Four Tips To Make Nutritious Cooking At Home Simpler
One thing I hear all the time is, “I want some helpful tips to make cooking at home easier, and tips for how to consistently make healthier meals.”
Guess what? Your wording alone shows me that you likely have internalized food rules that are complicating your ability to cook from home with ease.
Why is this?
Saying “healthier” implies that you believe some foods are good, and some foods are bad. Healthy vs. unhealthy. Often, when you have these foods rules you also believe that you are good or bad depending on the food you eat.
How does this get in the way of your ability to easily cook satisfying meals at home, though??
Your food rules likely influence the foods you choose to keep at home, the ingredients you allow yourself to use while cooking, and your flexibility in the types of meals you allow yourself to cook at home.
Let me use my client, Miranda, as a great example.
When we first started working together, Miranda believed that she was too lazy to cook at home, and just didn’t really understand HOW TO even though she had ALLLLL the kitchen gadgets.
She told me that even though she actually enjoys cooking, most of the time she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Oh how things have changed!
After our first 12 weeks of working together, when I asked Miranda what she was proudest of, this is what she said:
In my program, Miranda learned that at the root of her cooking issues were her deep set beliefs about herself, her worth, and the food rules that held her back from keeping food on hand that she enjoyed and felt comfortable using.
Miranda didn’t think she was worth the time and effort, and complicated the cooking process because she limited the foods she allowed herself to use due to her diet-based food rules.
Not to mention, because Miranda was not in touch with her hunger and fullness cues, she often found herself ravenously hungry before she allowed herself to eat. Ravenous hunger creates a sense of urgency, and compounded with all the other beliefs Miranda had about cooking at home, she found herself just turning to takeout or fast food more often. She felt it was a quicker option in those times of urgency when the only other option she knew was spending a bunch of time making a “healthy”, and frankly unappealing, meal at home.
Does this sound familiar?
I find that so many of my clients are already fully capable of cooking. However, they feel like they HAVE to spend time searching for a recipe that is “healthy enough” or that they can only use the freshest ingredients and must cook everything from scratch.
These are all rules that DON’T HAVE TO EXIST!
You are not only complicating your ability to cook with confidence, but also your ability to pay attention to your body and honor your cravings because of the foods you believe you are or aren’t allowed to eat.
You gottaaaa be more flexible, my friends!
How do you accomplish this?
Here are my top four tips to make cooking delicious and nutritious food at home an easier task:
- Use convenience foods: Pre-packaged and frozen foods can be extremely helpful in simplifying your meal time process. Pre-chopped, frozen veggies are a lifesaver for adding extra nutritious food to your meals. And that’s an important note here: I teach my clients to try to have an addition mindset, which allows them to ADD nutrition to foods they already enjoy, instead of limiting what foods they’re allowed to eat! A couple good examples of this are adding broccoli to a box of mac and cheese, or building a salad around some fast-food chicken strips you picked up on the way home, and not being afraid to add cheese and use ranch dressing to make it satisfying. Pairing veggies with fun foods doesn’t take away from their nutrient value!
- Examine and challenge your food rules: Do you cook without butter, salt, oil, sauces, certain seasonings, and other fun ingredients?? There may be underlying food rules that you need to address to widen the variety of foods you allow yourself to use. More ingredients = more variety which leads to tastier meals. Plus, variety is one of the pillars of good nutrition I teach my clients!
- Allow yourself to make the FUN foods at home, too: If you’re ONLY making plain, what you consider “healthy” food at home it’s going to be less fun than if you allow yourself to make fun foods, too. This really ties in to the addition mindset I mentioned earlier. I’m guessing if you’re a dieter, the times you found yourself cooking the most at home, you were following a meal plan or meal prep plan, probably watching your calories/macros/points, and restricting. This is going to keep you from having fun in the kitchen! What I want you to try is incorporating some fun meals into your regular pattern too, and experiment with making them at home! Pizza, burgers, french fries, and your favorite chinese takeout dish? You can find recipes to help you make these at home, and after a while they can become an easy go-to dish that you can incorporate more nutrition into AND have more control over the flavor!
- ASK FOR HELP: Whether this is asking a partner, children, or other family members to help prep some foods or take care of other responsibilities so you can take the time to prep a few things, I want you to know that it IS okay to ask for help. To be the best parent, partner, friend, etc, you have to understand that you REQUIRE and DESERVE time to take care of your own needs first. Another great person to ask for help figuring all of these things out and learning how to actually implement them in a way that WORKS for your lifestyle is me! My Empowered Eating program is designed to help you work through food rules, prioritize your self care and understand your worth, and have a better understanding of what good nutrition really means.
Want a few more tips? You can also check out this blog post about four ways intuitive eaters create healthy, lasting habits!
Diet culture has taught you that when it comes to nutrition and your health, it is a simple black-and-white decision to eat the “right” food. But in reality, it’s more complicated than that.
Once you can break free of your food rules and change your mindset around cooking from home, things can be so. much. easier!
If you feel like you need some extra help implementing these strategies so you can finally live the easy, healthy life you’ve always wanted WITHOUT having to obsess about food or plan and track every move you make, we should talk.
Schedule a free, 45 minute discovery call with me so I can get to know you and your goals, and explain to you just how my program can finally help you break free of your food rules and live a life free from diet culture once and for all.
Don’t just take it from me, though! Here’s what Miranda had to say when I asked her if she would recommend my program to someone:
It’s time to take that step and commit to YOURSELF.
I can help you get there.
Talk soon,
Lauren