As I’ve been reading blogs over the past months I see that a lot of you are *real* cooks. It got me thinking and reflecting on the ability to cook. And not only the ability to cook but the desire to cook.
Do you have to cook, or like to cook in order to eat healthy and/or lose weight?
To be honest with you, I used to hate to cook. When John and I married I honestly didn’t know how to make anything but plain chicken and white rice with no gravy. Well, that’s not entirely true. I also knew how to make every dessert known to man. That I could cook. But real meals? No. That probably explains why many, many restaurants knew John and I by name during those early years of our marriage!
Thanks to the assistance of some well meaning friends, I did learn to cook and to my surprise found out that I actually enjoyed cooking. Between the births of my second and third child, before I lost all my weight I was at the point where I cooked family meals on a regular basis. We still went out to eat fairly often, but I knew how to make many different meals – both healthy and not. I enjoyed experimenting with recipes and tweaking recipes to make them taste better for us. Even though I enjoyed cooking, I wasn’t at the point where I was just cooking for weight loss – but instead just cooking because someone had to do it – and I was elected!
But what of those people who don’t really enjoy cooking, or don’t really know how to cook. What do they do when trying to get control over their weight and healthy eating? Is it possible to eat healthy without cooking a lot?
In thinking this through I think it is possible, but it would be more difficult. There are lots of meals that require little culinary expertise yet yield healthy, tasty results. Things like:
• salads with grilled chicken
•bean salads
•whole wheat tortilla pizzas
•pasta with prepared sauce
•baked salmon (which is actually quite easy to cook)
•sandwiches of all kinds
•fresh fruit salads
•doctored up oatmeal
•bagels with healthy toppings
•etc., etc., etc.,
So to my way of thinking it is possible to prepare healthy meals without having to have a lot of kitchen skills, but it probably takes some careful planning to avoid the temptation to continually fall back onto frozen “diet” meals and healthier restaurant entrees. Both of those food items are okay on occasion but aren’t the healthiest choices. Learning to cook can definitely help in being able to expand the possibilities of healthy eating.
So where are you – cook extraordinaire, occasional chef, beginning chef, or barely able to boil water? How does this help or hurt you in your journey? Diane
Im not really a cook and found in a way it HELPED me on my journey!
I didnt attempt to doctor up high fat recipes I loved and accidentally sabotage myself along the way (my BFF struggled with this).
when I stated I just went cold turkey to raw clean whole foods—these were all pretty easy to prepare.
Miz´s last fabulous musings ..Join me for breakfast giveaway post
I love to cook. It makes healthy living a little more fun for me. I’m always trying to find a way to make the foods and recipes that we love a little healthier.
Alissa´s last fabulous musings ..My Love for RunKeeper
I do agree with you that cooking meals yourself, do help in losing weight and living healthy. You are also right that one can lose weight and be healthy with minimal cooking expertise but it will take up a lot of planning. A lot!
blackhuff´s last fabulous musings ..The weekend and a thank you to a friend
I am not skilled in the kitchen but can follow most simple recipes. One thing I find easy – crock pot meals!
Karen@WaistingTime´s last fabulous musings ..License To Lie
This might sound strange, but for me cooking is an intimate, spiritual experience. Intimate in the fact that you are creating something that is going to enter the body of the one you are feeding and nourish them ( or do harm). Spiritual because in cooking you are responsible for the end of life of the plant or animal you are cooking. If it was not needed for food by someone, it would still be alive.For these reasons food must be treated with respect, used in the way that brings it to the highest elevation possible and never wasted.If you think in those terms, why would anyone want to eat something that is only slightly removed from a lab experiment ? The majority of things passed as food on the store shelves and chain restaurants are lab experiments. If you want to eat food elevated to it’s highest purpose, you must cook it yourself with real ingredients. Real food brings real health and real satisfaction. Fake food demands fake behaviors and an attitude that it is okay to manipulate it( overeat/binge/obsess). You may see the numbers go down on the scale using fake food, but you will never learn to respect the energy that is food- and it will do a lot more harm than good to your body.Learning to cook and seeing how flavors and ingredients interplay with each other will benefit you and yours in many ways.
Diane´s last fabulous musings ..More moving
I’m a good cook but unfortunately I was taught southern cooking when I was growing up and it is hard to break the habit of making all those good but very unhealthy southern dishes. Since starting on the road to health 3 years ago, I have adapted my cooking style to more whole foods and simple lean meats and salads etc. I like simple and I don’t like to spend hours preparing a meal. I prefer convenience, especially in the summer when it is just too hot to cook. I do more cooking in the fall and winter. I do like to cook but it seems to come in stages.
Karen Ogle´s last fabulous musings ..Not Sure About Today
I actually cook a lot less now. We do a lot of grilling with lean meat and veggies on the grill. I get into trouble if I spend too much time in the kitchen! I can do it (just made a requested dinner last night that isn’t on my eating plan), but it is less tempting if I don’t do it often. I have actually been thinking about this a lot lately….the foods/meals I grew up with and the way I am learning to cook now. I’m trying to figure it all out!
Brenda´s last fabulous musings ..Tuesday Results for Week 16
I love to cook but, as a working mother of three, I have very little time to do so. Hence the name of my blog – “Still Life With Crock Pot.”
http://www.jennieiswriting.blogspot.com
Cooking in a slow-cooker is not only convenient, but it requires very little fat and is a great way to use less fatty cuts of meat and other healthy items like beans and root vegetables. Not to mention the fact that it always makes the house smell great.
Diane, I have been following you for a while and find your blog very inspirational. Thank you so much. Please keep it up.
I love cooking, and fortunately I began exploring that love much more after I’d made the decision to lose weight, so most of my “great” recipes are of the more figure-friendly variety
That said, I’ve also got an awesome pot roast and make a killer lasagna… LOL. Those come out maybe once a year.
Amanda´s last fabulous musings ..WW Weigh-In- Week 12
I stated out as a cake designer, creating art in flour and sugar even before there was a Cake Boss or an Ace of Cakes. You know all that trimming they do to the cakes for shaping? I ate the trimmings. I made and ate frosting and when I did paintings on chocolate I ate more than my share of milk chocolate and while chocolate in various colors. It is no wonder that I gained 100 pounds during that ‘career’ move.
These days I get a great deal of satisfaction from taking great recipes and converting them into something I can eat while maintaining my weight loss. This means no flour, no sugar and no milk fat. Some dishes are impossible but most can be adapted tastefully. I enjoy cooking more when I am challenged to make things differently.
Jane~
Keepingthepoundsoff.com
Jane C´s last fabulous musings ..Time for a Change
I’ve learned to create attractive, tasty, healthy meals, and without a doubt it has helped me. Interestingly, the ability to chop, for me, is more useful than the ability to cook
You probably saw my burn mark on my post this morn – no, not a good cook BUT I have found a few things I can do & I just change up the seasoning & stuff like that…. you don’t have to be a great cook to eat healthy!
Jody – Fit at 53´s last fabulous musings ..Award Time – Am I Adorable
I love to cook/bake and find that I don’t want to spend too much time doing it. By the time I get home from work, workout, shower, blog, there’s not a lot of time left before bedtime. I like to cook freezer meals on the weekends and I love trying new recipes. Unfortunately I also love to bake desserts.
Laura Jane @ Recovering Chocoholic´s last fabulous musings ..7 Ways to Make Weight Loss FUN!!
One of the kindest things we can do with our kids (in my opinion) is COOK. And notice I said COOK, not BAKE. I have noticed a lot of weight loss bloggers, who really struggle, and feel their lack of cooking skills is a real problem. Knowing how to prep and cook whole foods is a lost skill in many houses. There are many bloggers who do not know how to prepare many vegetables (for example) and that is cooking at its simplest. Good post.
PS – Diane, I know you take this a step further and make your own bread, pizza dough, etc. And I know you do a lot of kitchen things with your kids like I do.
Vickie´s last fabulous musings ..No- its not just you yes- they are working on it
I am not a cook, but I can put healthy things together and not spend much time on them. However, I don’t do it but for once or twice a week. I usually eat the frozen food meals or salads.
Sheri´s last fabulous musings ..Moving On
I love to cook, and actually started cooking for health. Because of that, cooking has helped me a lot. I used to dislike baking, but I recently tried a few recipes and now I’m hooked. This could be trouble…
I am a chef extraordinaire! I have loved to cook since I was a child and my original career choice was chef, but life intervened and I had to quit chef school.
Now I just cook for my partner, my family and friends, and my son when he comes to visit.
I have found ways to cook meals that are more conducive to weight loss.
Kimberley´s last fabulous musings ..My FitAfterFitbloggin Pledge
I think that part of not eating too much refined foods is to have simplicity. I boil two dozen eggs, make lots of chicken, and then we eat salad for several days in a row. We have oatmeal with a banana in it for breakfast. I go to a fruit market where fruit and veggies are about 3 times as cheap as the popular grocery store. We often buy over 20 pounds of fruits and vegetables for a week. So we often eat sweet potatoes, strawberries, or grapes for a snack. I have a banana or an apple in my purse most of the time. If cooking is too time-consuming, some of us will tend towards fast food because of its ease.
Well, you know I like to cook! I don’t bake, because I know I would eat those yummy deserts. I can get into trouble in the wintertime with cooking too many pastas, though. I am so glad summer and grilling season is here. In a few weeks we will start getting our fresh veggies from the CSA and then cooking becomes a whole lot healthier.
Stacy´s last fabulous musings ..No sewing…just landscaping
I don’t think you have to learn to cook, depending on where you live and what sort of stuff is available. My bf lives in a wealthy, healthy part of town, where he can buy a organic meal sized salad for $12, and he never cooks. I make a weeks worth of salads for $12. If I didn’t think it was the hugest waste of money, I could probably eat foods prepared by other people and be fine, but I’m too cheap, and I like my super-tasty produce, I like to control my ingredients, and I like to cook.
julie´s last fabulous musings ..I guess I should say something
Someone gave me a cabbage last year, and I had no idea what to do with it. That started me on learning how to cook a variety of vegetables, and it has been helpful.
Losing weight aside, I whole-heartedly believe children should be taught the skill of cooking or at least the skill of following a real recipe (not box recipes). I felt handicapped when I was on my own, married, then with kids.
Gina´s last fabulous musings ..Growing My Own