Tag: eating healthy

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Home Cooking

In Cooked, Michael Pollan states, ”The decline of everyday home cooking doesn’t only damage the health of our bodies and our land but also our families, our communities and our sense of how our eating connects us to the world.” It doesn’t have to be this way. 

What I like the most about cooking my own meals (with well-sourced ingredients) is that I can better control what fuels my body every day. As mentioned in Why Home-Cooked Meals Sustain Health and Wellness, you don’t have to cook every single day in order to obtain an optimal level of health and wellness. Most of us have busy schedules and aren’t able to set that time aside each day. Instead, you can implement a few different strategies into your weekly routine to achieve the same goal. One strategy you can implement is to set some time aside on the weekend to prep several dishes for the week. Prepping meals ahead of time lets you enjoy those meals at the end of busy weekdays with even more pleasure!   

What Prepping Meals Ahead of Time Looks Like

Home-cooked meals imply cooking with whole foods, which means using nutrient-dense ingredients that have not been tampered with. Once you have selected a few recipes to make for the week ahead (also called “batch cooking”) make sure you have all the ingredients written down on your shopping list. If you buy certain items online, order early enough so you have all the needed ingredients delivered in time. This does require some organizational skills that can progressively be learned and improved. If you keep your pantry stocked with the basic primal/paleo staples, that helps too.

Then, you can pick a couple of hours or so to prepare your meals. The weekend is usually the best time to do that. Cooking in batches gives you big enough quantities of ready-to-eat food that you can store in the fridge and/or the freezer for the upcoming days.

You can even make salads ahead of time! In The Plant Paradox Quick and Easy, Dr. Steven Gundry explains how to use a jar to cleverly layer the different ingredients of your salad: “dressing on the bottom, dense/heavy ingredients next […], then extras like cheese or nuts, topped off with veggies and greens. Since the greens won’t touch anything wet, they won’t wilt, and the whole jar will last in your fridge at least three days. To serve, just invert the whole thing into a bowl and toss.”

In Summary

There you have it! There is no better way than making our own meals to help maintain our health and wellness. Preparing meals ahead of time allows us to achieve this goal without any big fuss. Eating healthy is possible, even on hectic days. And to rediscover where real food comes from, how it grows and thrives, can lead to moments of true amazement!

Until next time!

References

Gundry, Steven R. The Plant Paradox Quick and Easy : The 30-Day Plan to Lose Weight, Feel Great, and Live Lectin-Free. New York, Ny, Harper Wave, An Imprint Of Harpercollinspublishers, 2019, pp. 112-15.

Hyman, Mark. Eat Fat, Get Thin : Why the Fat We Eat Is the Key to Sustained Weight Loss and Vibrant Health. First Edition. New York, Little, Brown And Company, 2016, pp. 190–91.

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Doing Away with Nutrient-poor Foods 

Once we decide to do away with processed foods and the traditional nutrient-poor foods found in most supermarkets, the amount of money we are going to spend on food is probably going to increase a bit. The next time you are looking at the low price tags on some processed foods, keep in mind that they are cheap because many of them are just a mixture of inexpensive fat, sugar, flour, and salt with barely any nutrients. On the other hand, when we consume real nutrient-dense foods, these will keep us satiated for a long period of time. We won’t feel the need to constantly have snacks throughout the day. Although at first it may seem you will be spending more when trying to eat cleaner, applying some of these simple strategies below will help to eat healthy on a budget.

Strategies to Eat Healthy on a Budget

Here are a few of these strategies, as described in The Wild Diet, by Abel James:

  • Buy in bulk and cook large meals ahead of time.
  • Shop at a food co-op (member-owned “cooperative”).
  • Join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm.
  • Shop at farmers’ markets.
  • Look into volunteering at local farms.
  • Grow your own garden.

There is also what is called “cowpooling.” This is when you decide to buy with your friends a whole butchered cow at a local farm, each one of you getting a section of it.

To locate where you can buy meat and produce in your area, you can check eatwild.com, localharvest.org, americangrassfed.org, and slowfoodusa.org.

Online, Thrive Market is an awesome option to buy low-cost paleo and keto products.

In Summary

Eating healthy on a budget doesn’t have to cost a fortune. It is also important to keep in mind that eating nutrient-dense foods will most likely save you some money down the road by providing better overall health in the many years to come than would the traditional processed foods. Knowing that we are all unique individuals with specific requirements and sensitivities, as always, see which foods work for you and buy accordingly.

Until next time!

References

James, Abel. The Wild Diet:  Go Beyond Paleo to Burn Fat, Beat Cravings, and Drop 20 Pounds in 40 Days. New York, Penguin Random House, 19 Jan. 2016, pp. 300-301.

Sisson, Mark. The Primal Blueprint : 21-Day Total Body Transformation. Oxnard, Ca, Primal Blueprint Publishing, 2016, pp. 94-96.

You can also find me on Instagram.