The Real Housewives of Orange County's Shannon Beador recently announced a new business venture: her very own prepared food line called Real for Real Cuisine, launching on QVC on April 18.

Shannon has bounced from higher weights to lower weight, and then back to higher again — like many people who experiences successes and setbacks while trying to get to a healthy place and maintain it.



And with the new healthy food line — each meal is a portion-controlled 450 calories or less — comes with some clear-headed reflections about lifestyle changes, and what's required to feel satisfied and stay healthy.

As far as the biggest challenge to healthy eating, Shannon tells The Feast it's often about portioning. "A lot of times there are portion-control issues, and a lot of people aren't aware of the calories that are involved in each item or ingredient they're using in the meal," she says. "The other thing that's important to me as well is I like to use fresh, simple ingredients, so that's kind of how we've put the meals together. All the ingredients work well together, it's complete meal, and it's as fresh as you can get."

While working on her new project, she says, "I'll be honest with you, a lot of it is the portion. I always thought that you needed to really eat nothing in order to lose weight."

But that's not the case, she knows now. "But to know that you can eat a serving of 10 ounces, it's a huge plate of food for me. I'm surprised. That's good news," she says.

And the project has also afforded other benefits, like quality family time... with her official testers. "What has been fun for me as well is I've been putting a lot of time in the kitchen. I do love to cook, and to kind of try and figure out what my favorite recipes are and then forward it onto the chef, it's been a lot of fun. My kids, we've been spending a lot of time with the girls in the kitchen, having them try things. Is this a good one? Is this a bad one? So it's been nice.”

-Reporting by Laura Rosenfeld