Are Chilaquiles Healthy? (3 Tips For Weight Loss)

If you live in or around Los Angeles, or anywhere in Southern California, you probably have had Mexican food. However, Mexican cuisine is quite versatile and doesn’t consist of only street Tacos.

A popular, staple breakfast dish in Mexico, is Chilaquiles, which means “smothered in chilis.” Traditionally, Chilaquiles are made with lightly fried corn tortillas, cut in quarters, and served with either red or green sauce, and topped with eggs and meat. 

One great aspect of Mexican cuisine is the fact that all ingredients used are always fresh. Therefore, we also recommend making this dish with only the freshest ingredients, as well as homemade sauces, tortilla chips, and refried beans.

Although Chilaquiles is a delicious breakfast dish, is it actually healthy?  

Technically, Chilaquiles is a healthy dish as it offers a balance of all three macronutrients, which translates to a suitable range of calories. 

Here are three steps that explain the calorie amount in Chilaquiles, as well as the ingredients that go into Chilaquiles, and how to stay fit and healthy while eating this popular Mexican dish. 

1. What Goes Into Chilaquiles? 

2. How Many Calories Are In Chilaquiles?

3. How to lose weight, or maintain your weight, eating Chilaquiles

Let’s check out the details about what Chilaquiles is and how many calories it contains depending on how it’s being prepared. 

Tip 1: What Goes Into Chilaquiles?

Traditionally, Chilaquiles are made with lightly fried corn tortillas, and served with either red or green sauce, queso fresco - which is a type of soft Mexican cheese, shredded white chicken meat, eggs, refried beans, Mexican crema, and garnished with avocado. It’s almost like breakfast nachos. 

Chilaquiles is a simple, yet flavorful and satisfying dish since you’ll get a variety of vegetables, herbs, fats, proteins, and carbs. 

It is also versatile and easy to be customized to your liking or diet restrictions. Which we will further discuss in this article. 

The best part of Chilaquiles, however, comes from the sauce. The classic version is a red sauce, also called “salsa Roja” and is made with tomatoes, garlic, onion, and guajillo chilis. Whereas the green sauce, or as they call it in Mexico “salsa verde” is made with tomatillos, poblano peppers, jalapeños, cilantro, garlic, and onion. 

Both types of sauces will add a bit of spice to them, which is balanced out with the eggs and the chicken meat. 

Since it’s a breakfast staple in Mexican cuisine, you can find it in many authentic Mexican restaurants all over LA. 

Now that we know what Chilaquiles are, let’s take a look at the nutrition facts and see how many calories go inside Chilaquiles salsa verde. 

Tip 2: How Many Calories Are in Chilaquiles?

What you always need to be aware of, when living a healthy and active lifestyle, is to understand how many calories you need to consume on a daily basis. 

If we take a look at the nutrition facts, you can see that a serving of 150 grams of Chilaquiles salsa verde has 340 calories with a macronutrient ratio of 52 grams of carbs, 10 grams of protein, and 11 grams of fat. 

This is not bad at all for a complete meal, as this dish is low in fats and has a moderate amount of protein. 

The issue with this dish is the amount of fried tortilla chips required to make this dish, which is responsible for the 52 grams of carbs.

However, if you take a closer look, you can see that there is a whopping 10 grams of fiber in a single serving of Chilaquiles, which is a type of carb you want to eat since it helps with dieting. 

If you burn more calories than you consume, then you will find yourself in a “caloric deficit” which is the only way fat loss can occur. 

Fiber allows you to feel full longer, which is key when you are in a caloric deficit. 

Staying healthy and fit is all about calorie or energy balance, which means that you can still eat your carbs and stay in shape. 

You just have to understand how many carbs you need to eat in a day and to make sure not to overeat on your total accounted calories for the day. 

The key to dieting is keeping a nice balance of macronutrients. A great ratio is sticking to 30% carbs, 40% protein, and 30% fats. 

This is why we recommend you try to make this at home and substitute certain ingredients to make this dish even healthier. 

For example, instead of frying your tortilla chips in oil, you can either air fry them or bake them instead. We recommend making your own tortilla chips since the store-bought version has higher fats and calories. 

Also, instead of chicken stock for the sauce, you can use vegetable stock instead. You can also make this dish vegetarian by using beans or homemade refried beans since the store-bought version is high in sodium and fat.

You can also make this dish vegan by using tempeh instead of chicken or soy chorizo, to add more protein, and serve it with beans and vegan cheese. There are many different ways you can make Chilaquiles, as you can see. 

By making a few changes and substituting a few ingredients, you will lower the carbs significantly and raises the protein intake, so you can get a more balanced meal throughout the process. 

Now that we know a little bit more about the nutrition facts of a classic Chilaquiles dish, let’s take a look at how you can eat Chilaquiles and stay in shape and get nice and lean. 

Tip 3: How to Lose Weight, or Maintain Your Weight Eating Chilaquiles

We have mentioned this in section two of the article but we’re going to stress again the importance of understanding how many calories you need to eat in order to stay in shape. 

Overeating on unhealthy, processed foods that are high in fats and carbs can happen easily and is usually the quickest way to get out of shape. 

Eating something like Chilaquiles, which is customizable and filled with whole fresh ingredients, is a great option if you are looking to shed some fat and feel great. 

Before we get into those tips, however, let’s go over how you can figure out your daily caloric needs and see how much of each macronutrient you should be consuming. 

Your daily calorie intake depends on a few factors, such as height and gender and if you want to gain weight, lose weight, or maintain it. 

Keep in mind that weight loss is really the concept of calories in vs. calories out.

So, how do you know how many calories you should be eating in a day? 

The answer is through trial and error and finding a calorie range that allows you to lose 1-2 pounds of fat per week. 

However, a good place to start is to multiply your body weight by 12 or to use an online TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculator. 

Be mindful that these methods will give you rather rough estimates that are not specific for your body type per se but you’ll see that they can get pretty close. 

Once you get that number from either method, continue to stay with it for a week and see how it affects your body. 

For example, if either method tells you to consume 1800 kcals a day, maintain that for a week and see what happens. 

If you don’t see any changes in your weight, decrease your calorie intake by 100 calories and see how that works. 

Most likely, you don't have to drop your calorie intake too low, as you’ll get a pretty low number to start off with, regardless. 

So, how do you lose weight while eating Chilaquiles?

As you can see, a serving of Chilaquiles has 340 kcals with macros, with 52 grams of carbs, 10 grams of protein, and 11 grams of fat. You can just add this into your day and subtract this from your total daily calorie intake. 

The trick here is to find really satiating and filling foods like Chilaquiles, which is a mixture of whole fresh ingredients.

This is where those macronutrients come in. 

You don’t want all of your calories simply coming from carbs or fats, you want there to be a balance coming from carbs, protein, and fats as mentioned in section two of this article. 

If the 30% carbs, 40% protein, 30% fat ratio is not working for you, and you live an active lifestyle, you can increase the carbs intake to 40% and decrease the fat intake to 20%.

So, just do the calculation of whatever calorie range that you find, and split up your calories by following those macro guidelines. 

After you’ve figured out how many calories you need to consume on a daily basis, you need to make sure that you are exercising regularly and are building muscle throughout every week. 

Building muscles, allow us to burn calories at rest, which means we can eat more and still lose fat.

This is really the goal of working out and is what keeps us healthy as our metabolisms increase.

Chilaquiles is a healthy dish, as it has the potential to offer everything you need to maintain a healthy diet. 

Once again, we recommend that you make this on your own and play around with the ingredients a bit to make it more favorable towards your diet. 

Just keep in mind to have a balance and to eat whole, fresh ingredients and save the bad stuff for your cheats days, or social events with friends. 

THERE IT IS! 

Our three tips and facts will help you eat Chilaquiles and still stay fit.

Chilaquiles is such a versatile dish, as it has so many delicious components that compliment each other. 

The classic version of Chilaquiles is filled with great benefits and can be a balanced meal if you make sure to customize it and add some leaner proteins, as well as add healthier fats.

In general, Chilaquiles are a great example of a dish that features whole foods and offers not only a delicious flavor but great nutrition.

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