First things first! If you want to be successful in leading a life in wellness, then you must make a promise to yourself that you won’t intentionally skip meals. The goal of eating regular, smaller meals and snacks throughout the day helps promote even amounts of calories and nutrients to use for living.1 When you skip meals, the message received by your body is that you can’t be trusted for regular doses of calories and nutrients to function well. The body is an efficient natural machine and it will learn to adjust its needs and place the body in an energy saving mode. This is not good for long term health and reliable energy use. Over time the body will tend to store the energy received for when meals are skipped and metabolically slow down to minimize energy use or calorie burning. In addition, another downside is that when you do decide to eat a meal there is a tendency to consume larger portions and increased calories at that meal. The larger meal calories may not be needed and therefore will go into storage. (i.e., storage as fat in the body)
To combat overeating the goal would be to commit to daily positive small meal eating. The idea going forward would be to know that as the day progresses there may be increased time demands in the evening which may sabotage the goal of eating small regular meals. Therefore, it would be a proactive approach to pre-plan what will be created or consumed for the evening meal. On paper that sounds great, however whether you are cooking for one or twenty-one, preparing a meal in the evening after a long day is challenging. I am not saying that you have to eat EVERY meal at home, but I am saying that by eating at home you are more likely to eat a healthier, smaller meal and reduce the money spent on eating out.
The first step is to say, “Yes, I will eat at home” and then buy a bunch of ingredients from the grocery store. However, having those ingredients make it to the table may be the biggest part of the commitment, especially for the evening meal. For one, it so simple to skip the meal altogether mainly because you have snacked your way to enough calories during the day to feel full enough. Another is that you are tired from your busy day and its easier to go out to a restaurant. I am sure you could even come up with more reasons to skip making dinner at home, but the bottom line is that many of the excuses do not fuel your body effectively; let alone cost effectively hit your wallet!
Nutritionally creating dinner at home gives you, the cook, the control of what goes on your plate. These decisions include flavor, type, calories, type of health focus, and included ingredients. The challenge is to narrow down your recipe choices enough so you can be successful. Here are two options that I used when my family dinner cooking changed to “empty nest” dinner cooking a few years ago:
Use a pre-packaged fresh ingredients meal from either your local grocery store or meal delivery kit service. While they may seem a little expensive, they are actually a great teaching tool for those who are struggling to start cooking at home. And they are less expensive than going out to eat where the meals are fresh and healthier. I also like that these new meal services tend to offer varied serving sizes for recipes. (4 or 2 servings) Therefore, if you are cooking for one person, you can select a meal kit that makes 2 servings and enjoy the leftovers later in the week for lunch or dinner. Not only do the meal kits provide great recipes using fresh and tasty ingredients, but they are also designed to provide proper serving sizes per recipe. For me this was a great tool to learn how to adjust from preparing larger family meals to portions for one or two.
Find a website, cookbook or cooking magazine that offer recipes to fit your needs. I enjoyed using America's Test Kitchen’s “Cooking for Two” magazine to re-learn how to cook for 2 adults instead of for a growing family. I also love finding simple 30 -45 minute recipes that require 15 minutes of chopping prep work and 15-30 minutes of stove-top or oven cooking. Using the internet, you can narrow your search using online recipe databases to find exactly what you want to prepare and eat. Most times it will also include recipe reviews to share how others successfully prepared and enjoyed the recipe.
I enjoy cooking and I even find myself asking “What should I make tonight?” nightly! I could not even imagine what it would be like if I didn’t like to cook. So, what do you do if you fall into the category of “non-cook”? Well, my thoughts are to keep it simple. Start out with a commitment to prepare and eat dinner at home 2 more times a week than you are currently doing. If you aren’t eating dinner at home now, then start out by making your dinner two times during the week. Do this for one whole month. Once you feel good adding it into your schedule, then add in another day per week until you feel good about the number of days you are preparing and eating dinner at home on a weekly basis.
Remember, eating well does not happen overnight or even in a month. Give yourself time to slowly make preparing and enjoying a dinner at home a habit you can do for a lifetime. If you are looking for more in depth support or training, I can assist you through video chatting, email or in person. My email is costeffectiverd@comcast.net OR I have culinary and nutritional support packages that are sized to meet everyone’s budget and personal nutritional needs. CLICK here to learn more about my offerings: https://gethealthie.com/appointments/embed_appt?dietitian_id=325619&require_offering=true
1 Mills, S. e. (2017). Frequency of eating home cooked meals and potential benefits for diet and health: cross-sectional analysis of a population-based cohort study. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act, 14(1):109. doi: 10.1186/s12966-017-0567-y.
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