Eating healthy is a way of life, not a diet or a fad. Eating healthy starts in your own kitchen, not at the local juice bar or latest organic themed restaurant. By taking control of what you put into your body 80-90% of the time, you will feel so much better from the inside and it will reflect on the outside. Guilt associated with food is the #1 reason why people fail at diets. Change your mindset about how food choices are made:
“I am going to eat ____ because I will feel better after eating it.”
Dining Out Too Often
I have a theory and tested it on myself that dining out or ordering take-out more than 2 times a week will lead to a larger waistline. When we let others do the cooking for us, we have no idea what they are adding into the meal. I recently discovered the innocent fried rice from my Japanese take-out restaurant is cooked with butter and so is the accompanying teppan steak. I have no idea how much butter they use, but one week we ordered it twice and I could feel the fat collecting on my midsection by the next week.
The other thing we need to be careful about is the source of the ingredients. Unless stated or is part of the restaurants philosophy, you can pretty much assume the vegetables and fruits are not organic. For starters, organic will spoil faster and that’s not good for profit margin. The organic spoils faster because there are no preservatives. What, there’s preservatives on our conventional vegetables and fruits? Here’s an article explaining why you might want to avoid the salad bar.
Why I Cook
For these reasons above, I really encourage you to make the time to prepare your own meals. I try to keep my recipes to one hour for cooking and prepping. If you think about it, ordering delivery or take-out can vary between 30 minutes to 1 hour. You can easily prepare a meal in that time, so long as we have prepped for it. Dining out will take just as long if not longer. Fast food does not count!
Remember, this is what it takes to live a healthy lifestyle and why it’s something we transition into, like any good habit. I promise it’s not difficult and I will happily answer any questions about how to adjust to this new way of living.
Some of the reasons I’ve fallen in love with cooking:
- I can choose the quality of the food I feed my body.
- I am able to account for the calories consumed.
- It’s therapeutic and satisfying knowing my own hands created delicious food.
You find within each recipe some tips on cooking techniques or how to pick your produce for these recipes. Those were added because over the years, friends often ask me during dinner parties how I put the dish together. Also, I realize, there are people out there just starting to learn how to cook and need a little guidance.
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I hope these easy healthy recipes give you the inspiration to the healthy lifestyle.
“Cooking is like love: it should be entered into with abandon or not at all.” – Harriet Van Horne