie Strategy

Volume eating means choosing foods that take up a lot of plate space relative to calories — soups, salads, vegetables, broth, lean proteins. A full plate that lands at 250 calories beats a small plate at 600 every time, because your brain registers the bowl size more than the macros.

The math is simple: vegetables are 25-50 calories per cup, broth-based soup is 20-100, lean protein is 120-150 per portion. A bowl with three full cups of food can come in at 350 calories and feel like a Thanksgiving plate.

The most popular low-calorie volume-eating recipes on Pepper are the ones that genuinely fill you up, because home cooks know that a diet only sticks when the plate looks big.

Quick Tips

  1. 1

    Salad bowl > salad plate

    Eating from a giant bowl signals abundance and slows you down. Best calorie-deficit trick in the kitchen.

  2. 2

    Broth-based first

    Start dinner with a cup of broth-based soup. Cuts the appetite for the main course by 100-150 calories.

  3. 3

    Greens triple the salad

    Add a fistful of arugula or spinach to any dish. ~20 calories per cup, doubles plate volume.

  4. 4

    Crunch comes from raw, not fried

    Cucumber, radish, snap peas, peppers — give salads the crunch your brain wants without croutons.

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