Making Healthy Cooking a Priority

I remember husband’s first offshore trip in 2009 mostly because it was when I realized how much I didn’t know about grocery shopping and cooking.

Growing up my family was incredibly busy and we almost never ate meals in the home. My mother, sister and I all took dance lessons so we were at the dance studio nightly from about 3pm to 9pm. Most of my meals came from a fast food restaurant or the gas station while in route to the dance studio.

My husband on the other hand ate most of his meals in the home growing up and learned how to grocery shop and cook. When we moved in together, he took the lead on this. I always went to the store with him, but I was rarely involved in the planning and cooking processes. When he left for 3 months, it became obvious that I was clueless as to how to fend for myself.

Speaking from experience I can tell you that eating in the home is 100% healthier than eating outside of the home (not to mention way more cost effective). Everyone says “they don’t have the time,” but it’s hard to argue the negative impact that the fast food is having on our health as a nation.

“Don’t eat anything your great-great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” ~Michael Pollan

5 Reasons to Make Healthy Cooking a Priority

1. Better nutrition since you can control the type, quality and variety of ingredients used (ex: hormone and steroid free products, no trans fats, organic, flavor types, etc).
2. Calorie and portion control. Restaurant portions are out of control, nothing new here 🙂 but when you are preparing the meals in the home you can cook in bulk and portion your servings out so you know what you are actually eating.
3. It creates a healthier relationship with food as you develop a regular pattern of eating. A regular pattern of eating smaller meals every 2-4 hours will also help increase your metabolism.
4. It saves a ton of money because groceries are cheaper than restaurants; not to mention the potential health care costs of a lifetime of eating high calorie, high sodium meals.
5. Better health as you learn to appreciate food and the variety of flavors out there. Experimenting with a variety of flavors (instead of the salt/sugar trap most of our palates are used to) will also naturally help you to be more satisfied with an appropriate volume of food without constant self regulation.

Learning to cook and prepare healthy meals seems like a daunting task; TRUST ME I can relate, but it doesn’t have to be. I will be dedicating the next few days of posts to this topic offering simple and practical advice to get you going in the right direction.

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