9 healthy dinners for weight loss

What should a dinner include for weight loss?

The same as lunch, in the same proportion. It is a rule of proportions, not quantities, so there is nothing to weigh:

• Half the plate: vegetables, raw or cooked. This is what fills you up with very little energy.
• One quarter: protein. White or oily fish, egg, chicken, turkey, pulses, tofu, tempeh or seitan.
• One quarter: carbohydrates. Potato, sweet potato, rice, pasta, couscous, quinoa or bread, in a smaller portion than you would usually serve yourself.

And for dessert, whole fruit or plain yoghurt with no added sugar. With that, dinner is complete.

Choosing wholegrain cereals is not a minor detail. The World Health Organization asks that carbohydrates come mainly from wholegrain cereals, vegetables, fruit and pulses. It also asks adults to reach 400 g of vegetables and fruit and 25 g of fibre a day [1]. Dinner is where it is easiest to add the vegetables that were missing earlier.

And dinner does not have to be minimal: adjust the amount to your hunger. If you ate more at lunchtime, you can eat less at dinner, but keep all three parts.

Does skipping dinner help you lose weight?

It is not the shortcut it seems. Skipping dinner is what people try most often after eating more at lunchtime —“I’m not having dinner today to make up for it”— and it is what leaves you hungriest the next day.

There is data on meal timing and the number of meals, and it is worth setting out in full. A systematic review with meta-analysis of 29 randomised trials and 2,485 people was published in JAMA Network Open in 2024. It found that eating within a short time window, having fewer meals a day or concentrating energy in the first part of the day are associated with slightly lower weight, between one and two kilos. The effect was small and of uncertain clinical importance, with studies at high risk of bias [2]. And for breakfast, the most studied meal, a meta-analysis of 13 trials published in the BMJ also found no evidence that adding it helped people lose weight [3]. At Alimmenta we recommend having breakfast, although the time is secondary, unless it makes you feel unwell or does not fit your lifestyle.

In other words: removing a meal is not the lever. The whole day is, and that applies just as much to dinner as to the next day’s breakfast. Intermittent fasting is neither generally recommended nor generally prohibited. Its effect on weight is small and similar to that of other diets with the same energy deficit. It is not suitable for minors or during pregnancy or breastfeeding. It is also unsuitable if you have or have had an eating disorder, or diabetes treated with medication.

It used to be explained that when you skip dinner the body defends itself by slowing your metabolism. That mechanism does not hold up. The reason to have dinner is simpler: the hunger you save today you pay for tomorrow.

Do carbohydrates make you fat at night?

Not in themselves. What adds up is how much you take in over the day, not the time on the clock: a plate of rice provides the same at ten at night as at two in the afternoon. The time of day matters little. In the JAMA Network Open meta-analysis cited above, concentrating energy in the first part of the day was associated with a small weight difference of uncertain clinical importance [2].

The myth matters because it has practical consequences, and they are the ones we see in consultations: people who believe it eat plain vegetables and chicken for dinner, fall short, and by midnight are standing in front of the fridge. A little carbohydrate at dinner is what stops you going to bed hungry.

What does change is the amount and the type: a smaller portion than you would serve yourself at lunch. Preferably wholegrain, as the World Health Organization recommends, because it provides fibre and helps you stay full for longer [1]. If you want the general approach and not just dinner, start with the weight loss diet guide.

9 healthy dinners for weight loss

Each of the nine dinners has a first course and a second course. Who they are for: a healthy adult who wants to lose weight. Who they are not for: they are not calculated for pregnancy, breastfeeding or anyone under 18. Nor for anyone with diabetes treated with insulin or with medicines that can lower blood sugar too much, chronic kidney disease, or a current or past eating disorder. Nor for anyone who needs to gain weight. If you have a condition with its own plan (coeliac disease, a diagnosed allergy, heart or liver failure), your own plan comes first.

1. Rocket and tomato salad · grilled megrim · two slices of wholegrain bread
2. Julienne soup with noodles · mackerel with vegetables en papillote: onion, asparagus and carrot
3. Green courgette and potato purée · grilled chicken breast with two rusks
4. Lentil salad with red and green pepper, spring onion, sweetcorn and gherkins · aubergine omelette
5. Dressed white asparagus · baked monkfish with potato and onion
6. Fresh spinach salad and wholewheat pasta spirals with tuna and prawns
7. Potato salad, little gem lettuce with grated carrot and soya bean sprouts · turkey skewer with pineapple
8. Grilled aubergine, pepper, onion and wild asparagus · baked hake en papillote with aromatic herbs and a small potato
9. Chard with sautéed chickpeas · scrambled mushrooms and prawns with an egg

All nine have the same dessert: a low-fat yoghurt or a piece of fruit. And all nine have the three parts of the plate, even though in two they are not visible. Dinners 6 and 9 have the carbohydrate inside the dish itself —the wholewheat pasta and the chickpeas—. That is why there is no bread on the side.

The quantities are left out on purpose: they depend on you. What does not change is the proportions. If you want the whole week and not just dinner, you will find it in the diet to lose 5 kilos; and there are seven more dinners, with calories calculated, separately.

Are there dinners that get rid of belly fat?

You cannot choose where you lose fat, not with a dinner, a food or an infusion. When your waist shrinks, it is because overall body fat has gone down, and each body decides the order in which it goes.

That said, your waist does deserve a look, for a reason that is not aesthetic. To track changes, waist and hip circumference are more useful than weight; you can also watch a belt you use often. If you weigh yourself, do it once a week at most so that you do not become obsessed with your weight. The European guidelines for managing obesity in primary care hold that reducing waist circumference matters even more than weight. They also hold that a loss of 5 to 10 % already brings important health benefits [4]. That is far more achievable than the round number you set yourself in January.

What mistakes do we see in consultations when you get home late?

It is the real-life case, and it is where dinners fall apart. The solution is not a recipe: it is having the fridge ready.

• Vegetables, already cooked. One tray in the oven —aubergine, pepper, onion, courgette— covers three dinners.
• Emergency protein. Hard-boiled eggs, tinned fish with no added oil, cooked or frozen pulses in portions.
• And the carbohydrate, already cooked too. Boiled potato, rice or wholewheat pasta from the day before.

With that, at half past nine on a Tuesday you only have to assemble the plate, not cook.

The video: how we put together a complete dinner, in the kitchen

Laia Gómez and Sara Martínez, dietitian-nutritionists at Alimmenta, put together the three parts of dinner with what is in the fridge, in four examples.

A warning, because the video is a few years old: at one point it explains that when you skip dinner your metabolism drops. We no longer stand by that part, for the reasons given above; the rest —the plate, the examples and the cooking methods— is what we still do.

YouTube video: dinners for weight loss, quick and easy recipes