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You are here: Home / Archives for healthy meal plans

Find Motivation to Cook at Home

October 13, 2012 by Featured Author Leave a Comment

When faced with the choice of preparing a meal or dialing for take out, too many people opt for the latter because actually cooking something seems like so much effort. We seem as a society to have somehow convinced ourselves that cooking is difficult, not worth our time and only for those who are talented at preparing meals. In reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Cooking at home is often quick, easy, cheap and doesn’t require you to know how to flambé anything.

Here are 4 simple things you can do to motivate yourself to turn that oven on and cook something at home.

1. Remind yourself that you’re saving money

If you are not eating at home then you must be ordering in or eating out. Economic times are hard and both of those options are expensive in the long run. Yet the worst part is that you’re paying more for something you could probably cook better yourself. Why pay for a burger that’s mass produced along with 5000 others when you can cook one yourself at home for cheap and it’ll even be tastier? Seems like there’s no excuses to me.

2. Sometimes cooking yourself is actually faster

Many people justify not cooking because eating out or ordering in is faster. When these people picture making a meal they see themselves slaving away at a stove for hours, and therefore understandably choose not to because they are busy and can’t spare the time.

However, their entire belief system about cooking is actually based on a lie: cooking doesn’t really have to take so long. Perhaps in 1850 a dinner might have taken 2 hours to prepare every night, but nowadays you can knock together a delicious meal in a quarter of an hour if you know how. British chef Jamie Oliver specialises in recipes that can be completed in 15 minutes, showing that making your own food doesn’t have to take over your life. Let’s be honest with ourselves: when was the last time you where served in a restaurant or had take-out arrive in less than 15 minutes?

3. Remind yourself that it’s good for you

If you’re eating out or ordering in, chances are you are not eating the most healthy choices on the menu. By cooking your own food you know exactly what is going into the food you eat and you have much more control over making your meals healthier.

The best part about cooking at home is that the easiest things to make are often the cheapest and healthiest choices too. Nothing is more simple to prepare than a salad or a vegetable stir-fry, which coincidentally are two dishes that are packed with nutritional content. Simple.

4. You don’t have to be a master chef

A reason that many people don’t like to cook is that they feel that they are bad at it. They’ll crack a joke or two about it and make it seem cute that they can’t poach an egg, but in reality they’re just putting themselves down and making excuses.

You don’t need to be a master chef to cook at home, because modern conveniences have made it easier than ever to prepare a meal without a misstep. All you have to do is print some recipes from the internet (you can search for particularly cheap or easy ones) and follow what they say. You can often get by without fancier skills (why sauté vegetables when you can put them in the microwave?) and still make a tasty meal.

Don’t let fear of the unknown stop you from cooking. Download a few recipes, buy some cheap ingredients and see what you can do. The more you cook, the more you’ll want to cook and be assured of your own abilities. Once motivated, it really couldn’t be easier to cook at home.

About the Author: Dora Novak is currently experimenting with fast and healthy foods you can cook with microwaves.

Filed Under: Guest Author, Motivation Tagged With: cooking at home, delicious meal, guest author, healthy meal plans, meal planning, recipes, saving money

4 Online Nutrition Education Resources for Families

July 1, 2012 by Scott "Q" Marcus Leave a Comment

Teaching your kids healthy eating habits and preparing nutritious meals for them is one of the most important things you can do as a parent. With childhood obesity rates on the rise, making sure your children eat right should be one of your major concerns. Unfortunately, unless you majored in nutrition in college, you may only have a vague idea of how to create healthy meal plans for your family. Many parents cook the same recipes for their kids that their parents cooked for them: casseroles, pot roasts, spaghetti and meat balls, etc. While many of these traditional home cooked meals aren’t necessarily bad for kids, they aren’t always necessarily the healthiest options.

If you want your family to learn more about nutrition and eat smarter, here are some online resources that you’ll find helpful:

1. Eat Smart, Play Hard – Sponsored by the USDA, this website provides parents with important nutritional information to help their kids make smarter eating choices and healthier lifestyle choices. Additionally, Eat Smart, Play Hard offers a useful meal planning tool for families and tips on how to grocery shop and exercise as a family to promote health.

2. KidsHealth – This website offers nutrition and fitness information and tips in addition to information about the human body and health in general. There are three versions of the KidsHealth site: one for parents, one for kids, and one for teens. The content on each of the sites is geared toward the different age groups. So, your kids and teens can learn more about how to stay healthy on their own versions of the website, and then the whole family can get together and compare notes.

3. BAM! – Made by the CDC for kids, BAM! uses games and cartoons to teach kids more about nutrition, diseases, physical fitness, and safety. If you want your children to understand why it’s important for them to eat healthy and stay physically active, you’ll find this site to be incredibly beneficial. BAM! might even get your kids excited about eating their vegetables.

4. Parents.com Kids Nutrition – If you’re having trouble coming up with healthy recipes to prepare for your family, you’ll find the Kids Nutrition section of the Parents.com website to be incredibly beneficial. It’s chock full of nutritious recipes and healthy eating tips and information.

The above websites well help your family get informed about nutrition. Remember that healthy kids and parents make for a happier family!

About the Author: Nadia Jones is a freelance blogger who loves writing about education, new technology, lifestyle and health. As an education writer, she works to provide helpful information, pointers, and the most recent online college news for students looking into online degrees.

 

Filed Under: Diet, Exercise, Guest Author, planning, Weight Loss Tagged With: childhood obesity, diet, family, healthy eating habits, healthy meal plans, lifestyle choices, meal planning, nutrition education resources, nutritional information, physical fitness

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